He knows what moves and what doesn’t. He looks at the guitar for 30 seconds and arrives at $40 and does not think about it further. “It was his for 24 years.” Helen says. “He bought it from Glendale in 1958.” Gary looks at the guitar. “The market on these is soft.” he says. Frank Kowalski came to California from Krakow in 1951 with $40 and the address of a cousin in Glendale written on a folded piece of paper in his shirt pocket.
He found work as a machinist in a tool and die shop in Burbank within 3 weeks because a machinist’s hands speak a language that needs no translation. And Frank’s hands were the hands of someone who had been working metal since he was 14 years old in a city that had been rebuilt from rubble after the war and that needed machinists more than it needed almost anything else.
He learned English from his co-workers and from the radio and from the paperback novels he read one a week every week for 30 years. He became a skilled machinist and a serious amateur guitarist. He had started playing guitar in Krakow at 16 from American records that came through black market channels, music that arrived in Poland in pieces and was assembled by young men who wanted it badly enough to learn from incomplete sources, who slowed the records down and lifted the needle and put it back again and again until they had the note. He
played in a small band in a basement on Florianska Street on Saturday nights for whoever showed up. Then he came to California and the band was gone, but the guitar was not. In Glendale in 1958, 7 years after arriving, he walked into a music store and bought a 1957 Gibson ES-335 in sunburst finish for $280. Nearly 2 months of his machinist’s salary.
He carried it home on the bus wrapped in a blanket because he could not yet afford the case. He went back 6 weeks later when he had saved enough and bought the original brown hard shell with the orange plush lining. He polished the latches every few months. He replaced the handle once in 1971 when the original wore through.
He kept the replaced handle in a small box in the closet because he was not sure he should have changed it. He played it every evening after dinner in the living room with the door pulled to when Helen wanted quiet and open when she didn’t, which was most evenings. He never played it for anyone outside the family.
Helen had heard it from the kitchen and from the bedroom for 24 years. She had never learned the names of the songs. She knew them by sound and by what they meant about how his day had gone. The slower ones when he was tired or thinking, the faster ones when something had resolved itself and he was playing for the pleasure of it.
The guitar had sat in its case in the bedroom closet since the morning in November when Helen had put it there because she could not look at it on its stand anymore. The stand had stayed in the living room for 3 weeks after Frank died. Then one morning she carried it to the garage. She had thought about what to do with the guitar for 4 months.
She could not keep it in the house where the silence it left behind was its own presence. She did not know anyone who played guitar. She knew where the pawn shop was. Helen puts her hand on the edge of the case. Her hand is the hand of a woman who has been holding things together for 4 months. Excuse me. The voice comes from the back of the shop.
Eddie Van Halen had been at Colorado Pawn for 20 minutes. He came to shops like this the way he had always come to shops like this on the chance that something useful was in a bin somewhere. The habit of a man who had built his first guitar from components found in places like this. He had been looking through a box of amplifier parts.
He had heard everything from 6 ft away. He walked to the counter. He looked at the guitar. He looked at Helen. He looked at Gary. “What year is that 335?” he said. “57, maybe 58.” Gary said. Eddie looked at Helen. “May I?” She looked at him. He was wearing a plain gray jacket and a baseball cap and had the look of someone who knew what he was asking.
“Yes,” she said. He lifted the guitar from the case. He held it the way he held all instruments, not performing the holding, just holding it the way you hold something you intend to understand. He turned it over to look at the back. He ran his thumb across the frets from first to 12th, feeling for the wear pattern.
He pressed lightly on the neck joint. He held it up and sighted down the neck from the headstock. He played one chord, a simple open chord. He let it ring. Then one note, held. He listened to it decay, not as a check on a list, but actually listening the way he listened to instruments, as if the note itself had something to say.
It decayed slowly. The sustain of a well-made instrument that had been played consistently for 24 years, the wood responsive in the way that wood becomes when it has been vibrating for a long time. The electronics were original. The pickups were correct for 1957 or 1958 production. He could hear the difference.
He set it back in the case, carefully, the way you set back something that deserves to be set back carefully. He looked at Gary. “This guitar is worth between $800 and $1,200,” he said. He said it the way he said things, not aggressively, just accurately. A 1958 ES-335 in this condition with the original case to the right buyer.
Gary looked at Eddie. The morning light in the shop was doing something to the face under the baseball cap. Gary was beginning to understand who he was looking at. Eddie turned to Helen. “I’ll give you 200 today,” he said, “cash.” “That’s not what it’s worth. If you want the real number, I know a dealer in Hollywood who handles vintage Gibsons, but I wanted you to know the $40 was wrong.
” Helen looked at the guitar. She looked at the man in the gray jacket. “Do you play?” she said. “Yes.” “Will you play it?” He looked at her for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I will.” Helen had heard the guitar from the kitchen for 24 years and from the bedroom when she was trying to sleep and Frank was still up playing with the door pulled to.
She had never learned the names of the songs. She didn’t need to. She knew them by sound and by what they meant about how his day had gone. “All right,” she said, “200.” Eddie paid Gary $6 for the amplifier part. He counted four $50 bills onto the glass counter and gave them to Helen. He picked up the case.
He carried it to his car. He sat in the parking lot for a moment before starting the engine. He had come to Colorado Pawn for a $6 transformer. He was sitting in the lot with a 1958 Gibson ES-335 worth considerably more than he had paid for it. He thought about what Helen’s hand had looked like on the edge of the case. The steadiness of it, the specific steadiness of someone holding themselves together rather than someone who is naturally steady.
