EVERYBODY'S SELLING SOMETHING

It's a good thing I'm not a businessman 'cause I've always been a lousy salesman.  What I'm talking about here is selling material things - you know, like cars or shoes or guitars or vacuum cleaners.  I couldn't sell hand warmers to Eskimos, but that doesn't mean I'm still not a salesman.  In fact, almost everybody is a salesman one way or another.  I'm a retired college professor, and that means I spent a long time in the classroom selling information to students . . . and folks, that's not an easy sale.  And it is a sale because they paid for it in the way of tuition and other college costs.  You'd think they'd be willing to listen and learn, but most of them aren't.

I'm also a writer, and that makes me a bullshit salesman.  Yeah, most of my books are pretty much bullshit one way or another, and crafting bullshit is actually an art form.  It's easier to sell bullshit, I've noticed, than it is history or political science or anthropology.  Bullshit is an effective method of selling ideas.  You just have to disguise it a little.  People don't want to be bothered with facts and figures most of the time, but they're always susceptible to bullshit.  Just call me Phil, bullshit salesman.

And that is my real name, by the way - Phil Martin.  I write under the names D. Paz Dalton, Cletus Duhon, and Philip Martin Cawlfield . . . all bullshit names.  I don't even know where I came up with them, but they've been around a long time.  I've used other pen names, but these voices have been around the longest.  I use them as salesmen for various ideas I come up with, things that turn up in blogs, short stories, or books.  They're better salesmen than I am, but that makes sense 'cause that's why I invented them.  Like I said, I'm a lousy salesman.

I'm fascinated by the way various things are sold, have spent a lot of time studying it.  I'm not a big fan of a laissez faire capitalist system by a long shot, lean more toward democratic socialism . . . but, only a fool would argue that any system would work that ignores man's need to profit.  He needs to trade or sell in some way to feel worthwhile, and this is what makes people productive.  I'm especially fascinated with goods, the crafting of a specific product . . . like a guitar.  I'm a guitar maker by trade, have a shop where I build them from time to time.  I don't make money doing it, have sold very few guitars, but I've traded some.  I started off thinking I'd sell them, though, and that got me into crafting them.  Wanting to sell or trade gets people started into lots of things, and even if the sales don't materialize, something good has happened.  

The idea that we should in some way profit from our endeavors might be more of a social need or drive than anything else, but it's important to our wellbeing.  Like I said earlier, I'm better at selling bullshit than I am at anything else.  But I'll always keep peddling something, just in case somebody might come along who wants it.  Since I'm a lousy salesman, I've got lots of stuff saved back.  I'm not a hoarder, but I do like to collect things.  I've got lots of vintage musical instruments, for instance - guitars, mandolins, fiddles, accordions, etc.  And I've got a big collection of old film cameras, and stuff like analog recording equipment, and even toys.  Maybe some day I'll start selling it . . . but I've got to get better at being a salesman first.  Selling a $5,000 guitar is lots harder than selling bullshit.  My books usually cost about ten bucks, a fair price for good bullshit.

THE LINE CAMP

It started as a guitar shop, but it has evolved into a home for refugee cats and lots of stuff.  It's an old house that was built sometime in the 1920s - just a little place of about a thousand square feet.  Someone added a room to the back later on, and that became home to my building tools.  I turned the rest of the place into a showroom for musical instruments, more space for working on guitars, an office, and a small den for just hanging out.  And, it's got a kitchen and bathroom.  I keep things there like vintage guitars, mandolins, fiddles, accordions, old cameras and movie equipment, and some old audio equipment.  It is also home to most of my cowboy collectibles - hats, chaps, boots, even a saddle and old rope.  Not many people get inside the Line Camp, but those who do say it's more like a museum than anything else.

And that's where Lionell, Urkle, Muffin, Lulu, Pekabo, and Yoda live - cats.  Good cats that don't destroy my stuff and get well taken care of.  I go there twice a day to feed them, and I spend some time each day playing with them.  Outside the Line Camp is more stuff - a flat bed trailer with lots of trash piled up on it, an old boat and motor, and a little SUV I bought back in 1984 . . . and some benches for working outside . . . and more cats.  Yeah, there's Big Mama, Ruty, Tinker, Toby, two full time kittens (Gidget and Gizmo), and four other kittens that show up most days.  Oh, yeah, and one chihuahua dog that mooches treats most days.  The Line Camp is therefore a cat rescue area.  Not that I need more cats.  I've got a dozen of them here at home, but they're big time spoiled cats and not like my cats across town.

It's hard to work on a guitar with a half dozen cats all over you.  Maybe you've noticed, but cats are curious critters, and these cats are only 7 months old.  I've got an older computer over there (still one of my favorites), but it's hard to write there for the same reason.  Once it gets colder outside, I'll take my laptop over there and work some (when I'm not in the shop working on guitars).  That's my domain, a place where everything is done the way I want it.  No woman to deal with there, no demands and no restraints.  Here at home, I'm under zoning restrictions when it comes to rooms.  I've got an office and a music room, and she's got the rest of the house.  I'm not complaining.  She puts up with me and my animal friends, and that's a biggie 'cause I'm a pain in the ass most of the time.  Actually, some of the cats here started life at the Line Camp.  And my son in Austin has four cats that came from the Line Camp.

I can build almost anything out of wood, not just guitars.  I've loved wood since I was just a small boy, and I can't remember a time when I didn't have a hammer, saw, and other tools to work with wood.  I've built furniture, cabinets, and even a few houses.  And I've been in love with guitars for a very long time.  I learned guitar making by reading and asking lots of questions, and my guitars are usually good instruments.  I once had ambitions of making money building guitars but gave up on that in a hurry.  Dealing with the demands of a buying public is irritating, even depressing, so I gave that up in favor of building guitars to keep.  I've given away quite a few, but most of them are right where they belong - either here at my house or at the Line Camp.

I build guitars for the same reason I write books.  I enjoy it.  In fact, without those two things, I'd have no interest in staying alive.  I'm old and time is short for me now, but I've still got work to do.  I want to have twenty books in print before I die (just got 7 now), and I want to leave behind at least 100 guitars.  My son is a guitar enthusiast, so he'll probably reap the harvest of guitars when I'm gone.  I tell people that I make guitars to last for a long time, maybe centuries if they're cared for.  The books I put in print might last longer than that.  My grandfather left me an old shotgun and a gold pocket watch, and I treasure both of them.  But what I treasure most about people is the memory of them, and having something they gave me jogs the memory.  I'll post some pictures of the Line Camp later on.

A LITTLE ADVICE ABOUT GUITARS

Since I'm a builder of guitars and a collector of them, I often get asked what's the best guitar for the money.  And I never have a good answer for a simple reason - there isn't one.  I'd have to ask a lot of questions before I could answer.  Are you a professional musician?  Beginner?  Fair to middling picker?  Collector?  But I could ask all sorts of questions and still not come up with a decent answer because we all have ideas about what we want . . . or think we want.  If I run across a rare person who has no idea what he wants, I can be more useful. 

First off, guitars can be expensive, and some of them are very expensive.  As a young man, I wanted the best guitar out there - a Martin, Gibson, or maybe even a custom made guitar.  I learned to play on an old Gibson Hummingbird, and that set the tone for me and guitars.  But I was an older man before I ever got one of them.  I finally figured out that the only way I'd ever own quality guitars was to build them myself, and I've built dozens and dozens of them.  I've built bass guitars, jumbos, dreadnaughts, parlor, and even ukeleles.  I've built electric guitars too, but that's not my favorite, and I've bought lots of guitars.  What's my favorite commercial guitar?  That's still the Martin guitar.  I sure wouldn't turn down a Taylor, Santa Cruz, or Gibson, but I'm a Martin lover first and foremost.

I own about 70 guitars, most of them vintage.  I've restored quite a few old guitars, but I don't really enjoy the work.  And I've long since overcome my love of expensive guitars.  One of the guitars I play most often cost under $500.  And my best playing guitar is an Alvarez Yari, a DY-77 that's over 30 years old now.  I bought a Parker guitar a few years ago, and I like it very well.  Not cheap, though.  Mostly, I play guitars I built myself, and that's because I made them to suit various purposes.  I've got jazz guitars, big box dreadnaught blue grass guitars, little parlor guitars, and my favorite size, the OO size guitar.

OK, here's my suggestion.  If you're an accomplished guitarist, bite the bullet and get a good guitar.  All the big names like Taylor, Martin, Santa Cruz, and Gibson produce fine guitars, and there's other companies out there doing the same.  If you've got big bucks to spend, go to a custom guitar builder and buy one, but if you've got only a moderate budget to deal with, try Alvarez.  A top rung Alvarez will set you back well over a thousand dollars, maybe even two grand, but they're good guitars.  And don't be afraid of the Asian guitars from Korea or China.  I've got several Chinese made guitars that are pretty nice.  Spend some time in guitar shops playing various models, even if you don't know much about them.  Ask lots of questions.

One last note.  My granddaughter wanted a guitar for Christmas some years back, so I went online
and bought a cheap guitar for her.  Paid like $150 for it, then was amazed at how good it was.  It was cheap, not a great player by any means, but it was decent.  And just as I suspected, she lost interest before long.  Don't be afraid to start at the bottom end, especially with a beginner.

News From The Line Camp

It's all about guitars over at the Line Camp, but that's what I intended for it to be from the start.  I bought the place in late 2003, started working on it early the next year.  It was a small house with a shop area built onto the back, and it was in bad shape.  I started renovations with some things in mind - a working shop area to build and repair guitars, a showroom, an office, a kitchen and bathroom, and a set-up area to work on guitars once they were almost complete.  After about six months, I had the place looking pretty good both inside and out.  I built lots of bookcases and shelves to store things, and I covered the walls with stuff I'd collected over the years.  It's definitely cowboy, a man's abode, and it is now home to six inside cats.  Got another six who hang around outside.

But I got older and less able to do hard work, so the outside area now looks run down again.  Got an old boat, car, and utility trailer in the yard, all sorts of other stuff.  That's a pending clean-up project.  Inside, the place still looks good, but it's much more than a guitar shop now.  Since it's a quiet place, it's good for writing.  My old computers are there, and they still have some stories on them written back in the 1980s and 1990s.  There's some audio equipment, and lots of tapes and records.  Yeah, a good place to crank up the old stereo and listen to some classic rock, country when it was country, or even classical music.   And sometimes, I do some playing myself.  I own about 60 guitars, and most of them are there at the Line Camp.  I've got a music room here at home, but it's small and cramped.  I'm not allowed to spread out here.  Female restrictions, you know.

But it's sad at the Line Camp these days because something is missing now.  My favorite shop cat was killed on the highway a few weeks ago.  She's buried in the back yard now, along with several other cats who died there.  I loved that cat, and I'm still angry at myself for not keeping her up at night.  She loved being outside, begged to go out, and I allowed it, and now she's gone.  Dammit!  My heart drops out every time I go there now because she's not waiting on me at the back door.  Oh, cats are still waiting - Toby, Tinker, Rusty, Big Mama, and a couple of new kitten.  I still have cat buddies, but I sure miss the one that's gone.  And her best friend, a grey tabby that was always with her, is here at my residence across town now.  I at least had the good sense to make sure she was safe.

My day will start before long with a trip across town to feed cats, clean litter boxes, and piddle around with whatever else needs doing.  Now that cooler weather is here, I'll be spending more time there.  My writing projects are coming along well, time to get back to
working on some guitars.  I need the work.  I've been blue lately, and blue isn't a good mood for writing.  I need to get my hands on some wood and see if I can make it come alive again.
Creation is good for the soul, and mine needs a little help right now.  My hands are less able these days to work the magic they once did, but they still work.  Yeah, today I'll work with wood.