It’s sure taken me a long time to sit down and write this story. The main reason is that a couple of months ago I was passing through Cincinnati and, on an impulse, I walked into Will’s Pawn Shop on lower Vine and casually inquired whether they might have a steel guitar for sale. Not a pedal steel, but a lap, or Hawaiian, steel guitar. Will went into the basement and hauled out a dusty case which contained the most beautiful National double-eight I’d ever seen. We dickered $ome on the price, but Will’s heart was clearly not into bargaining. After all, who, in this day and age, would be buying an outdated instrument like that?

Somebody who had gotten zonked out by Western Swing music, no doubt. And I had been. Watching Asleep At The Wheel Tuesday after Tuesday at the Longbranch had given me a kind of fever.