A Man with a Guitar
Larry just showed up one day. It was spring, and the bird cherry tree outside my shop on the corner of Donner Pass Road and Spring Street had just burst into bloom. There he sat with an old guitar under the tree, playing folk songs I remembered from childhood.
We exchanged smiles. I offered him a chair and told him he should stay a while. His voice was gentle and strong, and he just fit under that tree.
That summer, Larry became the soundtrack to “my end” of the block. But as summer came to a close, without a word, he was gone. The street went quiet, and winter set in.
You can imagine my surprise and delight when, just as the bird cherry started to bloom again, there was Larry, singing gentle, raspy, and sure. I remember embracing. He was surprised that I remembered him.
The third spring, he texted me and told me he was on his way. I had his chair waiting for him.
Most days he wore a plaid shirt buttoned incorrectly like a child. His long grey hair and self-cut bangs peeked out from under a bucket hat. But, honestly, no one noticed Larry’s appearance; they noticed how he made them feel.
Larry serenaded passersby, some stopping to request a favorite song; and when they sang, Larry would hand them the mic and play accompaniment. People came into the shop to exchange $20 dollar bills for tip money and told us how Larry’s music transported them to a special time — their wedding day, a family road trip, their father’s favorite song. The music Larry played was a gift to people, and they told him that every day.
When someone would ask Larry to play their private event, he’d kindly decline, then disappear for a few days. But as long as you showed Larry you didn’t need him, he would come back.
At first, Larry was a fair-weather friend. The minute the weather changed and his old fingers got too cold, he would return to the coast to play on the Santa Monica Pier. But six years into our friendship, Covid set in. The world shifted, contorting into something he was not familiar with, so Larry made the choice to stay in Truckee year-round.
Those winters, I lay awake wondering if the blankets I’d brought him — and the socks, the vest, the hand warmers — were enough to keep him from freezing in his van. If I didn’t see him in the morning, I was certain he’d succumbed to the cold.
Through snowstorms, sidewalk construction, political unrest, snap freezes in August, 100-degree days in September, Larry played outside my shop for 10 years. He was the melody that stitched the days together, and he sang himself into the story of Truckee.
Through the years, Larry and I collected wheat-back pennies together. Larry and I had a communal leather bag, one he’d hand-stitched with tooth floss. I mostly kept track of the bag, but when Larry’s suspicious nature got hold of him, he would ask for the sack back and store it in his van. The pennies inside would ebb and flow; he’d pawn a few of the really old ones to turn a penny into four dollars and buy himself fried chicken from Safeway.
Before his day of singing, Larry spent his mornings buying batteries for his amplifier and going to the thrift store. He was a bowerbird, often bringing my family and my employees presents — necklaces, metal detectors, wagons, children’s musical instruments, you name it. His guitars and harmonicas were all found, the life played out of them, and Larry played the life back into them.
Larry told me, and he would want me to tell you, that he was an angel, that he spoke with God. Larry would want me to tell you that he was a traveling musician with many children, most of whom he’d never had the pleasure of meeting in person. Larry would want you to know that he traveled the world, a poor boy from Kentucky with just his guitar and an unstoppable need to sing.
I want to say that Larry floated through the world the way cherry blossoms float from the tree once the wind has shaken them loose. He landed softly in places, until the winds whispered that it was time to go.
I don’t know why Larry stayed in Truckee so long. Maybe it was the untethered welcome that our small, transient town showed him. What I do know is that he loved it here.
The last day Larry played outside my shop, I could see he was dying. It was a crisp morning in early spring, and his poor body was just done. Still, somehow, his voice and his hands were able to lead the way. When each song stopped, the pain would return, until the pain became too much and he packed up and went home.
In the last year of his life, Larry’s home was a beautiful and messy apartment. He had lived for so many years in his vehicles that the apartment felt like a palace to him. He was proud of it.
The first time I saw it was the day the hospital called and asked if I’d seen Larry. He hadn’t shown up for a doctor’s appointment, and I was his emergency contact.
Relief hit my body when, after I knocked on his door, I heard his gentle voice. “Come in,” he said.
I opened the door and he greeted me with a smile. He was watching cartoons and drinking a Big Gulp his neighbor had brought him. He could barely move.
We spent the day together. I asked him some big questions. “What do you regret?” “Who did you love the most?” ”Why did you always leave?” “Are you afraid to die?”
Larry answered all my questions with his signature, ethereal voice, detailing memories and retelling stories. When I asked him what his favorite song was, he sang it, his voice suddenly unhindered by pain.
Two weeks later, on the day Larry died, he was surrounded by a few of his many children. They flew long distances to say goodbye. I can only imagine the strange feeling of saying hello and goodbye in one short trip.
As he worked to breathe, I told him it was okay to go. I whispered it quietly into his ear. I knew him, he let me know him, and I felt like it was my place.
Larry would want me to tell you he made some mistakes, big ones. He would want you to know he had regrets, and he lived with them. They took up residency in his weathered skin.
What I want to say is Larry was a beautiful songbird, traveling the world and giving voice to the soundtrack of life. People fed him from their porches, watched him with quiet fondness, and listened so intently that, for a moment, everything disappeared except Larry.
Larry knew he wasn’t going to have another Christmas, and that made him sad. This holiday, there will be a silence outside Bespoke + Atelier, and that makes me sad. On these crisp December mornings, I will wish that Larry was setting up, ready to sing the season into being, ready to greet passersby whose whole day could be shifted by the right song, and whose whole hearts could be transported by a man, his voice, and an old guitar.
