A very non-Irish St. Patrick's Day.

After making a couple of attempts at finding a job, I felt like I deserved some of the sun that was shining onto my front porch. I got a guitar and sat down to practice. I had only been playing for a few minutes when a man and woman walking by looked up to see where the music was coming from. The man was very interested and asked what kind of guitar I was playing. We talked as his friend waited. He said he had a guitar but it needed a new high E string. I told him that I would put one on for him. He asked how much I would charge and I told him he could have the whole set for $5. I only ended up changing the one string and still gave me $5.

His guitar was from a little electronics store in the neighborhood. It was a 3/4 size sunburst model. I tuned it the best I could. The intonation was really bad. It was impossible to get it totally in tune. But he was happy. He said, "I love chords". So I played a series of chords on his guitar. His reaction to each chord was not unlike someone watching a fireworks display. I played a B minor7 and he went "oooh", A minor9 "ahhh", C major9 "hey". Finally an E minor11 and he said "aw, you're killin' me".

We talked for a while. His name was Duane. He lived three doors down. He invited me over to drink some beer on the balcony of his third floor apartment. On the way there he asked how much I would charge to give him lessons. I told him $15 for a half hour. He said that he needed a tuner and "one of them things that keeps time, a methadone". He had forgotten his keys and began ringing the doorbell a bunch of times. A woman yelled from the balcony "who's ringing that bell like that?"
Duane said, "I'm sorry sugga wugga, I forgot my keys". She buzzed us in.
This woman turned out to be his wife. He introduced us and she had this look like, who is this guy you're bringing into our apartment? He said, "Dan's my guitar teacher we're going to play out on the balcony". His wife said, "I hope you don't drive all the neighbors inside". Duane said, "are you kiddin', we're gonna bring 'em out!"

Once we settled in on the balcony with a couple of cans of Icehouse, Duane played me a few things he knew and gave me an idea of what he'd like to learn. He looked at his watch and said, "ok, the lessons start NOW". It was 6 pm. He gave me a $20 bill and I gave him his $5 back. I wrote out some nice chord progressions and showed him how to play the voicings. He was really excited. At 6:30, the sun was going down and we were done. He brought out a calender and marked down his next lesson. March 24th. He gave me a fresh Icehouse for the road.