I was cruising through the South End Pawn Shop the other day, scratching for musical gear the kids bought new and then had to sell to Jesse, the owner, for pennies on their dollar. The days of finding a vintage Gibson Mastertone pre-war banjo are so far back in the rearview, even the memory looks like week old roadkill, thanks to the internet and Antiques Roadshow. Takes about ten seconds to determine anything\u2019s value. Jesse\u2019s prices, though, are wildly inflated, but if you\u2019re a good haggler, he\u2019ll come down a long ways.<\/p>\n
Me, I\u2019m the kind who hates to go around on prices. Just put it on the tag and I\u2019ll take it or leave it. In the course of my lifetime I\u2019ll probably pay twice what everyone else does. But for peace of mind — and the lowering of blood pressures — I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s biz?\u201d I asked Jesse who was perched predatorially on a stool behind a glass case. He looked like a hawk on a telephone line. Patiently waiting for the next mouse. \u201cCouldn\u2019t be better,\u201d he smirked. I shrugged and he went on about the boyz hurrying in to sell their guns \u2018before the Democrats takes em away\u2019 and the boyz who wanted to buy guns \u2018before the socialists outlaws em.\u2019 \u201cI shoulda voted Democrat. These guys are making me rich!\u201d<\/p>\n
I never really paid much attention to Jesse\u2019s arsenal before, but I said show me what you got. He asked what I was looking for, pistol, semi-automatic, shotgun over and under, military assault rifle \u2026.. \u201cWhoa,\u201d I said, \u201cJesse, I\u2019m just an innocent bystander. Doing some research \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Half an hour later I\u2019m casually acquainted with enough armaments to take the City of Stanwood, just me and a few NRA pals. If Jesse has 200 firearms — and apparently my neighbors are stockpiling what he\u2019s selling — the idea of disarming my het-up citizen friends seems more than a bit quixotic. They\u2019re apparently a gun-totin, pistol packin, shoot from the hip pack of yahoos and by god, good luck talking down the barrel of a Smith and Wesson. You can probably tell a South Ender easy enough by his gun collection, but you sure can\u2019t tell him much.<\/p>\n
I walked out of Jesse\u2019s with a big used tube amp for my electric guitar. Jesse said it was brought in by a kid from a heavy metal band who was dead broke. \u201cDems\u2019ll probably ban these too before long,\u201d he said as I lugged it to my truck. \u201cDial it up full volume, it\u2019s potentially lethal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Right, it could kill my marriage, if nothing else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was cruising through the South End Pawn Shop the other day, scratching for musical gear the kids bought new and then had to sell to Jesse, the owner, for pennies on their dollar. The days of finding a vintage Gibson Mastertone pre-war banjo are so far back in the rearview, even the memory looks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[2209,2208,2210],"class_list":["post-12234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-confiscating-banjos","tag-pawn-shop-arsenals","tag-taking-my-guitar-out-of-my-cold-dead-hand"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12235,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12234\/revisions\/12235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}