$20 Guitar

While driving around on the north end of Royal Oak on a recent Saturday, Amy saw a sign advertising a garage sale. She followed a couple of handwritten signs and found the sale. It was a normal garage sale for the most part. A card table, some chairs, a box of assorted items marked "free", some power tools, candles, VHS tapes, and a guitar. Amy picked up the guitar and looked at it carefully. It had been made in Brazil. The  tag on it read $20. And it even came with a case. The guy having the sale told her that someone had just tuned it - a skinny man with two tone shoes and a  black suit. He had tuned the guitar, played a few chords and was suddenly gone. 

Amy brought the guitar home and I played it for several hours. It was a Classical  guitar with a  knotty looking top. Certainly not the norm. It sounded really nice and full. I couldn't stop playing it.
I played until I fell asleep holding it. While I was sleeping, I had a dream that I was in Rio de Janiero.
I was walking in Ipanema and it was about four in the morning. Someone carrying a guitar was walking toward me. He was wearing a black suit with two tone shoes. We somehow got into a conversation. He spoke almost no English and I wasn't much better with Portuguese. He had just finished a gig playing guitar. I asked him if I could see his guitar, and if he would play something for me. He opened the case. It was the guitar from the garage sale! Not one like it, the actual guitar.
He picked it up and started to play. His playing was unbelievable. His technique was perfect. His sound was so great. This person was the legendary Candinho, the great guitar player. He had been a big part of the original Bossa Nova movement that began in 1956.
He started to play Jobim's Aula de Matematica, a song that he and Sylvia Telles used to do together.  I wanted to try to get those chord changes from his brilliant arrangement, but everything was just happening too fast.

Candinho finally said that he needed to be on his way. We shook hands and he started walking.
He was out of sight in seconds.

The next day, I told Amy about my dream. I asked her exactly where that guitar had been purchased.
She said that she couldn't remember the name of the street. She did say that it was a street she'd never been on before and that it was a dead end. We were both born and raised in Royal Oak. I think we know all of the streets. We have also been going to garage sales in this area for nearly the last ten years. We got in the car to see if we could find the the street and house. She said that it was north of twelve mile, off of Washington. We drove around that area for over an hour. We couldn't find it.