Musings

Ron was a freewheeling bachelor who loved women and cars and planes and having a good time. He wasn’t particularly interested in all the serious, “settling down” nonsense that all the churchgoing people we knew were so concerned with.

I spent the afternoon with Thomas Hartel, whose father, Al Hartel, made the famous “Surfrite” surfboard Guitars for Mosrite in the 1960s. Thomas contacted me recently after seeing a video I shot at Norman’s Rare Guitars.

Yesterday I drove up to Ridgecrest, on the edge of China Lake (where the Navy has their Naval Air Weapons Station), close to Death Valley. You don’t accidentally go to Ridgecrest. It’s a town on the edge of nowhere out in the hot California desert.

Had an amazing but VERY HOT and sweltering day in Bakersfield to wrap up this particular research trip. In the afternoon I went over to the Kern County Museum, where the staff treated me like a visiting dignitary.

Had an amazing evening and morning with David McCarthy in the Bay Area. We photographed a bunch of his Mosrite guitars for the book, but he also pulled out some other amazing stuff.

The Mosrite “Johnny” guitar I photographed today is one of the earliest Mosrite guitars I’ve ever seen. It could possibly be the first Mosrite guitar that Semie Moseley made for someone other than himself.

“The Hag” model Mosrite was never put into production, and until today it was just a rumor that this guitar existed. It has never been photographed.

There I was, photographing a one-of-a-kind Mosrite Ventures-style tenor guitar in the dust and debris of an old machine shop in Tulare County.

Sleeping in the bunk of a van barreling down the highway at seventy miles an hour isn’t easy. You have to train yourself, mentally and physically.

Betsy had a fascinating history. She was one of the original Little Rascals in the Our Gang series back in the 1930s. Then in the 1940s she began a career in Western music.