In March of 1965 I celebrated my eighteenth birthday with a cake my mother baked and a night out with my girlfriend that Saturday. The next Monday, I registered for the draft. I wasn't too worried about being drafted into the US Army because I'd already been accepted at MTSU as a music education major. I ended up having to take the Selective Service Qualification Test but I had a deferment from the draft for the four years it took me to get my degree.
At that time, I was certain that given how the US had helped defeat the Axis in WWII and had held their own against the Chinese in Korea, any war in a tiny little country like Vietnam couldn't last for four years. I gave it another year, maybe two years tops. The US would stop drafting men then, and I'd get out of college and start teaching music in some high school somewhere.
Popular music in those days was a mix of pop, folk music, country, and the beginnings of rock and roll. There was also classical and big band music for the older folks. Classical music was what my high school band played at our concerts and we played Sousa marches at the football games. I played the trumpet and it was a lot of fun marching in the homecoming parade and at half time of every home football game. It was fun playing in the concert band too, but the little stage band was more fun. We played big-band tunes for at least one dance every fall, and it was fun and a little funny watching the parents dance to swing tunes from the war years.
My real love, though, was the guitar. I'd played guitar since I got one as a Christmas present when I was twelve. It wasn't much of a guitar, just a Silvertone from Sears & Roebuck, but it was a real guitar. The English teacher at my high school, Mister Jacobs, also played guitar and taught lessons, and my parents signed me up for lessons with him two days a week after school.
After two years of lessons, I was getting the hang of things enough my old Silvertone wasn't up to the task. The neck had bowed some, so playing high notes meant I had to push the strings down further to get them fretted and that messed up the intonation. Mister Jacobs showed me what wrong and when I asked him if it could be fixed, he shook his head.
"Maybe, but you'd be looking at almost the price of a new guitar. You'd be better off finding a good used guitar like a Gibson or a Martin. It won't matter much how old it is or what it looks like as long as the neck is straight. It'll still be a better guitar than your Silvertone."
I kept playing the Silvertone, but as soon as I turned sixteen, I got a summer job in a grocery store in my hometown, Gallatin, Tennessee. I worked four hours a day, three days a week that summer, and when school started, I could work four hours on Saturday. After income taxes and buying some clothes I wanted, by that spring I had seventy-five dollars in my guitar fund. That summer, I worked in the same grocery store, but the owner let me work eight hours a day. When school started that fall, I had another hundred dollars in my checking account. I went looking for a new guitar.
Most guitars used by the professional musicians of the day were electric, so they needed an amplifier. I didn't really care for the sound of an electric and I didn't have enough money to buy an amplifier to go with an electric, so I was looking for a good acoustic guitar. An acoustic fit right into my favorite kind of music as well. I really liked folk music.
There were several stores that sold guitars in Nashville and I went to them all. Most had Gibsons and Martins, and playing them made me realize just how much better they were. The problem was they were way out of my price range. After I'd played two Gibsons and then told the salesman I loved how they played but I couldn't afford them, he gave me some advice.
"You're just looking in the wrong place. Try some of the pawnshops. A lot of guitar players come to Nashville hoping to make it big in country music. After a year or so of not getting anywhere, they're down to their last dime so they hock their guitars to get enough money to go back home. You might find a pretty nice guitar that you can afford."
At the third pawn shop I visited, I did. She was a Gibson J200 and I thought the sunburst finish was gorgeous. She did have some case wear in a couple of places and the finish on the back of her neck was all but gone, but her neck was straight as a string. When I tuned her up and played her, she played like a new guitar.
I had to haggle with the pawn shop guy a little. He wanted a hundred and seventy dollars for her and a beat up hard case. I had that much, but I wanted new strings. I said I'd give him a hundred and sixty if he'd throw in two sets of strings. We settled on a hundred and sixty five with one set of new strings and a better case. I named her Lucille.
By the time I was a senior, I'd been listening to music by some of the best jazz guitar players, and liked the style where they played music by "finger picking" instead of just strumming chords. I practiced imitating that style for hours until I could usually pick out a song after I'd heard it a couple of times. I'd also changed from trumpet to guitar in the stage band, so I got a lot of experience in playing chords and the occasional guitar solo.
When I went to MTSU that fall, I took Lucille with me. Playing wasn't just enjoyable for me. It was also relaxing. If the weather cooperated, on Saturday and Sunday I'd take Lucille out on the lawn in front of the dorm and play the folk songs that were popular at the time. If it was raining, and later when the weather turned cold, I'd take Lucille down to the common area of the dorm.
One cold Saturday afternoon in February, I was down in the common area with Lucille, sitting by myself and quietly playing a song I really liked. It was "Blowin' In The Wind", by Peter, Paul, and Mary. A guy and his girlfriend walked past me on their way to the TV set at the other end of the room. Women weren't allowed in the men's dorm except for in the common area, and since most guys didn't have a lot of money, the common area was a place where you could take a girl on sort of a date without spending money.
Well, anyway, as they walked past me, the girl stopped and then walked over beside me. She waited until I started the next phrase of the song and then started singing the words.
I knew she was there but I hadn't been paying attention her. People sometimes stopped to listen when I was playing and then walk on. When she started singing, I looked up at her.
In 1966, women were expressing their rejection of social norms with mini-skirts and tops that accented their breasts, hips, and legs instead of trying to hide their figures. This girl wasn't though. She had on a drab, brown flowing dress that reached from her neck to her ankles, and her shoes were leather moccasins. That was unusual, but the thing that drew my eye was her hair. She had dark brown hair that spilled over her shoulders and down over her chest almost to her waist.
She wasn't especially pretty, just sort of average, but her voice was fabulous. She was a low alto, and the tones were clear as a bell. She was smiling too.
When she finished the last verse of the song, I played a short ending and then looked up at her and grinned.
"With a voice like that, you should be making records."
She grinned back.
"That's what I want to do some day, but Daddy thought it would be best if I learned how to do something else in case that doesn't work out. I'm studying accounting. You're pretty good yourself."
About then, the guy she was with cleared his throat. He sounded more than a little aggravated.
