Summertime blues

Would you like a cup of coffee?” the man asked, getting up from behind an ancient wooden desk in the back corner of the store. Would I like a cup of coffee? “Sure,” I almost said, but thought better of it in the nanosecond it took the answer to travel from my brain to my mouth. It seemed best not to commit myself to such hospitality just yet.

It was a dusty, old guitar store off a county road somewhere between Greenville, S.C., and Atlanta. From the road it looked like the kind of place I love to visit on the rare occasion I indulge in some shopping as pure entertainment—small, obscure and obviously independent.

I'm a die-hard guitar junkie. I am confident that one day I'll find the instrument that makes the sounds I hear in my head but after nearly 20 years still can't seem to create with my own hands. As soon as I'd seen the store's sign as I blew by in my rental car, I knew I'd have to turn around and stop in for a look. Just a little peak, what harm could that do? It looked to be the kind of place, after all, where people find the Great Steal of a Lifetime and all I had to do was go in and grasp it.

It only took a quick glance around the store to set my “social pity” meter—the one that drives me to give something to any homeless person I pass—to ringing even before the small brass bell on the front door stopped chiming my arrival. “No thanks,” I said to his coffee offer and then began giving the store a closer look. Quickly, it was all too apparent this was not going to be the place where I made that big score.

The merchandise was either poorly made or old—most of it a combination of both. Usually, “old” in a guitar store is a good thing, although the preferred term is “vintage” because, like a fine wine, string instruments made of wood get better with age. It's why 19th century violins cost so much. But this store was full of budget-quality instruments that were now “vintage” only by virtue that no one wanted them 40 years ago and they still don't want them now.

It was disappointing. And somehow in my mind, disappointing a potential customer is a cardinal sin of retailing, especially at a specialty store devoted to something customers tend to have a special attraction to. That afternoon was a little like waking up on Christmas morning and finding there were no presents under the tree, or going to Philadelphia just for a cheese steak and finding the cheese steak shops were all out of both cheese and steak.

What was most disappointing about the store was not that it was empty, but that the owners didn't even seem to try. You couldn't even rationalize the merchandise mix as a bid to attract beginners. Even kids would know the store's selection was so lame that its only seemingly useful purpose was for reenacting the scene in Animal House where John Belushi's character smashes a folk singer's acoustic guitar against a wall during a frat party. It was as if the owner had lost interest in his own store. There was no visible effort to make you want to buy something, or to ever come back.

After I'd turned down the coffee, the manager went back behind his desk to finish reading a newspaper. “If you want to try anything out, give me a holler,” he said, and I was pretty sure he'd already chalked me up as just as much of a lost cause as I him.

I took a slow lap around the store just to make sure there weren't any hidden gems in a corner, did my best impression of someone contemplating a potential future purchase and left in as quiet and unobtrusive a way that I could.

Besides, there was more driving to do and summer vacation had just begun.