system

Little Jimmy Watkins smashed his guitar against the oak-floored stage at the Beaumont Theater. He swung it like a sledgehammer, a ten-pound maul, holding it by its delicate neck as if he were a mad lumberjack. It splintered and sparked, the body finally dangling dangerously by the six steel strings like a lifeless fish. Piercing feedback. The sound of ten-thousand maniacs screaming.
Hours later Pedro Alvarez, a brilliant but broken man, found the neck and dangling strings in the dumpster behind the Beaumont. The body was missing. Despite its amputated state, it was the inlaid mother-of-pearl, the machined brass tuners, the polished wood, that thrilled Pedro. He played at one time, but then hard times fell, and he drifted into a homeless dark netherworld. But this splintered thing moved him. Two months later Pedro could be found playing a miraculous electric guitar deep underground on the platform of the Aukland Street stop. Some might have called him mad.
So be it.
Pedro constructed an instrument of peculiar beauty. The body was made from a five liter oil can. The wires were exposed and made it look as if Pedro was dangerously close to self-electrocution. He found an old speaker. Begged a broken amp and repaired it. He carried a bar battery in his shopping cart and charged it at a friendly station on Third Street.
Bills floated into Pedro's upturned hat. The sound of coins clinking made him smile. A half-circle of commuters could be found around Pedro throughout most of the day.
Little Jimmy Watkins never heard about Pedro.

hear that guitar here