Just Wanted to Learn

by William Swafford

  The new black electric at least made it where I didn’t have to play the garage sale acoustic anymore. It got me wanting to play things that just weren’t only for acoustic. I just had to learn how.

  I meet this guy in school named John. He was trying to learn how to play guitar. We were never great friends, but at this time I just wanted to jam with someone.

  He was skinny and had really bad breath. His tiny red car had a funny smell to it. His group of friends was the ones we called nerds in school. He was a year older than I was.

  I went over to his house once and attempted to play music. He lived across town. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there.

  This was the first time that I had ever tried to play guitar at the same time with someone else. It didn’t go well at all. We both knew it.

  John had an old guitar and amp. The amp and amp head looked old enough that his grandpa had played on it. It was still better than what I had.

  We sounded like crap together. It was over faster than what it had begun. There was a silent argument that we both sounded like crap.

  I didn’t try to play music with John anymore. I did talk him into selling me his amp. He didn’t want to at first.

  I had some small amp that couldn’t even get loud. I had never owned a real amp before. His old set up was a move up for me.

  I paid twenty-five dollars for the amp. I got the amp home and started using it every time I played. The amp wasn’t enough though.

  I was getting more into the rock of the late eighties and early nineties. The clean sounding electric needed to be dirty. I ended up buying a cheap extortion pedal that I didn’t know how to use.

  I only used the pedal a couple of times. I couldn’t get it to sound good. There was no one to show me how to use it. Then it just collected dust.

  I had gotten into a fight with John. He had told on me for drinking a beer at someone’s house while on school lunch. I had gotten into some trouble.

  I kept following him around the block. I pushed him around when I could. He wouldn’t fight back. People eventually told me to leave him alone.

  I am not the type to tell on people. I expect the same respect back. I’m not saying what I done was the right thing to do.

  Chapter Eight

  1993 was the year that everything changed for me in music and in life. I was fourteen to start the year off. Still feeling like the odd man out.

  I had started smoking weed. I thought that I couldn’t play guitar without it. I couldn’t do anything without smoking weed first.

  I tried playing guitar as much as I could. I had to share my room with my brother and I couldn’t play when he was in there. He wasn’t the easiest person to share a room with.

  My brother had a friend named Josh. I didn’t like the kid at all. Something about him just didn’t sit well with me.

  He was the kid who always had told stories about things that happened to him. Everyone story you could tell was a bold face lie. He was supposedly in a lot of car accidents and the car always landed on his side, but he was never hurt.

  I was always trying to fight Josh. If I was drinking with them, then he would be the one I would get rude with. Then he had something that I wanted.

  “I got something you might want,” Josh said.

  “What’s that?” I replied.

  I was kind of rude. I didn’t like talking to him.

  “Do you know what this is,” he said.

  He handed me a black electric guitar tuner. I had never really seen one before. I didn’t want to admit that I really didn’t know what it was at first.

  “It is a guitar tuner,” Josh said.

  I wondered what Josh was doing with a guitar tuner. He didn’t know how to play and didn’t own a guitar. There was a chance that he had taken it from someone.

  “What do you want for it?” I asked.

  “Fifteen dollars,” he said.

  “I don’t have the money,” I said. I thought about it for a moment. My brother had helped me get a bag a weed the night before. “Maybe we could trade.”

  I got my first electric guitar tuner on a trade. I traded three joints for the tuner. I thought it was a great deal.

  That summer my dad had been staying at a campground. It was the same campground that we had to live at when I was younger. The campground my mom’s relatives owned.

  He wasn’t doing it to get out of the house. He was living there in a tent. He wasn’t good with managing his money. He spent a lot of money of beer and weed. That doesn’t even count the cigarettes.

  My dad always seemed to be moving around. He could be living one place one day and then somewhere else the next. He wasn’t the easiest person to get a hold of.

  He had never said too much about things, but I knew that he was having a hard time dealing with things. There were two deaths that we all were still dealing with. There were a lot of things used to cover the pain.

  I had gone there to visit him a couple of times. This is where I first seen someone dry pot out on the hood of the truck. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t afraid of getting into trouble.

  The campground is where my dad had first met Nick and his wife. It was a guy who my dad played some guitar with. I don’t know how they first met.

  They were a nice couple from out of state. Nick was tall and was built. His wife was shy. She was in the air force. They weren’t like my dad’s other friends.

  This is when I got my first experience of listening to music by a lake. I am talking about fishing poles with lines in the water, cooler with refreshments, and two guitars. My dad and Nick played and singed.

  Nick was a big man. He could stand up and get loud. Nick like playing the oldies. His wife could play and sing too.

  They were both good at playing and singing. I wasn’t good enough to follow along with them.

  I loved it and couldn’t get enough of it. It is something that I would always love doing throughout life.

  I wished that I could have stayed all weekend.

  There were two different people that I tried to play with that summer. Things didn’t go well with either one of them.

  Sitting around the house and playing alone wasn’t enough for me anymore. I had to meet others that played, somehow.

  The first one was an older brother of someone I had known in school. Scott was seventeen and skinny. He had dark black hair. I couldn’t tell you how I even found out that he played guitar.

  I really didn’t like him or his younger brother. They weren’t people that I would normally hangout with.

  I just wanted to play and be in a band. I was getting tired of playing alone in the house. I didn’t even play with my dad.

  After my dad had showed me the chords to the House of The Rising Sun, my dad didn’t teach me anymore. I learned everything from books. I couldn’t go any further with the books, because I really didn’t know how to use the books.

  “You got to learn for yourself,” My dad said. “I didn’t have anyone show me how to play.”

  I started off as a self taught beginner guitar player. I was doing whatever I could to sound better.

  I went over to Scott’s one night to play. He had lived on the other side of town. I didn’t want to go in the house.

  It was dark and dirty. I didn’t feel comfortable being there. Of course, I always felt uncomfortable at other people’s houses.

  His younger brother played too, but I had never heard him. I didn’t know too much about them.

  His guitar was better than my black electric, but it wasn’t anything special. He had an amp and a microphone. It was all set up in his bedroom.

  I wasn’t a good singer. I would try knowing that I wasn’t good. I had never used a microphone.

  I couldn’t get comfortable being at his house. I still stayed and played.

  My guitar sounded good going through his amp. I did try singing some of the songs that I
wrote. I thought I sounded good going through the microphone, but I wasn’t.

  After I was done, Scott played the music that he did. He was into heavy music. He didn’t sound too bad, but I couldn’t follow along. I wasn’t really all that impressed by his playing.

  I couldn’t jump in and follow along. I hadn’t played like that before. I was still working on my chords and he was going all over the guitar neck. That was also the first time I was able to get loud.

  I just stood there and watched till he was done. I had already packed my guitar up. I was ready to go home.

  I didn’t want to hang out after we were done. He got the impression that I didn’t want to be there. That was fine with me, because I wasn’t trying to hide it.

  I didn’t talk to Scott anymore after that night. It wasn’t the way I wanted to take my music.

  The second person I tried playing with that summer did last longer. It was all a different experience for me. I wasn’t used to hanging out with people too much older than me, because I always stuck with people my own age.

  I had started spending more time with my mom’s side of the family. There always seemed like something was going on.

  I had an aunt and uncle who had lived next door to my grandma’s house. I would go back and forth between houses. It was through them that I had met this guy.

  My uncle was into the whole CB radio thing. My uncle was a heavy set guy. He didn’t work. I didn’t know that people actually did the CB thing for fun. My uncle had met this guy who called himself, the Mad Bomber.

  His real name was Brian and he was twenty-one. He was taller than me with an average build. He had blonde short hair with a mustache. He seemed to go hundred mph all the time.

  Brian still lived with his parents in another town. He was a security guard who wanted to be a cop. He even tried to put lights on his car a few times.

  He would always drive his blue two door car like a madman. It was a thrill ride.

  Brian seemed to be crazy. He was interesting enough to hang out with.

  I was riding with my uncle and him once. Brian had run a red light and my uncle said something about it.

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “My brother taught me how to drive.”

  The next light we came to was green and Brian stopped.

  “What are you doing?” my uncle asked.

  “Stopping,” he replied. “My brother might be coming the other way.”

  It was funny and stupid at the same time. It got a good laugh out of the three of us.

  They had taken trips to the blood bank to sell their plasma. I never knew why people would do such a thing.

  I had hung out with Brian and my uncle a few times. Then I somehow found out Brian had played guitar. I thought it be good for us to jam together.

  We listened to basically the same music. He was into more laid back stuff, which I did listen to on occasions. My music taste was changing a little, but I always kept love for the music of the past.

  I had a hard time understanding why he acted like he did. He was a decent guitar player. That’s what caught my interest. He knew things that I didn’t know.

  I started hanging out more with Brian. I kept trying to jam with him. It was hard to sit and play music. It was like he was on crack. He always had something to do and was in a big hurry to get it done.

  Brian did have a real nice acoustic guitar and red Cort electric guitar with a white pick guard. The electric was nice, but I really liked the acoustic.

  I had somehow fallen in love with just playing acoustic guitar. I wasn’t into getting loud and changing the sound of the guitar with effects. I wanted the natural sound of the guitar.

  We played guitar a few times, but mostly just hung out. We always were driving but never really doing anything.

  Then he started hanging out with my brother.

  I had gotten to go to a pay lake with my dad that summer. I had been to a pay lake before when my dad and mom were married. We never stayed overnight before.

  We had gotten there in the evening so we were able to stay there all night. Nick and his wife were there. We had a little cookout.

  I watched them drink beer and play music for most of the night. I didn’t have a guitar with me, so I couldn’t try to follow along. I just sat by the fire.

  There wasn’t much fishing getting done. No fish was caught that night. I didn’t even have a fishing pole. I have never been much into fishing, because I don’t have the patience.

  They both had their fishing lines in the water. They were too busy playing music to keep an eye on them.

  I was amazed how Nick could get loud. His voice seemed to carry across the lake. My dad could get loud too, but not like Nick.

  I was completely amazed by the music and the surroundings. After they had gotten done and were lying down for the night, I played on my dad’s guitar by the fire.

  I stayed up all night. There weren’t many other people there, so I walked around the lake for a while. I couldn’t bring myself to even lay down to try and get sleep.

  We packed up and left as the sun came up. I was so tired on the way home. The sun coming up over the lake and the cool breeze felt great.

  As the summer was nearing an end, a lot of things were changing for me. I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere and didn’t have any true friends.

  I had friends that I did hang out with, but they all usually ended up being my brother’s friends. Sometimes I believed that my brother didn’t want me to have friends at all.

  He would always embarrass me whenever he could. At times when his friends weren’t around he was alright, but he always tried to show off in front of his friends.

  Everyone had gone to the fair one night. I had been arguing with everyone. I had stayed home alone. I had a chance to go to the fair, but I didn’t want to go.

  I had gotten upset over something. My mind wasn’t thinking straight.

  I got some pills out of the medicine cabinet and took them. I didn’t even know what the names of the pills were.

  I had told my mom what I had done when everyone had gotten home. I was taking to the hospital.

  They made me drink some black charcoal stuff. It made everything that came out of me pitch black. I spent the night in the hospital.

  I was truly terrified of the hospital and I still am. Everyone had gone home. I stayed up for most of the night alone and scared.

  Brian was still hanging out with my brother. I hung out with him a couple of times after I had gotten out of the hospital.

  He must have felt bad for me. He told me that I could have one of his guitars. He said I could choose which one.

  The electric was nice, but I was still scared of getting loud. I loved acoustic guitars.

  He had hoped that I would have chosen the electric. He kept to his word and gave me the acoustic guitar.

  Brian wouldn’t be around much longer. My dad made sure of that.

  Summer was coming to an end. I went one last time to visit my dad at the campground.

  When I got there, I had to go look for my dad. He had found someone else to play guitar with.

  He was sitting at some guy’s trailer playing and drinking. They were all encouraging my dad to drink more and keep on playing.

  I used the one of the guy’s guitars and tried to follow along, but I didn’t do that good. I had my attention on something else this visit.

  There was a pretty young redhead named Sandy at the campground. She had long red hair. Her checks were red from the sun. She was very pretty. She had my attention.

  I had gotten to talk to her a little at the beach part of the lake. I had a crush on her. It was a good start to the weekend.

  My brother would arrive later that day. Brian had brought him. I wondered why Brian had brought my brother.

  We had spent some time at another person’s campfire. Brian and my brother were off on their own.

  Later
on in the night I had gotten to spend more time with the redhead. We were down at the beach part of the lake.

  We didn’t sleep with each other or anything. I just got to stand behind her and put my arms around her.

  I thought that it was so cool with the surroundings and the fact that I had just met her. It was a warm clear night. We were young and spent a summer evening together.

  When I got back to where my dad’s things were, nobody was there. He only had a tent and a truck.

  I stood around and waited. After a while I had heard someone yelling and it sounded like my dad. I went to go check things out.

  First I found Brian and my brother at the swing sets. The swings were fifty yards from the restroom and shower area. I walked over and talked to them.

  As I approached them my brother was alright, but I could see that Brian was acting nervous about something. His hands were shaking. I got the feeling that something bad was happening.

  My brother said that my dad was drunk and flipping out. My dad had threatened to hurt Brian.

  “What’s his problem with, Brian?” I asked.

  “Because he’s out of his mind,” Brian said. “He needs serious help.”

  I soon seen my dad was making his way from the restroom area to where we were. He didn’t have a shirt on. He wore shorts with suspenders and hat. He was yelling and stumbling from side to side.

  The three of us just stayed at the swings. My brother and I were standing up. Brian was sitting on a swing.

  I noticed how nervous Brian was and I couldn’t understand why. He had even taken out a small knife.

  “I’ll defend myself,” Brian said. He kept opening and shutting his knife. “I’ll kill him if I have to.”

  Brian had always thought that his security training had made him a pro at hand to hand combat. I had a sense that he was questioning his training.

  My dad had walked straight up to Brian. Brain just sat there and let my dad yell at him.

  “I seen what was going on in there,” my dad said. “I should beat your ass.”

  “There was nothing happening,” my brother said. “We were just using the restroom.”

  “I seen what he was trying to do,” my dad said. “Why are you hanging out with this queer?”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was accusing Brian of putting the moves on my brother in the restroom. My dad claimed to have seen it.