Chapter 28 – Vox Populi

The ancient steps were shrouded in shadows beckoning us to follow the path to the iron crossed wooden doorway built when America was only a twinkling in the eyes of Leif Erickson. We were the only visitors that day to the Draconian castle known to all as Culross Abbey (pronounced Currus) in the heart of the Kingdom of Fife. The residents of Scotland took for granted the historic importance of their castles as we, in America negate the Grand Canyon, Empire State Building and the celluloid hero’s of Hollywood’s golden age. We entered the ruins of the abbey with trepidation and, I for one was soaking in the ambiance like a sponge.

 “I grew up with this and it’s all new to you,” Donna said rubbing her belly as if a fish and chip dinner was more on her mind than the dead faces looking back at us with majesty and valor. We ventured on to Edinburgh Castle where the firing of the one o’clock gun could be heard from Holyrood Palace all the way to the Forth Road Bridge. That ancient edifice that rose out of the fog and mist like an gargantuan, blue specter in the center of the great city, where the likes of James Barrie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.K. Rowling and Sean Connery all cut their teeth.

“Don’t you realize how amazing this place is?” I said to her as we crept along the red carpeted walkway surrounded by paintings of James I, Mary, Queen of Scots, Rob Roy, William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charlie who seemed to be telling tales of battles lost and won and treasures horded by the ancient realm of days gone by.

In my mind I was plotting a way we could move to this amazing island, but Donna was getting Americanized and wasn’t ready to retreat to the place of her birth with all the rain, restrictive and backward thinking and such. I was imagining getting a job as a greenskeeper at the Royal and Ancient Golf Course at St. Andrews or restoring old British roadsters I would find out of the local papers while pursuing my solo career as a singer/songwriter. But what would I do with Bridget Bardog and Ginger? I couldn’t think of bringing them over and subject them to six month of quarantine. My great plan would have to wait.

At this point the idea of marriage was a long way off but if I were to tie the knot, Donna was the only woman I would consider. I was and still am almost twelve years older than her but that seemed about perfect. She was very mature, most European women are, and I was still a teenager in my mind, maybe a twenty year old. Although I didn’t hide anything  from her, Donna had no idea of the kind of crazy stuff I went through with Silverspoon— all the drugs, parties, famous rock and movie stars I hung out with, not to mention the ex-girlfriends. She was no innocent babe in the woods, but our backgrounds were as divergent as night and day. We could have been from different planets or solar systems. The common bond was our sense of humor, moral code and a deep physical and mental attraction. She’s no dumb blonde by any stretch of the imagination.

I was browsing through the local paper, The Fife Free Press, looking for anything interesting or valuable when I came across and ad for a mid to late 60’s Vox AC30. Besides maybe a 1959 Fender Bassman, this amp was considered to be the Holy Grail of amplifiers. After all, it was used by The Beatles, The Yardbirds, Hank Marvin and too many others to list. The Vox AC30 was originally introduced in 1958 as “big brother” for the fifteen watt (15 W) AC15 model at Hank Marvin’s request because the AC 15 was not loud enough with the screaming fans at Cliff Richard’s concerts. The amp sported a thin white covering ("Rexine") with a small printed diamond pattern and larger diamond pattern grill cloth. It reminded me of an old television set my mom and dad used to have in the fifties when we would gather around the living room and watch The Ed Sullivan Show. With all the personal devices in vogue now I wonder if people still do that kind of thing anymore.

I called the number in the paper and asked the youthful gentleman on the other side of the phone when I could see the amp and how much he was asking for it. He said I could come over directly and the going price was three hundred pounds, which would have translated to about five hundred dollars. Donna and I headed over to Livingston, which is not far from the Edinburgh airport, or about forty miles from the Smollett home in Glenrothes.

We rang the buzzer at the modest home and a young man of around twenty years old opened the whitewashed door. I thought to myself this kid was pretty hip to have such a treasure in his possession and wondered why in the world he was selling it. Was there something wrong with it? He plugged in a reissued American made Fender Telecaster, which is my guitar of choice, and he fired up the amp. That familiar warm tube sound filled the air and the smell of old British electronics permeated the tiny room. He handed me the guitar and I played Ticket to Ride or the solo from Nowhere Man. It was love at first note. I had to have the amplifier but the price, even though I knew it was worth three times what he was asking, was still a little out of my range. I offered him a hundred and fifty pounds. We settled on a hundred and eighty and the amp was mine. Oh rapture, oh joy, I silently exclaimed, like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz shouted out when he got his brain.

We loaded my new prized possession into the yellow Vauxhall trunk and it barely fit. We were good to go. I knew how expensive it would be to ship it back to America since the amp weighed at least sixty, maybe even seventy pounds. I decided I was going to pack it in a suitcase and take my chances with the airlines baggage handlers—a risky proposition. Where in the world was I going to find a suitcase that large?

The next day, Donna and I went into Kirkcaldy, a small seaport town in Fife just across the Firth of Forth and the gleaming city of Edinburgh. We went to a few second hand shops but no one had a piece of luggage large enough to fit the dimensions of the Vox. I was rummaging through the last second hand shop we were going to visit for the day and I saw a Glengarry hat with a pin in front that read, Scotland forever. It is similar to a beret with a wee tail of a ribbon hanging down in the back. I bought it for ten pounds. I asked the lady behind the counter if she had any large luggage. She told me there was an old suitcase upstairs in the attic that might work. She brought down this giant olive green monstrosity that looked like something my grandmother might have used when she came to America from England in 1910. I didn’t care about aesthetics, it was functionality that concerned me and it knew it would work like a charm. I bought it for three pounds, fifty. I couldn’t wait to bring it home and introduce it to my 1958 Telecaster and my 1964 Gretsch Anniversary—two guitars that I am proud to say I still own. But tomorrow Donna and I were off to Ayr and would be spending a couple of days on the shores of the beautiful and freezing Irish Sea. It would be the first time we would be alone together in days. The amp would have to wait in the closet of the council home in Glenrothes. The first night in Ayr, I heard the jingly-jangly chimes of golden arpeggios ringing in my dreams.