danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

In 1987, when the most garish aesthetic elements of that decade had only just reached their zenith, my father took me to a store on Hillsborough Avenue in Tampa called Paragon Music, where I got a close look at electric guitars for really the first time in my life. I have a vivid recollection of a wall of pointy instruments in obnoxious neon and florescent colors. Not long before, Don Johnson had had a popular music video for a song called “Heartbeat”. At Paragon I saw the same bright green guitar that appears in the video (at about :10). I thought it was the epitome of cool. I do not remember if I was able to actually touch any guitars that day, but my desire to have one of my own was suddenly awakened.

I was only ten years old in 1987, and I certainly had no friends who played guitars, or any instruments, really. But I wanted one so bad that I probably annoyed a lot of people in my lobbying to procure one. That Christmas morning, the only one we spent at Scott Court, I didn’t see an electric guitar under the tree. Remembering that when I was a child, the true meaning of Christmas lay in the receiving of gifts, I was sad. But taking the torn and crumpled paper that had wrapped an assortment of seemingly lesser gifts out to the garbage in the garage I found a small tube amplifier–an Alamo Embassy–and a cardboard box which held an Electra 2253w guitar. I was ecstatic.

Later that morning, before we headed off to see the rest of the family in Dade City, my Dad and I posed for a picture. Twenty Christmases later, at my Grandmother’s house in St. Petersburg, we recreated that historic photograph, with all of us looking a little bit worse for the wear I suppose, including the Electra, which has lost a pickup and sits unstrung in a closet these days. Still, as I lately obsess over white blonde Telecasters, and candy green Stratocasters, I have that old Japanese Fender copy as a tangible reminder of where my interest in playing music–however unaccomplished–began, twenty years ago.

Filed under: Dana Heritage Project, Nostalgia, Special Occasions on December 31st, 2007