Journal Entry — Morro Bay
Morning on the harbor moved slower. Coffee came up on the burner while the water worked itself awake. The boat shifted on the buoy with the small pull of the tide. JR drank his coffee and watched the surface like it was giving him information.
After a while he said we should go in and walk the marina. No reason given. Just something to do with the morning.
We took the skiff to shore and tied up at the dock. The marina was already in motion—people loading coolers, hoses running, someone arguing with an engine that wouldn’t cooperate. We moved along the docks and past the dumpsters near the end of the row. That’s where I saw it.
Just the neck at first, sticking out at an angle. Wood exposed and stained from water. It looked like trash until it didn’t.
I pulled it free. No case. No strings. Mud packed into the seams. The finish was worn through in places that came from hands, not accidents. The neck was damaged but not snapped. Salt had worked its way into everything. It looked finished.
I turned it once and set it down. JR glanced at it and shrugged. He said it might be worth seeing if it was worth fixing. He knew a guy in San Luis Obispo.
That was all. No speculation. No names. We put it in the back of the truck and headed to town.
The shop sat off a side street in San Luis Obispo. Small and quiet. Tools laid out the way they’d been for years. Wood shavings on the floor. Old cases stacked where they fit. Skip Navarro looked up when we came in. Older. Lean. Hands that knew what they were doing without checking.
He took the guitar from me without comment and turned it once. Ran his thumb along the edge of the body and looked down the neck. He didn’t ask where we found it.
“This didn’t end up like this by accident,” he said.
He set it on the bench and leaned back. He said he’d worked on it for years. Belonged to Red Tide. He talked about the wear, where the finish was gone, how it had been kept up before. What it meant when someone stopped caring for an instrument like that.
I told him to fix it. He nodded. No price. No timeline.
JR asked if he’d seen Red Tide lately. Skip shook his head. Said it had been longer than usual. That was all we got.
We left the guitar there and drove back south.
Tonight we ate at Happy Jack’s, sitting in the bar. Loud room. Heavy pours. Faces that watched longer than they needed to. The club leaned against my stool. Nobody said anything about it.
Two guys drifted over after a while. Leather. Hard looks. One of them told us we didn’t belong there.
I moved the club with my foot and set it where it cleared space.
“You’re standing in the wrong place,” I said. “Asking the wrong question.”
They waited.
“Last chance to move.”
They thought about it, then backed off without a word. It didn’t seem random.
The room settled back into itself. Food came. Drinks disappeared. Nobody followed us outside.
The harbor was quiet when we stepped out. Lights stretched across the water in broken lines. The skiff rocked lightly against the dock when we untied it.
JR exhaled and said we were probably noticed now. I agreed.
Some things don’t announce themselves. They just stop being invisible.
Sand Rating: 5 / 10
Condition: Damp, compacted, marked by foot traffic
— BG
Travel light. Swing hard.
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