Saturday, March 19, 2016

A new song from an old guitar ~ March 2, 1995


David Heiller

I don’t know Dennis Hansen well, but I know him better now, after he fixed my guitar. I bought the guitar for $3 in 1979, at a garage sale in Belgrade, Minnesota. It was a smaller size than normal. Someone told me it was a parlor guitar, made for women around the turn of the, century.
David playing a different old guitar, his beloved Gibson J45.
(Alas, I cannot find a photo of him with the parlor guitar.)
The original bridge was missing. That’s the part that the strings are attached to at the bottom of the guitar. Someone had replaced it with a metal bridge, screwed into the tail end of the guitar. The face for front side) of the guitar was cracked. Some of the support pieces had come unglued on the inside.
Slight depressions had been worn into the fret board, from people playing the same chords over and over. That appealed to me. The guitar had been played a lot. It was well-loved.
I wondered who had played it. Maybe some farmer sitting in his kitchen on a cold winter morning, singing to his wife. Maybe a mother singing to her kids at bed time. I thought if the guitar could talk, it would have some good stories to tell.
But then it had been set aside and forgotten, and eventually ended up at a garage sale in a broken down condition.
That happens with old things, from guitars to people. So I bought it, and put nylon strings on it, and played it. It sounded good, a soft, clear, simple sound.
I bought a steel string guitar in 1980, and the old guitar ended up in my garage. But I never forgot about it. Three months ago I dug it out. I thought maybe my son or daughter could play it. It’s just the right size for a starter. But it was in worse shape than ever. The face was split in several places, and many of the support pieces inside were loose.
So I took it to Askov to see if my favorite handyman, Red Hansen, could fix it. He and I and Dennis Hansen of Sandstone were playing music for our open house, and when I asked Red if he wanted to fix it, Dennis stepped forward and said he’d give it a try.
Dennis brought it back last Tuesday, February 21. It’s hard to describe the job he did. He took the cracked face off, and made a new one out of basswood. He planed and sanded it all by hand, until it was smooth as paper, and glued it perfectly into place, so that it looks better than the old one ever did.
He glued support pieces inside. He made a new walnut nut, which is the little wooden piece that the strings cross over just before they are fastened to the tuning pegs. He stripped off the old varnish, and revealed beautifully-grained rosewood on the sides and back. He scrounged a wooden bridge and three bridge pins from a friend, and carved three other bridge pins by hand.
He made a bridge piece out of a plastic brown rain gutter. They say necessity is the mother invention. He adjusted it so the action οn the strings is just right. He even put new strings the guitar.
Dennis didn’t brag about all this. He’s not a man of many words. I had to ask him about everything he did, and then he told me a smile that is almost always present on his bearded face. There was a hint of pride too. He knew he had done a good job, like you do in any true labor of love.
He wouldn’t have had to work that hard. It wasn’t even his guitar, and he sure wasn’t doing it for the money. I think he saw the beauty in the old guitar, and wanted to bring it out for others like me to see and hear.
Now when I look at it and play it, I think of the beauty of Dennis Hansen. Α part of him will always be in the guitar. It’s another story the guitar will tell every time it is played, and one I’m proud to pass along.
The guitar now sits in the corner of our living room. It’s alive again, and it has a place in our lives again. I like to play it in the morning, old ballads and love songs, especially if my wife is listening. It sounds as soft and clear as ever.
I hear my daughter strumming it right now. That’s a good end to this column, along with, “Thank you, Dennis.”