I figured you guys would appreciate this story.
My brother and I went to downtown Springfield, MO this past Friday to do some busking. He plays the washboard and I play the National.....we always have a great time. We had a little time to kill before people started coming out so we decided to go hit some flea markets and antique stores. We stopped by a little shop on Boonville street and started looking around. They didn't have anything we were interested in so we were going to leave quickly, but I decided to ask the guy if he had any old guitars laying around. He said he had purchased an old "crappy" guitar at the auction of Boxcar Willie's collection in 1999 just after Boxcar had died. He pulled out an old Toledo parlor guitar. The thing is fantastic.....it has an old ornate hand-carved bridge with hand-carved pegs. I asked him how much he wanted for it.....he said $50, I offered $40, he countered with $45, and I slapped the money on the table. He told me that most of the stuff at the auction had gone for a lot, but nobody seemed to want that old parlor so he got it cheap.
I've been admiring it over the past couple of days. It had a few things rattling around in it so I turned it over and was shaking it around. After a couple of minutes of shaking I noticed something way down in there stuck to the wood. I fished it out and it turned out to be a hand-written note that said, "Boxcar's First Guitar."
Az
My brother and I went to downtown Springfield, MO this past Friday to do some busking. He plays the washboard and I play the National.....we always have a great time. We had a little time to kill before people started coming out so we decided to go hit some flea markets and antique stores. We stopped by a little shop on Boonville street and started looking around. They didn't have anything we were interested in so we were going to leave quickly, but I decided to ask the guy if he had any old guitars laying around. He said he had purchased an old "crappy" guitar at the auction of Boxcar Willie's collection in 1999 just after Boxcar had died. He pulled out an old Toledo parlor guitar. The thing is fantastic.....it has an old ornate hand-carved bridge with hand-carved pegs. I asked him how much he wanted for it.....he said $50, I offered $40, he countered with $45, and I slapped the money on the table. He told me that most of the stuff at the auction had gone for a lot, but nobody seemed to want that old parlor so he got it cheap.
I've been admiring it over the past couple of days. It had a few things rattling around in it so I turned it over and was shaking it around. After a couple of minutes of shaking I noticed something way down in there stuck to the wood. I fished it out and it turned out to be a hand-written note that said, "Boxcar's First Guitar."
Az