I’m putting new strings on an old guitar. Bronze. Medium light. I’m not a great player, but there’s nothing quite like the sound of new strings.

New strings remind me of the days I used to wash and wax my mama’s Oldsmobile Delta 88. I’d buff and shine all afternoon long. And when I got to drive it later that night, she felt good. She glided down the road on air.

A clean guitar with new strings is like that. It plays better.

And I didn’t just change the strings. I polished the fret board, body, neck, and head stock. I buffed the frets and got all the tarnish off, so they shined like new. I tightened the tuning keys. Cleaned and lubed the grooves in the nut. Then the new strings went on.

I said “old” guitar. And this is true. This hunk of spruce and maple and rosewood is 50 years old, or pretty darn close. The Dove guitar was only made from about 1970 to 1978. I bought mine in 1972 or ’73. Only 700 of them were ever made.

Scattered throughout several old shoe boxes in my closet, there are pictures of me and the Dove. My favorite was from a wedding at the old Shingleroof Campground near McDonough.

When I got married in 1978, my guitar went with me. At the time I was doing youth ministry work with the church in Blountville, Tennessee. I used it so much that often times I’d just leave it at the church building, so I didn’t have to carry it back and forth.

In the spring of 1979, someone broke into the church in the middle of the night. They broke glass and kicked in a few doors. They stole some cash out of the office. Seems like they took some tape recorders and maybe a camera. They also took my guitar.

Getting robbed is an empty feeling. You feel violated. You feel cheated. And if you’re a musician, even a crappy one like me, having your instrument stolen is like having part of you taken.

I had spent a lot of hours with that guitar in my lap. It fit me. I could close my eyes and feel the music in it. We chased James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot and John Denver and Harry Chapin songs together. We were like old friends.

Then, in one night, the Dove was gone.

I’ve had three other acoustic guitars since then. One I played for the next 30 years. The other two have been more recent. But none of them ever matched the resonance and sustain of that one.

In October of last year, Marion and I were walking through some of the shops on the square in Newnan, Georgia. Just killing time together. Enjoying the morning together.

On the corner across from the courthouse there’s a record shop and guitar store called Riff Wizard.

“Let’s see what they’ve got,” Marion says.

I’m always ready to gawk at guitars, so I say, “Sure.”

When you walk through the front door, there’s a floor stand rack full of guitars. Maybe a dozen instruments. A few electrics, but mostly acoustics. And on the very end closest to the door, hooked by the head stock, there hangs a Dove guitar facing me.

I almost dropped my jaw on the floor.

“Would you look at that!” I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Look at what?” she asked.

“I used to own that guitar. That one right there with the dove on it.”

I’m pointing like a German Short-Hair. Of course, I can’t be sure it’s the exact same one. I don’t have the serial number from 1972. But in every detail, from the bridge to the inlays, to the pick guard, to the binding around the body, it’s the same guitar.

I forgot everything else in that shop and held my Dove again for the first time in 45 years. I hate to sound goofy romantic about it, but she felt good just as I remembered. Someone had taken really good care of her. A few small dings. A familiar pattern of light scratches on the pick guard. A set of rusty strings. But otherwise, beautiful.

It’s just not possible for me to tell you how big the grin was on my face. You’d have to ask Marion. She’d tell you, “It was big.”

But I didn’t buy it.

I have a nice Guild acoustic at home, already. I don’t gig on the street corner or anywhere, so I don’t need two acoustics. No one pays to hear me play, so why would I spend this kind of money just to satisfy an old memory. I don’t typically impulse buy anything that costs over $10.

Well, I thought about that guitar for weeks. I couldn’t get it off my mind. I even found an excuse to go back to Newnan a month later so I could just happen to wander into that store and hold that guitar again.

It was gone. My heart sank. It almost felt like it did back in 1979 when mine got stolen. Empty.

“Dang it!” My words were just a whisper as I stepped out onto the sidewalk. I lost her once, and now I’ve lost her again.

I told Marion about it. She sympathized and gently scolded me for not buying it. I moped for a month.

That was in October. The guitar was never mentioned again.

When December came, and I was visiting with Marion, we exchanged Christmas gifts. I can’t recall, but I’m sure I gave her something dorky. Probably a mixing bowl or a spatula. Then she asked me to follow her to her daughter’s old bedroom.

“I have your present upstairs.”

Which made me a little nervous. I had never been upstairs in her house. She was subdued and maybe a little too serious. I couldn’t read the signs and really had no idea why a Christmas present would need to be tucked away upstairs.

“Can’t you just bring it down?” I asked.

“No. You have to come look.” That, I could read.

I can still hear the echo of our footsteps as they fell against the wooden stair treads. The tall, vaulted ceiling in the foyer gave the same foreboding sound as a cavernous courtroom with a solid pine floor. We turned at the top of the stairs and headed for the bedroom.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I walked through the door and saw that Dove guitar sitting upright on a stand.

“Are you crazy?” Maybe not my best response.

“Maybe,” she said, “but there’s no way I was letting that guitar get away after you told me that story. Finding that guitar was a God-moment, and you we’re being too stubborn to see it. So, I went back and bought it a few days later.”

Some gifts are so perfect that you can’t find adequate words to describe them. This is one of those.

The untested strings are stretching, finding their pitch. I keep re-tuning. The fret board feels clean. I’m still amazed that I own this guitar. That it found me, or I found it, or that two worlds collided in a divine drama of it-was-meant-to-be.

I really wish I knew if there was a serial number match between this guitar and the one that got stolen. That would make this story a whole lot crazier than it already is.

Either way, I get jazzed up every time I hold it.

And with a new set of strings, she plays like she’s walking on air.