Actually the title is a bit misleading, because some mandolins have gone faster, I'm sure. Sometimes folks take them on airplanes to go somewhere, and those mandolins are definitely faster than my seventy mile and hour one. But my mandolin was going seventy or so when it hit the pavement of Interstate 580, northbound just coming out of Hayward, CA. Unbeknownst to me or to Roberta, who rode by my side, in her car after a gig we played in Hayward the trunk was not closed securely and my new mandolin had departed the confines of said trunk.
One hundred miles later, crossing the Causeway into Sacramento, Roberta chirped. "Oh Shit! I think the trunk is open!" It was, and when she got back in the car after inspecting, searching, and closing the trunk, her face told me what I feared most; the mandolin was gone.
We backtracked a few miles hoping the open trunk was a recent occurence in this trip, and found no sign that any mandolin had ever been dropped on that part of the freeway. I was devastated. I am a professional musician, and that mandolin was my grip on a career involving playing it. And that grip was lost on a busy Interstate at two o-clock in the morning.
The next day, a career change had developed in my mind by the time I arose from a sleepless night. I would borrow a mandolin to finish up a few gigs I could not bow out of, and I would begin a new career, telemarketing or something that would not involve heart-wrenching disasters such as losing a mandolin.
At practice that next evening, I got a call on my cell phone. I had alerted authorities at various agencies like the California Highway Patrol, and a few Bay Area Music stores, of the loss of my mando, so on the slight chance that someone had news, I answered the phone. It was a friend of mine who happened to be playing at the Fox and Goose, a local pub that I play at frequently. She said that the bartender had received a call from someone professing to have my lost mandolin. Now news does travel fast in this world today, but for the life of me I could not identify any connection that would have included the Fox and Goose in my mandolin story, but I dutifully spoke with the bartender who is a friend of mine also, and he had a telephone number for a man named Mike, who said he had found the mando on the freeway in Hayward.
Mike, it seems, is a highway construction worker and had been on a crew on I580 the night before. He told me he saw cars dodging something in the middle lane, and he went out and rescued what turned out to be my mandolin. As he was telling me this story, I remembered the entrance to the freeway where we had gotten on after our gig, had sported obligatory cones and signs and detours of the overnight construction zones of the California freeway system.
It dawned on me then that this story was a once in a life time happening. What odds that my music would depart this earth at the very spot where someone would be working on a road that has continual speeding traffic, and he would be in a spot and have the wherewithal to run out on to a busy four laner to retrieve what must have been unrecognizable as anything in particular. The story grew even more amazing in the telling.
At the exact time he began telling me how he came to find me, I realized there was nothing in the case that identified me as the proud owner of the little stringed lute; I had never, to my knowledge, put one of my business cards in it, and it being only a month or so old, I was still being careful not to let the case fill up with any detritus. How did he find me!
Mike said there was a picture of a gray-haired, gray-bearded guy, standing in front of the Fox and Goose. I remembered the picture; a friend had taken it some time before and had just given it to me, and I had put it in the case just a day or two before. I also remembered that Roberta and I had looked at it at our aforementioned gig, and I had remarked something to the effect that I should get it out of my virgin case. I'm glad I procrastinated that one. Mike had no clue where the Fox and Goose was, but he did have a keen interest in finding it, for he told me that he knew looking at my fine mandolin that somebody was sorely missing that little jewel, and he also said later, when I picked the mando up at his house, that he would have spent a fortune on lessons for himself or one of his kids to learn to play it.
The picture is of me standing in front of the front door of the Fox and Goose with exactly that on a sign that was right behind me. It could have been anybody, anywhere in the world. Mike started calling information in the Bay Area, and after getting a California directory assistance from Nextel, located the pub, called them, described the picture to the bartender, who told him it must be me.
After I hung up with instructions to Mike's house, and an agreed time to go pick up the mando from him the next day, I wiped the tears from my eyes and relayed the story to my band mates. I don't ever remember being as stunned nor as elated as I was right then.
It is a little over one hundred miles from my house to Mike's, and driving there the next day, allowed me to fully appreciate the gravity of the story I'm relating here. What an amazing tale! I couldn't believe my good luck and came to truly believe that this Weber mandolin was blessed by some deity somewhere, somehow. I had gone from throwing in the towel and never playing music again, to a place of divine intervention, a new regard for the world, and its inhabitants, and a renewed vigor for my chosen life.
Mike is a construction worker. He works nights, has a nice little house in a small town by a river, is married to a very nice woman,and has two little kids, probably three and five or so. When I got there the only payment Mike wanted was for me to sing Happy Birthday to one of his sons. When I opened the case and pulled the mando out of its case, I noticed it was not harmed at all, though the case sports some serious road rash, it was even still in tune. I gladly sang, though it was hard to sing through the huge lump in my throat, and even harder to see through the tears that filled my eyes.
I'm sure Mike is a fine human being, and I'm also quite certain he is normal, suffers pain when he hurts, laughs with joy when life is good, bumps his elbow on the occasional door jamb, and loves his life in the bits and pieces we all get to play as we wind through our time here, but I'm also equally sure that when the tickets are taken and the bills are marked, his will be paid in full, and then some.
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