The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I always knew, deep in my fluttering heart, the Day of Reckoning was going to come. As sure as winter comes every year, as certain as Monday and the timeclock, as predictable as Christmas sales starting in November, it’s got to be faced. And no, I’m not talking about that vote in Alabama too close to be called between a man who as a federal prosecutor brought justice to the bombers of the Birmingham church that killed those kids back in the 60’s and the man who rather date kids, not that kind of reckoning.

Naw, I’m talking a little closer to home, way closer to the bone. I remember the day when I had nearly completed my little homemade sailboat and the time came to cut the slot in the bottom for the centerboard keel to slip through. You know if you make a wrong move, all the work that preceded this will be for naught. So you put it off, you double check your calculations, then you put it off some more. But … there comes that day when you just gird your loins and hold your breath and put the saw right down the bottom of the boat you spent a month building.

The boat survived the saw. I outfitted it with black sails and launched her a few weeks later. It wasn’t the most elegant of vessels and it certainly wasn’t fast under sail. I flipped it on a camping trip up in the San Juans and this time, I survived, evidently not a Day of Reckoning for the builder, not that day anyway.

Today I’m doing the final work on my handmade guitar, the one I’ve been obsessing over for weeks. If all goes well, I’ll have it strung up and played by mid-afternoon. The neck has been attached and the top glued down so there’s no more room for adjustments or corrections. It pretty much is what it is. I’ll put on the nut and the tuning machines, attach the walnut pickguard, screw down the fancy tailpiece and set the bridge. Then wind up six strings, monkey with the action as much as possible, then pick out a song and see what it sounds like.

It may sound crummy, I don’t know. Like I say, Day of Reckoning. If it doesn’t sound good, I can’t do a single thing about it, the deed is done, the die is cast and I can hang it on the wall as a testament to over-ambition, unwarranted optimism, bone-headed endeavor … or just call it wall art. I figure Stradivarius had to build fiddle #1. Course, he probably apprenticed for ten years under a master. Well, like my old man always said, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Nothing lost either, I’m figuring. At least not lives….

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