My Martin is a personal thing to me. we've been through so much since 1996. I've sung my pain and joy on it, deep pain and high joy and all between. I identify it with places I played (the best memories are just playing in a friend's garden or at a small private party). I was unemployed for a year, and I played that guitar in pubs and made enough to buy groceries each week. I've played it in living rooms and Biergartens.
When my family and I came home from Germany, I was once again unemployed and we lived with my parents way out in the woods. My habit was to get the kids to bed, make sure everyone was settled in, roll a spliff and grab the Martin and go off to the barn. I'd sit there on a bench under the trees and stars and sing and play.All was peace. But there was a trailer of meth heads just a half mile through the woods. They were wild men, trashy, teeth black with rot, wasted faces. One night, I was playing open chords loudly and singing at the top of my lungs, when all of a sudden, I heard a scream. I stopped singing, unsure of what I'd heard. Then another scream and a next and a next. The sound was coming straight toward the house. My only thought was to run to the house, wake everyone up, and get dad's guns. I knew those guys carried guns. The sound was getting closer, the screams more severe and aggressive. I ran. And somewhere on the gravel path, I lost a shoe and cut the heel of my foot on sharp stone. I ran in and roused my father who came out with a flashlight.
The screams had stopped, and there was nothiing to see. That's when I realized that my guitar was still strapped to me. The next day, a neighbor told us that the screams had come from her severely autistic daughter.
The sound had carried through the woods a half mile away. Mystery solved. Martin was protected the whole time, more so than the sole of my heel.