Just Wanted to Learn

by William Swafford

  The shop didn’t get many visitors. I was there at least once a week. They never seemed to get any new inventory.

  I had gotten a car and started visiting my mom. We were still having a hard time talking to each other. I had brought my guitars back with me to the halfway house.

  I met a lot of interesting people while staying there. I was the youngest there. The rest of the guys there were straight out of adult prisons. They were crack heads and heroin addicts.

  I met a couple of black guys who had played guitar. They had played a different type of music then I ever played and that I had rarely listened to. I tried to pick up a little of their style.

  I had to go to meetings in other cities. I met more new people. I even met a girl that I had liked.

  I had met a long red hair guy named Rob. He was into things like the Grateful Dead. He was what I would like to call a new age hippie.

  Rob was always trying to get people together to play. When I first tried to talk to him, he didn’t take me seriously.

  There were three of us that started playing together. It was Rob and I, and then John who played country.

  Rob and John got along and fit together good. I didn’t seem to fit in. Sometimes the way they had played songs wasn’t the way that I had learned. I had a hard time catching on and following along.

  That’s when I had learned that some people only try to sound close to another song. They don’t care about playing it like it is supposed to be.

  I had started visiting my dad. He was playing in a bar once a week. He would play along and sometimes his friends would show up. He had to tell me about it.

  He did show me a couple of songs on the guitar. I knew that Rob wasn’t showing me right. When I tried to show Rob how they were to play, they laughed at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  I didn’t get to see my dad play at the bar while at the halfway house. I didn’t want to do anything that would get me into trouble. I didn’t see him much, but I did notice that he was changing.

  I had seen a couple of concerts while staying at the halfway house. One of them had really caught my attention.

  I had gone up north to see a guy who was the first act of the original Woodstock. It was just him and another guy with guitars. It was a great performance.

  Ivan and his girlfriend had taken me to see it.

  My mom had given my brother and I some money from my sister. I had gotten a little of it and had gone to the music shop across the street.

  I had bought the twelve string guitar that I had always looked at. I paid three-hundred-and fifty dollars for it.

  I got off probation and was able to leave the halfway house. I had went back home, but it didn’t last long.

  I had moved back in with my mom. I had gotten a job. Then I started smoking weed again.

  I wanted to party with my brother. I had started buying weed off of him. It did bother me a little to start smoking weed again.

  While I was away, I did take getting clean seriously. My life was the same whether I smoked or not. I just had less money, but my days were easier to get through. That’s when I figured out that I’m a loner who sometimes has a hard time dealing with always being alone.

  I was working a third shift job and had gone to his house. There was another guy on the front porch. He had the same name as I did. I had known him from when we were younger.

  He said that he was waiting on my brother. He said that he had a joint and we could go to my car and smoke it.

  I had really wanted to get high. I figured it could get me by till my brother got home.

  I should have known something was up. He was standing on my brother’s porch alone. The place was out in the country and he didn’t have a car. I know that he didn’t walk out there.

  We got in my car and just sat in the driveway. I was driving a blue four door Dodge.

  I gave him my pipe to pack the weed in. Then I had seen a blue car coming.

  It was an undercover cop and I don’t even know how I knew. I had told him and he threw the stuff on the floor between his feet.

  Five undercover cars surrounded us. They took him out of the car first. They had put him up front in one their cars to talk to him. Then they put me in the backseat.

  They wanted to know if I knew someone I could nark on. I said that I didn’t.

  Richard kept looking back at me. He wasn’t saying a word to me. He acted like he was on the detective’s side.

  The detective had threatened to have me put in jail and to impound my car. I was given a card and told I had till Monday to come and see him.

  I had gone home and told my mom what had happened. The next morning I was back up in Sidney. I went back to the halfway house.

  I only stayed at the halfway house for two weeks while I looked for a job. I did tell Ivan who was still running the place way I had come back. I wanted to be honest about it.

  He didn’t appreciate me coming back on those terms, but he was nice enough to let me stay. I had to go to the drug and alcohol meetings plus follow house rules while I was there.

  I got a job and then an apartment in the same town. It was a house split into two apartments.

  There was a nice size living room and dining room. I had two bedrooms upstairs. It was a decent priced apartment, but more than what I needed.

  After a few months I moved to an apartment with the same landlord in a small town outside of Sidney. The only thing the town had been a bar.

  The apartment was smaller and only an upstairs apartment. I still had a decent living room and dining room, but only one bedroom. The walls were covered by wood paneling.

  I did have a few girlfriends while I was living up there. They all seemed to have been messed up situations. The last girl I was with I did have feelings for.

  Her name was Brandy. She had short red hair and a nice figure. She liked the harder drugs though. She was also married. Her husband wanted to kill me.

  She had moved in with me for a little while. Then one day I came home from work and she was gone. I had a hard time dealing with it, so I decided to move back home again.

  I had left the apartment in the middle of the night because of a bad dream. I was in town before my mom or anyone was up.

  I had about hit a dump truck because I had fallen asleep at the wheel.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I was nineteen when I moved back in with my mom. I had gotten a job, but wasn’t paying any bills. I wasn’t saving money either. I had something else to spend my money on.

  I started smoking weed again. I started buying more than what I needed. I had kept it in a lockbox in my room.

  Then I had met a guy at the place where I was working. He had mentioned that he could get good deals on some things off his friends. He started selling me acid.

  I stayed up for days. I would go to work while peeking off acid and weed. I knew that I was asking for trouble working and driving while I had been on acid for three days.

  I had gotten fired one night because I couldn’t make it to work. I was so messed up from the acid I turned around at the gas station. The gas attendant took one look at me and then took a step back.

  That same night my mom had found some weed in my room. I couldn’t believe that she had gone into my room. I had forgotten to lock my lockbox.

  If I couldn’t follow the rules, then I had to leave. She gave me till the next morning. I have never spent a night at my mom’s house after that night.

  There was something that was still growing inside of me. I still wanted to play music. I still wanted to learn how to get better.

  I got back to learning on my own. Only looking at magazines and learning a little from them. I still couldn’t pick things up by ear. I didn’t know how to teach myself how to get better.

  It was time to go find the legend that I had always heard about. It was time to bring back the classic rocker. It was time to
try and learn from the only person I knew that could teach me.

  I was always a little scared of the man. It was hard pushing away the past, but he was the only one who would be able to teach me. Then there was my mom that I was concerned about.

  She always thought that I like my dad more than her. She thought I had forgiven him and thought he was great. She didn’t want me to have respect for him even though she knew that he was my dad.

  I had gone to stay at a motel in the town that sat on the section of the interstate that my sister had died on. The motel was a five minute walk to the spot of the accident. It was the same motel that my dad had stayed at when my sister had died.

  I finally got to see my dad play at the bar. He was still playing at the same bar every Wednesday night. It wasn’t like what I had been told.

  There weren’t many people there. My dad just played his guitar by himself. There was something different about him.

  He wasn’t the rocker anymore. He just wanted to play country, bluegrass, and some classic rock that could be played on acoustic. I wanted to learn how to get loud on the electric.

  “You have to play what the crowd wants to hear,” he would say.

  All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be taught how to be the rocker that I wanted to be. I was disappointed.

  My dad had gained weight and had grown his beard out. He kept his hair long with a black flat cowboy hat. He wore overalls a lot and sometime when he played.

  He always had to have a Jack and Coke when he played. He bragged about how he could go through a bottle of Jack a night.

  I wasn’t a fan of country and bluegrass. I didn’t listen to the music, but I was willing to learn. I knew that I had to get better.

  I never understood how my dad was with music most of the time. He didn’t sit down and show me songs. He wanted me to be able to sit in with any band without knowing a song and still be able to follow along. I was never shown how to play a song. This is how I had to learn.

  I was never able to take my guitar into the bar when I had gone to watch my dad at the bar before. The first time that he said that I could I took my black acoustic. At first I thought it was because he had no one else to play with or that he just felt sorry for me.

  I had gotten all excited. I had no idea how to play any songs, but it was going to be my first time playing in a bar. Then I got a lesson in reality.

  I wasn’t allowed to plug in my guitar. I tried to follow my dad, but I didn’t do well, but nobody heard me anyways.

  This had upset me, but it didn’t stop me. This went on for a couple of weeks. Then I took in my twelve string guitar.

  I had been practicing on the guitar. I got to where I sounded better on the twelve string guitar then I did on a six string. It wasn’t the guitar of my choice, because it took a little more work.

  It got to the point that if I wanted to be heard, then I would have to be on the twelve string. I did what I had to do.

  I went with my dad every Wednesday night. I didn’t know what we were going to play or how to play what we did. When it came to plug in, I either followed along like my life depended on it or take my guitar to the car.

  This might sound like everything is great and I’m finally learning like I have been waiting on doing. I had to watch my dad drink Jack and Coke for five hours.

  He would get drunk and pour beer on his guitar. He tried it on mine once, but I said no and he knew that I was serious.

  I had always taken very good care of my guitars. I couldn’t even understand how some people would put stickers on a guitar.

  If there was a microphone, he would make a fool out of himself. If people weren’t into the music, he would talk crap thinking people couldn’t hear him through the microphone.

  There had been several times I had been sitting at the bar and heard people talking. They didn’t like how my dad would get rude and sometimes talk about them like they couldn’t hear him.

  I had tried talking to my dad about this once. He acted like I was just making it up. He put it off as if I didn’t know how to act or how people act at a bar.

  You might ask yourself how people would put up with a man who got so drunk and acted like my dad. It was because he was good.

  He could sing and sound just like some of the greatest country music stars. He knew songs that others didn’t. He was one of the best guitarists in the county.

  There was enough talent in him that he could have been a star. There were too many downfalls to make sure that it didn’t happen.

  Then I would have to put up with the liquor attitude after the music was over. He was loud and rude. He would go home and argue with his girlfriend.

  I shared a room with her son. Her kids would stay up listening to them fight. Sometimes they would hear my dad talk bad about them. I never knew how to feel when it was going on. I had to get out of his house even if it meant living at a motel.

  My dad and could along fine as long as we were playing or talking about music. When there was no music, it was hard for me to be around him. I couldn’t work for him.

  Chapter Twenty

  My dad had a new partner to help hang siding on houses. I had lost my job and had started helping him.

  I worked a week with them. I was there every minute that they were there. I cut their pieces, got whatever they needed, and cleaned up everything at the end of the day.

  I had to pay my motel every week. It cost me a hundred-and-thirty dollars a week for the room.

  At the end of the week I had to pay for my room and needed money for food. They took me to the motel to drop me off.

  My dad gave me a hundred-and-forty dollars to pay for my room. Then he asked for his change back. I couldn’t believe that he had done me that way.

  I had to call and ask my mom for help. On Wednesday of the following week, I had another job.

  I started working at a pallet shop in town. They made all kinds of skids or pallets for different companies. I was to make seven-dollars-and-twenty cents an hour. My first day didn’t start off so good.

  I had my first accident on my first day within the first hour. It was my first time using a nail gun. I tried to do as I was told.

  I was doing fine at first. They told me to keep my hands five inches away from the gun as possible. I did my best to do that. Then I heard a nail go off, but I didn’t hear it hit the board or the floor.

  I looked down to see the nail in my left thumb. The site of the nail through my thumb made me want to freak out. I was embarrassed and didn’t know what to do.

  As a guitar player, this is an injury that should always be avoided. I use my left thumb to press on the back of the guitar neck to make chords. This wasn’t a good thing.

  I had gone to the bathroom without drawing attention. I had to keep my job and going to the hospital wasn’t an option. I couldn’t afford the hospital bills or possibly failing a drug test and losing my job.

  The nail had to come out and I had to figure out how to do it. The real problem was that I couldn’t just pull the nail out. It was a spiral nail that was cover by glue and paper.

  The nail had gone through the side and through the other side. The nail lay under the fingerprint of my thumb. If I tried pulling it straight out, it could have caused more damage.

  I grabbed the head of the nail and turned my head. I didn’t even want to see what I was about to do. I ripped the nail through the layer of skin that it was under.

  It did hurt, but I didn’t yell or anything. I got a Band-Aid and wrapped it up. People had noticed. They acted like it was something they had seen hundreds of times. I stayed and finished the work day.

  I had planned on sitting in with my dad at the bar that night. I didn’t have to go play. My dad didn’t even have to go play.

  The bar only gave him twenty dollars and his drinks for free. I just went to learn to play. I did get free draft beer as long as I was playing.

&
nbsp; I just thought it was cool. I was nineteen learning how to play music in a bar. I would get free beer and then smoke weed out back on breaks. It was better than sitting at the motel alone.

  I had decided not to go out and play, but my dad had talked me into it. He had gotten used to me driving him to the bar. We would pack everything in my little car.

  I had started the night with the band aid still on my thumb. The twelve string guitar requires a little more pressure on the strings. I was having a hard time making the chords.

  I had to take the band-aid off. It was the only way that I was going to be able to play the guitar. It hurt using the thumb with an open cut to press on the back of the neck.

  I made it through the night. I didn’t play anymore around the motel till my thumb got better. My dad did get me to play at the bar the following week.

  I kept working and playing music. I was getting better on the guitar and it pushed me further. I wanted to sing. This was going to be a challenge for me.

  I wasn’t a good singer. I could do well on a couple songs that I wrote, but wasn’t so well on cover songs. I have never considered myself as a great singer.

  My dad was no help when I would try to sing. He wouldn’t play guitar or anything. I had to do it all by myself. I would sit there embarrassed trying to sing. People had a hard time hearing me.

  We had started going out to different bars on the weekends. My dad would go in and ask if they wanted some music. A lot of the places my dad had already played at.

  We had gone to this bar the next town over. The bar was small and had only eight people inside.

  Things were going as well as they could with only eight people. Then it turned into a lesson in reality for me.

  My dad had gotten up and left me alone to sing. I was told to sing one of the songs that I had written. I didn’t want to sing at this time, but I did anyways.

  I was nervous and didn’t even want to talk. It took a minute to figure out what song I might be able to pull off.

  I started to sing a song. A guy who looked to be in his mid forties got a chair and sat it down with the back of the chair facing me and then he sat down looking straight at me. He was a foot away.

  “You suck!” he said.

  I stopped playing. I sat there and just looked at him. He took a drink of his beer.