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A Hawaiian Guitar Story
by Mural Adams

It had already grown dark on that early spring evening in 1942. I was in the farmhouse taking care of my baby sister, while my mother and father finished the milking chores. At eight years, going-on-nine, one is expected to do his share. Supper dishes were completed and time is my own.

Down the half-mile farm driveway shines a set of headlights, announcing visitors. A dark car rounds the corner and two men step out and walk to the porch. The smaller of two men is carrying a black guitar case. They knock. I answer. With politeness, the taller, more handsome man asks about my folks. I tell him, in clumsy eight-year-old manners, that my mom and dad are about to come back to the house at any minute. I'm saved as I look past the men to see the happy light of a swinging Coleman lantern that announces the return of my parents. They greet the strangers, and settle in for the evening.

The two men unfold their story about Hawaiian guitars and beautiful sounds. My parents listen. The handsome man in a tan suit asks permission to open the case and play a song to give reality to their story. He asks for a chair, puts the guitar on his lap and in the light of a gasoline lamp, in the kitchen of a farmhouse, he unfolds a part of my future, playing a soft, slurry, beautiful Hawaiian melody. My twenty-six year-old mother sighs, as she hears this beautiful sound in her own house.

The smooth man turns the guitar and chair over to the smaller, smiling, nervous, younger man who sits to play a more popular tune. The smooth man convinces my mother and father that their eight year-old son will be able to supply entertainment for future long evenings by taking lessons, once every week at seventy five cents and twenty five cents for each new piece of music. The man offers the very guitar brought into the house, case and all for a one-time price of five dollars. My father, whose dreams were disguised by a fake frown, unfolds his wallet to pay six dollars for the guitar, the first lesson and the first piece of music.

The lessons went wonderfully, I thought. My father wasn't all that convinced, when at the first lesson he found that it was a group-lesson with fourteen other people, all with identical guitars, crowded into the living
room of the village boarding house. The older of the two men was not to be
found. My father felt a bit cheated not to find both men available for so many people. I thought it was grand. I heard that evening for the first time, our young, quiet teacher play an electric Oahu guitar. He became my idol. In four weeks my skills were among the best of the other players. Most of them, being adults, talked about finding time to practice, and some were already failing to show for the weekly lesson, an unthinkable act for me. Practice was no problem; it came right after dishes, while my folks milked and while I tended my sister. Since milking happened seven evenings a week, the routine seldom varied.


The guitar class size dwindled some, but for the remaining students the pace picked up. We where given special, extra music to learn, mostly patriotic, all for an upcoming concert. We polished "There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere," "Caissons Go Rolling Along", and "The National Anthem." My father frowned at the extra fifty cents per copy, but quickly reached into his pocket.

The concert performance came on a Sunday, early in the autumn. My parents and I soon found out what the Oahu-trained teacher did on the other days of the week when nearly 150 guitarists and their families gathered at the community band-shell two towns away. The band-shell of course couldn't hold all of the new guitarists, but it mattered not at all. The sound of so many guitars playing pretty much in tune and close to the same beat, was a great musical tribute to the men and women fighting in Europe and in the Pacific. The honor guards for the celebration were soldiers and sailors home on leave from the war.

After nine months of lessons, on an early winter evening at the boarding house, my teacher announced that the next week would be the last lesson. He was being drafted and would soon be inducted into the army to fight in WWII. He promised to pick up where he left off as soon as the war was over. I felt sad and proud at the same time. My father wondered what the army would do with such a small man. We learned six months later that he had been killed in the Pacific. I put away my Hawaiian guitar.

A short time ago, I was playing golf with a fellow retired college professor. He asked me, 'What's new since you've begun your retirement." This seems to be a favorite topic among professors emeriti who seem to fear that retirement might lead to nowhere. I told him that I had found and purchased a beautiful old Oahu Hawaiian guitar on the internet, and that I am currently searching and finding all kinds of old Oahu tablature music from my past through the computer. I told him how I enjoy imitating my once young teacher in the boarding house. My golfing colleague, himself a WWII veteran, reflected, "What a great tribute to that young soldier." I agreed.

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