I wrote a story not long ago about a man named Moe Rivers, a guitar maker living on the border.  Yeah, Moe's just a character from a story and not a real guitar maker.  I could write that story with confidence because I am a guitar maker, and it's more than just a hobby with me.  My wife gave me a guitar kit one year for Christmas, and since she spent nearly four hundred bucks on it, I felt obligated to do something with it.  I cleaned out a shed in the back yard, set up a shop, and went to work.  Three months later, I had my first guitar built and ready for action . . . and it sounded awful.  Well, not awful, but not nearly what I expected.  I'm not a great guitarist, but I do fairly well at playing and deserved better than that particular guitar.  I put it away and bought another kit.

Guitar number two was nice because it looked better and produced the sound I was after.  Number three was a built from scratch guitar - no kit, did it all myself, and it turned out to be a decent instrument.  I built a few more kit guitars, the went to my own construction designs.  I made a dozen acoustic guitars, all big dreadnaughts built the old time way with center wound headstocks and 12 fret necks.  After a few years of doing that, I started making smaller guitars, even some 0 size.  And I experimented and made some weird creations of my own, like bass guitars made from oval metal tubs.  I even built a couple of upright basses that look exactly like regular dreadnaught guitars . . . except big, very big.

I build guitars partly because I get a kick out of construction but mostly because I love wood.  Over the years I have built mahogany, rosewood, maple, purpleheart, and even white pine guitars.   I built the pine guitar on a lark, just to see if I could build a nice guitar from scraps . . . which I did and came up with a beautiful guitar that sounded good, and one where all the wood came from a local lumber store.  But most of all, I love mesquite wood because it presents a real challenge to any woodworker.  For one thing, it does not smell good like most woods, and it is hard and sometimes difficult to work with.  Getting pieces of mesquite large enough to build guitar bodies and necks with is in itself a challenge, but I've built a number of them with good succcess.   The wood, when carefully chosen, is indeed magnificent in appearance.

Most people in Texas think of mesquite as junk wood, and the ranchers usually spend a lot of time trying to kill it.  Some people think it's good for nothing other than cooking barbeque, but I disagree, as do any number of craftsmen.  I hate seeing it wasted, and I surely hate to see it destroyed as being a nuisance bush or tree.  I doubt that we're going to run out of mesquites any time soon down here in Texas, but I still grieve some over the demise of the tree.  To me the woods I use to build things with, especially the guitars, take on a special significance to me.  I work hard at not wasting anything in my guitar shop, especially the wood.  I do that in the knowledge that the wood is in many ways far more durable than I am, and maybe in the long run more important.

Think of it this way, if you will.  A living tree is a thing of beauty we all should appreciate.  It provides a service essential to us because it gives us air that's fit to breath.  Without them, we all die - it's just that simple.  Killing a tree should be not be taken lightly, but we need trees to survive in other ways, and so the cutting of them for essential things can be justified.  The wholsale slaughter of them just for commercial purposes should be seen as a crime against humanity, in my opinion.  This is something man will likely never understand because he sees everything in the world as it relates to him.  The unfortunate thing about a tree is that it is often worth more dead than alive.  Alive it's just a tree, taking up space and providing some shade and adding to the beauty of the earth (not to mention what it does in regard to providing oxygen), and mankind has never been known to save something just because it's shady and beautiful . . . or even healthy.  If he can make a buck off it, or it it's in the way and causing his some discomfort, he'll kill it in a heartbeat.  Dead, the tree becomes lumber - wood that can be used to build all sorts of things like houses . . . and even guitars.  

And what is a man worth dead?  As far as I can determine, a person is worth nothing much dead.  Unlike a tree, he's not wood and can't be used to the benefit of anything.  Oh, he's worth something to doctors and hospitals and morticians because they might make some big bucks off his dying.  If he's young enough, you might be able to harvest some organs or body parts somebody else might find useful.  Considering I'm an old fart with worn out parts, I'm worthless for sure.  And dead, a person is an inconvenience because he has to be disposed of.  We cart the dead off to graveyards, maintained at great expense, and bury them, and make yet another businessman happy when we have to buy the expensive grave stone.  Nope, we're not only worthless dead, we dead weight because we're a disposal and economic problem.  But a tree?  It becomes wood . . . something valuable, and something that's likely to turn into something really nice - like maybe a guitar.

I think about that when I'm out hunting for wood or in the shop working on a guitar or some other project.  I have guitars in my shop that are old and in need of repair, but they're still here.  With a little TLC they could be played and enjoyed again, and the people who built then are likely long since dead and buried.  Maybe a hundred years from now someone will hold a guitar I made, lovingly play it, and perhaps still be able to read the label inside that says, "Line Camp Guitars.  Don't Waste The Wood."  And even if some irate woman uses the guitar to beat her her drunken husband half to death, it served a purpose for somebody - right?  Who knows, some traveling musicians might get stranded along the roadside in a Montana snow storm, and it could be that old guitar that keeps them from freezing when they swet it afire to stay warm.  Wood does burn, you know, and it usually smells good in the process.  I'd hate to think how bad the bus would smell if you had to burn the drummer.

And, oh yeah, that first guitar I made?  The saddle popped off not long after I made it,  and it stayed in my shop for ten years gathering dust.  Several years ago, I cleaned it up and fixed it, and it sounds great.  My son down it Austin has it in his collection . . . so I did not waste the wood after all.

D. Paz  . . . Aug. 30