30th Year Photos/#90

OOPS!!!!

I’ll never forget that Christmas eve.  It was about 3 pm and I was the only one left at the office of Wood ‘N Strings visiting with a customer who was picking up last minute gifts for his wife.  It must have been about 2002 or 2003.  The phone rang as the customer left so I grab it.  It was another customer who had just received his brand new Russell Cook Edition from UPS.  He was a doctor who unfortunately was recently divorced and this instrument was his Christmas gift to himself on his first holiday season alone in a long time.  At least I felt good that we were able to bring something new and time consuming to his life to help him through this trying time.  But he was sobbing and muttering something along the line of “…but it’s broken, Russell, it’s broken…”.  All I could say was “Don’t worry - we can fix anything made of wood!” trying to console him as best I could.  How sadly mistaken I was.  When the instrument (if you can call it that, now) arrived at the office days later, once again I was speaking with a customer and Beth kept coming in to see if I was through – I knew something was up.  Finally I broke free and she grabbed my arm and told me I had to come see this.  The crate was leaning up against the wall still taped up as UPS had just returned it to us to evaluate (HA!).  I couldn’t figure out why Pheyland and Beth hadn’t already opened it.  But I picked it up and turned it flat from its vertical resting place.  OH MY!  What a sound.  It very much sounded like those long round tubes you used to see in tourist shops to sell to people with more time and money than…..well, you know…I think they were called “rain sticks”.  They were filled with tiny pellets and nails were inserted throughout the length of the hollow tube.  It sounded very much like rain for as much as 30 seconds as the pellets filtered down through the maze of nails.  That’s what this poor instrument sounded like!  As we found out later, a misguided forklift had ran over it – all the way over it with double tires – I know because you could see their tracks – complete with skid marks!!!!  Anyway, we built the sad gentleman a brand new instrument and all ended well, eventually.  I haven’t shared this story too often before for fear folks might run scared about having us ship their instruments to them.  I can honestly say I have never seen anything else like it in 30 years of shipping probably 100,000 or more packages all over the world.  But…..