I'm Retired! Now what?

May 18, 2026

One of the cool things about living in a relatively small city and living there a long time is the fact that on occasion you randomly run into someone you know.  Well, this happened to me this past week as I was in the checkout line at the local Albertson’s grocery store.  Indeed, I saw my old guitar teacher Phil, and strangely enough, he remembered me as well.

Around twenty years ago, I decided to add a 12-string guitar to my collection.  I had few guitars by then, but no 12 string.  So after I picked up an acoustic Takamine 12-string guitar art one of the local music stores I came up with the weird idea that owning a collection of guitars might be more fun if I knew how to play the blessed things better.  I had taken guitar lesson in jr. high for a while, and I had been self-teaching myself for years.  I also played a trombone in band for eight years, so I had a little basic understanding of music.  So with that in mind I found some guy who was giving guitar lessons.

Why I didn’t find Phil when I first moved to Texas is a question that I’ve been beating myself over the head with for the last twenty years.  Back in those days I was young and single and had a couple of decent guitars.  I also had nothing but time, a nonexistent social life, an undying love of music, and as added bonus, I was basically bored out of my mind most of the time.  However, I never even thought about checking the yellow pages or guitar shops or whatever to find a professional guitar teacher.  If I had, who knows what I might have become.  Maybe I could have been the next Eric Clapton by now.  I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened, but at least I would have been a better player.

Back when I was taking lessons, I’d show up every Thursday morning for thirty minutes and struggle through all the guitar stuff that Phil had given me to practice the previous week.  Back then my two guitars of choice were a red and white Japanese Fender Stratocaster and a baby blue Guild acoustic that I had traded for a 12-gauge shotgun.  Along with a lot of patience, Phil had an old acoustic guitar that he had played so much that he had worn a hole in the thing.  What used to catch my interest though were all the photos taped on the walls of his little room that portrayed him playing in local bands over the years.  When asked about his bandmates he’d make the comment, “Some of these guys I still talk to, but most of them I never want to see again.”  If I learned nothing else from the guy, I learned that playing in a professional band isn’t all that much fun.

Although I’m not sure that Phil remembered my name, the man did claim he remembered me and noted that he was retired from giving lessons while throwing in the fact that he was now 75 years old.  I always find it weird how guys want to throw in their age when the subject of retirement is brought up.  You rarely ever hear a woman do that.  However, I was far more interested in the fact that he was still keeping his guitar picking fingers limber by meeting up with some old, classic rock junkies who still liked to rock!  And I don’t mean rock in a chair.  He said their ages ranged from mid-70’s to mid-80’s, and they all hung out somewhere in the country where they could crank their amps up to eleven and squeal out the old Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple tunes like all good senior citizens should!  Okay, he didn’t get quite that detailed, but I’m just assuming that’s what he meant. 

I wish I could have hung around and chatted with the guy some more, but I’m sure Phil had better things to do than talk to me.  Back when I was taking guitar lessons from him, we seemed to have that classic rock, old blues music bond that I have found with very few folks.  During our weekly sessions back in those days Phil would show me how to finger bar chords over open chords along with a few blues scales.  And like any good guitar teacher, he’d keep things fun by writing out a few riffs from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Stray Cats.  Even though I still play through the opening of Sweet Home Alabama and attempt to play Sleepwalk every once in while, my fondest memories of taking lessons from the guy tend to be the times when I just talked music with the dude.  We’d seen a lot of the same bands in concerts over the years, and we both had a love for blues music that ranged from Robert Johnson to Stevie Ray Vaughn.

After a few years I quit taking lessons because my wife got in a serious car wreck and my parents needed my attention along with a few other things that tended to be more important than a music habit.  I might say that life got in the way of my guitar time.  I considered resuming my guitar lessons but for some reason I always had something else to do.  I never purchased any of my guitars or took lessons with big dreams of becoming some super guitar god.  I read somewhere that guitar god Steve Vai used to practice for twelve hours a day while the master of the Stratocaster, Jeff Beck played four hours a day even into his sixties.  I never had that kind of commitment to reach for musical greatness.  However, I can’t pick up a guitar without thinking of the good times I had chatting with Phil while learning a bunch of chords and few licks, even if I just learned how to play well enough to entertain myself.