I had an old friend ask me late into our New Year\u2019s Party last year if I had a banjo she could borrow so she could learn to play one. Since I had 5 of them hanging on various walls, I could hardly say no without seeming like some selfish materialistic you-know-what. Four were handmade by me, three of them within the year so I didn\u2019t want to loan those. Another is my concert banjo, mostly rebuilt by me, so no on that too. And another was a 1920’s vintage Sterling, nice inlays, sweet action, pretty sounding little 5 string.<\/p>\n
So I loaned her the Sterling. Reluctantly. And I still felt like a selfish materialistic you-know-what. I mean, jeez, she was a friend and I could help out and maybe she\u2019d even learn to play the thing and maybe love playing it and the world would be a better place with another banjo picker. Stranger things have happened, believe me.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later I get a call. The banjo, she says, has problems. Won\u2019t hold its tuning. The 5th string peg is glitchy. She\u2019s had her luthier pals look at it, but they don\u2019t want to make adjustments. She wanted me to pick it up, fix it and return it when I had it ready. She sounded a little put-off that her loaner wasn\u2019t up to snuff. I said bring it down and I\u2019ll see what I can do, but I\u2019d been playing it and I sure didn\u2019t have those problems. She said snippily, it does now.<\/p>\n
I adjusted some tuning pegs and glued the 5th string peg and she took it on home. It was clear she wanted a replacement banjo, but I was \u2026 well, you already know what I was. A week later she called to say the banjo was no good. Her friends had looked at it and they said it was no good too. She was bringing it back. I said okay. I was leaving but just leave it in the shop, door is unlocked.<\/p>\n
When I got home, it was raining cats and puppies. There was a message on my answering gizmo telling me my banjo was leaned against the shop back door, outside, and it was raining so if I got this call, I might want to bring the banjo inside. At which point she laughed and hung up. I raced down and sure enough, my vintage 1920 maple banjo was soaking wet, the pot full of water, the tuners ready for some imminent rust.<\/p>\n
Maybe a better man, a less materialistic you-know-what man, would\u2019ve shrugged and said c\u2019est la vie, it\u2019s just a banjo, probably only worth $500, no big deal. But like I said, I\u2019m not. And my friend, well, she isn\u2019t my friend anymore. With friends like that I could start another band. Course, it would be mostly blues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had an old friend ask me late into our New Year\u2019s Party last year if I had a banjo she could borrow so she could learn to play one. Since I had 5 of them hanging on various walls, I could hardly say no without seeming like some selfish materialistic you-know-what. Four were handmade […]<\/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":[7564,7563,7562],"class_list":["post-19685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-banjo-blues","tag-banjo-rental","tag-neither-a-lender-or-a-borrower-be"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685","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=19685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19686,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19685\/revisions\/19686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}