Safety Procedures Learned the Hard Way…
I seldom talk about my other interests on this blog, but I’m actually quite the Renaissance man. A regular Thomas Jefferson, minus the Sally Hemings controversy. Yikes– rabbit trail warning! Anyway, I and my wife love to camp, and I have been an active musician for somewhere north of fifty years. Occasionally these two interests intersect.
Who doesn’t like to sit around a campfire late in the evening and play a guitar? If you’re a guitar player, anyway. Well, I do. I always bring one of my acoustic instruments on camping trips. In July 2021 that instrument was my Taylor 410CE Dreadnought acoustic, my pride and joy, a gift from my wife a dozen years prior, and the pinnacle of instrumental glory for me.
Earlier in the year we had purchased a nice, barely-used Keystone Cougar trailer. It’s the perfect camper for a soon-to-be-retired couple. It’s got a queen bed with an actual mattress, shower, TV, stereo, full kitchen, and a power slide-out that hosts the dinette. Power jacks. Power awning. Remote control for all of the above. It’s everything we ever dreamed of in a camper.
This was our first season of ownership and we were still getting the hang of its various features. Similar to buying a new car these days, it takes a while to get familiar with every nuance of every function. But we were doing pretty good with it by now, and packing up after a week of camping had become a familiar routine.
At the conclusion of this trip we were doing the usual tear-down and had nearly finished. One of the very last things you do is to retract the slide-out, which means first organizing everything inside. Then and only then do you activate the high-torque electric motor that turns the large worm gears, sucking in the dining room. So there I was, standing outside with the remote, cranking in the slide-out. It was nearly flush when I suddenly heard a loud snapping sound.
That can’t be good, I thought. I immediately backed out the slide-out and went in to check out the odd noise. I bounced up the fold-out steps, turned right, and stopped dead. My guitar case seemed to be crushed. Fearing the worst, I set it on the bed and quickly opened it. The case was not all that was crushed. The body on my beautiful, irreplaceable, expensive guitar was caved in. Cracked and splintered, beyond repair. I know enough about woodworking to know irretrievable damage when I see it. It was so horrible that I just stood there, literally feeling nothing, not reacting, inexplicably calm.
My wife came in right behind me and she was also horrified, quickly concluding that there was no hope for this no-longer-beautiful instrument. One that I needed quite badly, incidentally, since the following week I was to help with music at our church campout. But not with this guitar, this pile of splinters, this… this eurethaned beauty, now reduced to exorbitantly-expensive firewood. Her reaction? “We’ll get you another one. Today.”
I looked at her in disbelief. With what money? I asked her. “With my bonus from work. We’ll stop by the music store in Aztec on the way down.”
Is there any wonder why I married this lovely woman?
After a feeble but futile argument I succumbed. We completed the packing process, hooked up, said our goodbyes, and headed down the mountain towards home. Main Street Music was on the way and open. This is where we’d bought the now-destroyed guitar and they have a nice acoustic room which usually has a good selection, and we went in to check it out. As it turned out, their stock was a bit down at the time– by which I mean, they had entry-level guitars, and high-end guitars, with nothing in between. Basic stuff that I frankly wouldn’t want (but probably deserved after stupidly placing by guitar between the slide-out trim and the bed pedestal), and a breathtakingly expensive and beautiful Taylor 814CE.
Do you know which one she told me to buy?
Reference previous observation about choosing well my mate. Yeah. The 814. The envy of every musician I know who’s seen it. The plays-like-butter, gorgeous, tricked-out, upgraded-electronics, Cadillac six-string marvel.
So, it’s not just about camping and music. It’s also about love. She showed me such love through this whole situation… and I’d best remember what a treasure I have in her! Speaking of which, I need to go pick up some flowers. See you later!
Oh, and now we always have one person inside, watching to make sure nothing is going to get crushed. One disaster was enough…
Action Road 