Splashes PigeonsGift

							                                    PIGEON'S GIFT

                                       Bill Barker


What a friend for a young couple just starting out in life.
Pigeon was like having your own Magic Genie. He had been a friend of my wife's
family as long as she could remember. When I first met him, he was in his late
fifties and had been a bachelor all his life. He owned a country store near Beech
Island, South Carolina. He was the local Magistrate, a fancy name for Justice of the
Peace. To a young, impressionable couple, he represented excitement and
adventure. He was short, about five feet, five inches tall, rather rotund, balding,
with a round, cherubic face, black twinkling eyes and an ever-ready smile. He was
our idea of what Santa Claus would look like.

Pigeon was always ready to entertain us with a story of his adventures on the
Mexican border or his life on the high seas, but his real talent was making dreams
come true.

Here's how he fulfilled a dream of mine. Every since I was a small boy I had
always wanted to play the guitar. A tragedy occurred in Pigeon's life. His store
burned to the ground. He had lived in the rear of his store and until it was rebuilt he
had no place to stay. He rented a small apartment. My wife and I invited him to
spend his evenings with us. This was a real treat, because he was an excellent
cook. He insisted on bringing and preparing dinner for us. During these visits he
learned of my desire to play the guitar. On his next visit, he brought a guitar case
which contained a beautiful guitar, rosewood body, spruce top with an ebony fret
board, inlaid wood outlined the body. Then Pigeon played the blues. Beautiful,
soft, haunting work. His favorite song was "I Get the Blues When It Rains."
He quickly taught me the basic chords and said he would leave the guitar with me
to practice on.

Although I thought I really tried, I just couldn't seem to get the hang of it. Pigeon
just said, "Keep trying. One day when you least expect it, it will come."
Then another tragedy struck. Pigeon was taken from us with a sudden heart attack.
I called his brother and offered to return the guitar. He said, "No, Pigeon would
have wanted you to have it." So, the beautiful guitar was now mine, a gift from a
good friend.
There was one mystery connected with the guitar. "Who made it?" It undoubtedly
was a fine instrument. The only clue to it's maker was the word "Wolverine"
stamped on the end of the neck, and the statement, "Made especially for the
Grinnelle Brothers of Detroit, Michigan," stamped on a strut inside the body.
When I asked my friends who knew about guitars if they ever heard of a
"Wolverine" guitar, all I got were strange looks and the word, "Nope."
Several years go by. We are in a new location, South Carolina. My landlord is a
music teacher, a former union musician who played with big bands in Atlanta,
Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Guy Lombardo when they came to town. He
agreed to teach me to play the guitar. We had one minor difference. I liked
country, "Lovesick Blues" He liked Pop “Moon River." He prevailed for teaching
purposes.

I showed him my beautiful guitar. He carefully examined it and attempted to tune
it. He then told me the neck had come loose from the body, making it impossible to
tune. I took my lessons on a Gibson guitar. The beautiful guitar was put in the
closet.

A number of years went by. I'm now in Galax, Virginia, the home of the original
old-time Fiddler's Convention, where each year, the second week in August, 20 to
30,000 musicians and fans converge for a week in of competition to determine the
best musicians in the mountains.

    We lived next door to a superlative, much in demand, banjo player. I struck up
a close relationship following him around like a puppy dog everywhere he went to
play. One evening, he called and asked if I would like to go to a recording studio
where he and his group were going to provide backup for a mountain folk singer.
The folk singer had written a ballad about the truck wrecks on Highway 58 at
Fancy Gap, Virginia, the point where the highway makes its steep decline off the
Blue Ridge. He planned to record the ballad and makes tapes to sell in truck stops.
The recording session went well. The song was recorded to the satisfaction of
everybody.

Just as the folk singer was packing his instruments and getting ready to leave, he
said, "Hey, you fellers wait a minute, I've got something to show you." He ran out
to his car and returned with four packages wrapped in quilts. He carefully laid
them down as though they were babies and unwrapped them. There, displayed
before us, were four of the most dilapidated, beat up, abused guitars I had ever
seen. None had strings and most had serious cracks in them.
The group viewed them and almost simultaneously began to say things like, "What
a find," "I can't believe this," "What Beauties," "Where in the world did you find
them?"

The folk singer said, "I got ‘em offen' old Ben Grimes widder after he passed. He's
kept ‘um under his bed all these years."

The thing I immediately noticed about the guitars was the wood they were made
from. The inlay work was identical to my guitar.

I asked the banjo player why they were so excited about those beat up guitars. He
looked at me as if I was lacking some vital segment of mountain music knowledge
and exclaimed, "Man, those are pre-war Martins." He further explained they had
the most sought after tone for bluegrass music, and after they were refurbished by a
luthier, they would be very valuable instruments.

After we got home, we went into my house and I showed him the beautiful guitar.
He said, "It sure looks like a Martin to me, but I never heard of no Wolverine
Martin." He said, "I can tell you in a minute if it's a Martin. Get me a flashlight."
After receiving the flashlight, he turned the guitar up and, looking in the sound
hole shined the light at the spot where the neck joined the body. "Yep, it's a Martin
all right. It's got a serial number. A friend of mine has a Martin serial number list.
We'll check it and let you know the year it was made."

That was when I first learned what a treasure I had inherited from our dear friend,
Pigeon. Serial number 20882 was made by the C.F. Martin Company in 1923. On
March 1, 1923, Henry Whitter of Fries, Virginia, recorded two songs for Ralph
Peer of RCA Victor in New York, "Wreck Of The Old Southern 97" and
"Lonesome Road Blues." This was the year recorded country music began.

That summer, while at the Galax old-time Fiddler's Convention, we visited a booth
dealing in vintage instruments. They had a book on the Martin guitars. According
to the book, the beautiful guitar was a "contract Martin." It was a regular in-line
Martin, but personalized for Grinnelle Brothers, a large department store in
Detroit, Michigan. The Wolverine is Michigan's state animal. The book stated this
meant the guitar was even more rare than a regular Martin.

There remained only one more step in the saga of the beautiful guitar. I went to
Piney Creek, North Carolina, and looked up Uncle Dave Sturgill. Uncle Dave
looked almost exactly like a billy goat, even down to the white goatee. The only
thing he lacked was a set of horns. He was a renowned luthier, who once built a
banjo for John Hartford with a map of the Mississippi River inlaid with mother-of-
pearl in the neck. He looked the guitar over and said, "I don't mind putting these
back together. It's those fellers who bring in the Montgomery Ward mail-order
guitars that belonged to Daddy and expect me to do something with them that
worry me. There's only one condition; I have to take it. Don't ask me when you'll
get it back.

Almost exactly two years later, I got a call from Uncle Dave. "Your guitar's ready."
I rushed up to Piney Creek and beheld the beautiful guitar in all it's glory
This was the culmination of many years of the transformation of an unknown,
unheralded instrument to one of true distinctive value. Uncle Dave took the guitar
and gave me a one-hour concert, which immediately reminded me of "The Touch
Of The Master’s Hand."

If you want to see one exactly like it, just watch Willie Nelson when he plays his
guitar. The only difference is the beautiful guitar doesn't have an extra hole below
the sound hole.

Today, when I take it out and strum it, I can see Pigeon and hear the haunting
strains of "I Get The Blues When It Rains.”