Rudy Molina's Guitar

Rudy Molina gave me my first guitar - on permanent loan. Mom and Rudy met at the Democratic Club of Los Angeles. I was twelve. His guitar came from Candelas’ Guitar Shop on Sunset Boulevard at the east end of Echo Park. I still have it. If he ever comes back to earth from the Great Beyond - looking for his guitar - I’ll be very surprised, but I can tell Rudy something of what his glorious and generous good deed hath wrought since he bequeathed it to me in 1960.

My teacher Lenny Potash approved of the quality of this fine guitar, and set to work teaching me, and my mom, the obligatory folk cords: A, D, and E7. 

During that first lesson at the Purple Onion on Melrose, I saw posters of the greats of the day, who had performed in the space - including Mary Travers, Pete Seeger, and The Lime Lighters. I was enthralled, and within six months progressed from the basic cords and thumb-pluck of “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie” through the Spanish right hand slaps and dramatic minor cords of “Malagueña,” to the blues licks that sounded like electric or at least steel strings - even on the soft nylon strings of my guitar.

Six months worth was all the lessons I got. Mom took fewer than I. She decided to give motherhood a try one last time and met, married, and bore a son to Leo, my step-dad - just after she turned 43 and I turned 14. What a whirlwind time it was in my young teen years!

Without Rudy Molina’s guitar to emote with, and the support of a gifted, intuitive, and compassionate English teacher, my eighth-grade experience might have been a disaster of unbearable angst and displacement.  

Mr. Pollack gave us an open-ended assignment for our term project. I chose to write essays. Most of them were about the joys of having a baby in the house - whose “pudgy starfish fingers reached out and clung to anything offered for exploration.” Some of my pieces had to do with simple observation. One was titled: “You’re Imaginating Things,” about going backward from “imagination” to reconstruct erroneously that the infinitive would be “ to imaginate” instead of “ to imagine.” Mr. Pollock gave me an "A" on my project.

It takes so little for a kid like I was to feel seen, heard and appreciated. Even though I didn’t get much further with my guitar prowess after those six months with Lenny, the music and love of making it stuck with me. Even though I didn’t become the polished and published writer I imagined (imaginated?), I love to share observations in this essay-like format.

Rudy's guitar accompanied many a nursery school performance when I was teaching, and serenaded our daughters during camping trips and impromptu songfests.

When we go to camp as volunteer counselors, my husband takes his magic paraphernalia. I take my guitar. Kids who may never have had a chance to hold one in their lap and just play with it or on it, come alive with light in their eyes... the light of recognition of the possibilities.

Rudy Molina’s guitar lives on in its self-esteem building usefulness, and I am thankful.