If you’ve got a minute, I’d like to tell you a very cool story. It’s got all the right ingredients for a nice Christmas smile.

The best stories include an all-the-planets-had-to-line-up-moment. You can’t make it up, and you can hardly believe it. You almost have to think that Someone else is calling the shots.

This year Christmas began in 1973. I know that sounds crazy, but bear with me.

I was 16 that summer. My birthday was coming up in October and I knew exactly what I wanted. I was working for Mr. Jim Henderson to earn the money I needed. I painted his hay barn green that year. By myself. With one 3-inch paint brush and about a gazillion 1-gallon paint cans. And when I wasn’t painting, I was helping get hay up out of the field and put up in the barn.

What I wanted was a new guitar.

My cousin, Gary, gave me my first guitar when I was 14. It was a Sears acoustic parlor guitar. Small. Rusted strings. Looked like maybe it had lived a rough life before falling to me. I played that thing, literally, until my fingertips bled.

Mama took me to see Dr. Black to get a tetanus shot just in case.

I know how kids are with musical instruments. Believe me. A parent has to be concerned about whether or not the kid is gonna be serious about playing the thing. Nobody wants to spend money on an instrument that is just gonna collect dust after six months. Otherwise, you end up with cases of band instruments piled up in a closet with no life.

Please message me if you’re interested in a few slightly used brass horns and woodwinds.

Anyway, after about a year, my folks accepted the idea that I might stick with playing the guitar. They took me up to Atlanta to shop. Did we go to a music store? No. We went to Ellman’s discount-catalogue-members-only-cheap-stuff-retail-outlet-store up on Cheshire Bridge Road.

I picked out a classical style guitar with nylon strings. I think maybe because I had seen Simon and Garfunkel playing one. The neck was so wide it hurt my hands. But it was brand-spanking-new. It had a hard case. And it cost well under a hundred bucks, which was the limit I was given, which was a lot of money back then.

I kept that guitar until about 10 years ago. I took it with me to Mexico on a mission trip just because it was small and light to carry. Plus, if it got damaged somehow, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I ended up giving it to a young boy in Linda Vista who was playing a broken guitar with a few strings missing. It deserved a new life outside my closet. He was still playing it when I went back two years later.

But back to 1973. I was in the market for a better guitar. Something with steel strings. Something beautiful. Something worthy of the likes of Jim Croce or James Taylor or Gordon Lightfoot.

I wish I could remember the name or location of the store, but all I can remember is it was up in Marietta. Seems like it was a concrete block building. Light green in color. It had the little bell over the front door that dinged when you went inside.

I couldn’t afford the high-end Gibson acoustics, so I got the next best thing. I bought a Gibson-look-alike. The Lyle Dove W-415 caught my eye and was in my price range.

Lyle Guitars were made in Japan, and BTW, so were Gibson guitars at the time. “Made in Japan” didn’t necessarily mean poor quality. The name Lyle was a brand used by the distributor out of Beaverton, Oregon. The Lyle design was so close to the Gibson that a lawsuit was filed. Consequently, there were only about 700 of the Lyle Dove guitars produced before that line went away.

I didn’t know all this back then. I only recently did a little homework. And here’s why.

I think it was 1979. I was living in Blountville, Tennessee. I was playing my guitar in church on Sundays and was too busy to play much during the week. So, I left it tucked away in one of the rooms at the church building.

By some crazy turn of fate, the building got broken into one night. They stole an IBM Selectric typewriter. Some microphones. A petty cash box. And they got my guitar. I was sick. I loved that guitar.

I don’t know why I didn’t try to find another Lyle just like the one I’d lost. It was a great guitar. I bought a Yamaha that I would play for the next 30 years. And I just kind of forgot all about the Lyle.

That is, until this past October. Marion and I were just kicking around downtown Newnan, Georgia. It was her home turf. I was the new guy. She was showing me the sites. We were walking aimlessly, and she was pointing out interesting stores and talking about the shopkeepers she knew who used to run them.

We ambled into the Riff Wizard Guitar Shop on the square. Not far from the door was a low floor rack of acoustic guitars. Maybe twenty of them. On the end, facing the door, was a Lyle Dove exactly like the one I had 50 years ago.

“Hoooooly Coww,” I said!

I told Marion the story I just told you. I even had a pic on my phone of me playing that guitar for a wedding at Berea. I showed it to the guy working in the shop. A young boy with black hair holding the same exact guitar they had hanging on the rack. At least one like it.

As much as I wanted to buy it, I passed. But I kept thinking about it. I wasn’t obsessed but it kept coming up. I went back to the store a month later to see if they still had it. I might see what he would take for it. But it was gone.

Christmas weekend, Marion says to me, “Come with me. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

For nearly three months she had kept silent about this. Never breathed a word. She returned to the store a day or two later and bought the guitar. She showed the shop owner my picture and made him swear an oath.

“If he comes back in here looking for this guitar, you don’t know nothing. You sold it to some guy from outta town. Got that?”

I walked into an upstairs room in her house and there sat that Lyle Dove on a stand. Cleaned up a little. New strings. And sounding as good as I remembered.

I was blown away. Who is this woman? How could this be real?

Of course, there’s no way to know if this is the exact same guitar. But that doesn’t matter. I’m holding in my hands a piece of my personal history that speaks to my heart.

Now that is some gift.

My favorite gift, in fact.