Vintage Stella Harmony Guitar

I remember so clearly, staying at my Aunt Nancy’s apartment and her singing Puff the Magic Dragon on her Stella folk guitar to me. I was probably 11 years old then, and looking back on it, I think that each of us kids got shipped off to an Aunt or grandparents’ house for a weekend to give my parents time to “reconnect”. During one of these parental breaks, my Aunt Nancy gave me her Stella guitar. I loved that thing — and her. I used to practice every day. I took my lawn mowing money and hired Terry Clark, a kid from down the block who played, I paid Terry to teach me some chords and how to play. I also remember a time when our cousins came to Algonac (the Garavaglias - my parents said we were cousins by osmosis), anyways, after swimming off our dock in the St. Clair River, Nancy Garavaglia came up to my brother Bill’s and my bedroom and we played around a little on the guitar…I’m pretty sure that’s when I started falling for older women — she was 12 and I was 11 — but the guitar made me feel like I was 13…hahaha.

Moments like that made me want to learn how to play. I’d practice every chance I got. The only place to practice was in our bedroom. I don’t think my practice was that annoying, but my brother Bill did. He was lying on his bed and as I practiced, he rolled over, grabbed a hardbound book, probably his history book, and threw it at me catching the guitar on the side of its body and shattering it in two. Yeah, that was my brother. I mowed lawns for another two years before I had enough money to buy my first new, nylon string folk guitar from W.T. Grants. — it just wasn't the same...