When I was a kid, a sure way to tell if your parents did not like you is they bought you a memory game called "Husker Do".  I mean, the television commercials were embarrassing. The game originated from one of the Nordic countries, hence the name…Husker…Pronounced HOO-sker  DOO… as in Doctor DOlittle. Together the words meant "Do You Remember".  I never received that game as a kid so all in all, I feel pretty loved here at 55 years of age.  I had great parents. They had their problems too, like we all, but everything aside, GREAT parents.

I ask about that old memory game, because even though, I never possessed the genuine article, I do find myself at times remembering the fond things of life. Most of those for me were musical. I remember my first guitar, my first amp, my first keyboard, my first guitar picks…remember the old Ace brand sparkle picks??? And because my parents would not know one guitar from another, I remember learning about fine musical instruments from magazines and music store windows. When I was a kid, a Silvertone from Sears was considered a great guitar. I remember lusting after one of the guitar/case/amp combos. You remember it, it came in a case that was also an amplifier.

It looked like a whole lot of guitar for about 50 bucks…yeah you heard right…FIFTY bucks back then. I saw an old add for one of those rigs a while back and liked to fell off my chair. Well today, we know that those fine instruments were made for Sears by Danelectro. They are also considered collectors items. I actually saw Tom Petty's guitarist using one the other day. Well smoke my oysters! I can remember seeing kids get laughed at in my day when they whipped out their Sears Santa Special at the talent show in High School. Now, your freakin' in vogue if you own one of these old rattlers.

My son and daughter-in-law recently gave me a subscription to Vintage guitar magazine for my birthday. For younger guys it is a field of dreams, to us older dudes, it is a hall of horror. It is there where we see all of the gear we parted with so nonchalantly in our twenties, now featured as rare birds of exquisite vintage selling at outrageous prices. For that purpose, I think that anyone forty or more who subscribes to that magazine should receive a specially published edition called "kick Me'".  The Name Vintage Guitar just somehow seems unjust when you set the publication down on the coffee table and think, CRAP!!!  Like remembering your electric bill when you wake up in the dark, it's a bad feeling. I have one piece of gear that has made it with me from age fifteen and that is my old faithful 1966 Fender Vibrolux Reverb amp. Why I never sold that piece, I will never know, but I know that my oldest son has thrown down dibs on it for when I hang it up.

And well he should as it is he who has kept it singing all these years, technically speaking. Oddly enough, I did not buy that amp new.  I bought it as part of a package my dad found in Biloxi Mississippi on a bulletin board outside a restaurant. Apparently, a young man entering the military, going to Viet Nam was selling all his equipment. There was a Vox organ (remember those) (kick me), the Fender Amp, and an Elvis Elecro-Voice microphone (kick me again). We bought the whole package, almost new stuff….for three hundred dollars. There have been times when I wondered about that young man. I do not know how his tours of duty went in Nam, nor do I know of his whereabouts today. But I do wonder if he thinks back on that great keyboard and amp, and microphone that he sold. I wonder if he sees similar stuff on Ebay, like I do….and sees the price it now sells for, like I do….and think to himself…..CRAP!!!....like I do.