Kentucky Traveler by Ricky Skaggs Page B

like the time I faced my first real tragedy—almost losing my Gibson A-40.
    We were over at a neighbor’s house up the road, the Baileys. We played music till real late at night, and by the end, we were all wore out. Dad loaded his guitar in the back trunk, but he’d set my mandolin down and forgot to put it in; it was dark and he was very tired. I was sitting up in between my folks in the front seat. My dad put our Ford Galaxie in reverse. Soon we felt a thumping sound under the car, and we knew we’d run over something.
    I heard Dad whisper, “Oh, my God,” and I knew something bad had happened, but I wasn’t sure just what. He knew, though. Dad shut off the motor and got out. He looked down and saw he’d backed the car right over the mandolin, smashing it pretty bad. I saw it lying on the ground, and I just lost it. Dad never did curse, and he didn’t this time, either. But he saw me bawling like he’d killed my best friend. It’s not that I was mad at him. It was just that my heart was crushed worse than my mandolin. For me, my mandolin was more than my friend. It was my whole life.
    Dad felt so bad he got back in the car, put his head in his hands, and just sat there. He looked at me crying and got hold of himself. “Son, I’m so sorry! We’ll get it fixed, don’t you worry. We’ll send it back to Gibson and get it fixed up like it was before.” It seemed pretty hopeless to me, but my dad always kept his promises.
    He mailed it off the next day to the Gibson manufacturers in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It sure sounded like it was a long way from Cordell, Kentucky. I still don’t know how he managed to pay for the repair. Bad as it looked, it turned out it was only the broken neck that needed fixing. But I wasn’t counting on how long it would take, which wasn’t days or weeks but months.
    Back then, if you got a package too big for the mailbox, they kept it at the post office. So every day for a few months, I’d walk the mile or so from my house to the post office and ask about my mandolin. Every time, the postmaster, Grace Cordel, would say, “Honey, it’s not here today. I’m sorry.” I’d walk the mile back home, and the next day I’d make the same round trip. When the package finally did come, that was one happy day, I’m here to tell you. The wait was worth it. I couldn’t believe they’d put it back together like new.
    Backing over my mandolin was about as upset as Dad ever got, ’cept for one other time, and that was when I saw him when he was scared ’bout half to death. Garold and I were riding home on the school bus one day around Halloween, and we saw big thick clouds of smoke down the road near our place. The bus dropped us off, and we ran around back. Come to find out, my dad was on the hill behind the house fighting a wildfire. He’d been burning piles of brush and debris, part of the usual fall clean-up work he always did, but that afternoon, the autumn wind had picked up and blown the flames out of control toward our house.
    Well, Dad was freaked out, running around and shouting for help. I never saw him so rattled before or after that; he was always solid as a rock, no matter what. Seeing that look of fear on his face, that scared Garold and me real bad. Dad was afraid the house was gonna catch fire with the next big gust of wind. Dad was so upset that he hollered out, “We need some fifarters!” instead of saying “firefighters.” We tried not to laugh at that but it sounded so funny. Garold and I did our best to help, ’cause there wasn’t a fire truck for miles around. We were grabbing blankets and coats and whatever we could find to smother the fire, and after a lot of work, we finally put it out!
    We got the fire put out, but the most important thing in my world was that my little Gibson mandolin had made it back to Brushy Creek good as new, and just in