How to Take: A Guitar Lesson

How to Take: A Guitar Lesson by Mike Cohen 2026

In 1966, I still didn’t know what to call Bill Warshal, my father-in-law-to-be. Mr. Warshal sounded too formal; Bill felt presumptuous. “Mr. Bill,” his name at Warshal’s Sporting Goods, was no better. His family nickname, “Fazio” or “Faz,” was impossible. How could I speak man-to-man with someone I called “Fazio”? Laurie, my fiancée and his devoted daughter, was no help. To her, he was simply “Faz.” Maybe, for me, he would have to be just “Laurie’s dad.”

That awkward question surfaced when I mentioned I wanted a new guitar. I had been playing a cheap Japanese knockoff and hoped to reward myself with the real thing, though after four years of college and six months in the Air Force, I was nearly broke.

Laurie, one of four siblings, introduced me to shopping Warshal family style. At her urging, her father offered to take me to Meyers Music on Seattle’s First Avenue, a store owned by Warshal cousins.

This was new to me. I was an only child, with no extended family nearby, and taught to take care of myself. Laurie’s family-to-be was the polar opposite: a local network of aunts, uncles, and multiple generations of cousins accustomed to interacting with one another on favorable terms.

I reluctantly agreed to make the guitar hunt a family enterprise, but had no idea where it would lead. At the appointed hour, I arrived at the Warshals’ house to find Laurie’s dad beside his car, surrounded by battered black instrument cases holding flutes, piccolos, saxophones, trumpets, and who knew what else, all bought over the years for his four children’s lessons. They looked like leftovers from the marching band in The Music Man. I had no idea what this pile of instruments had to do with my guitar search,  

I helped Laurie’s dad load the cases into his car; then when we arrived at a garage at First and Madison I carried the whole caboodle, stumbling along like a pack mule on the way to our musical shopping expedition at Meyers Music.

Meyers Music is gone now, but in its prime it was a temple for folk and rock musicians: in its high-ceilinged show room, guitars hung from every wall like moss in the Olympic rain forest. Crowding every aisle were would-be stars who strummed, thrummed, and hummed their imagined hits on the closest displayed guitars.

Laurie’s dad knew nothing about guitars, but that did not deter him. By then I understood he rarely pursued goals in a straight line. In baseball terms, he was a curveballer: a businessman who supported workers right to organize, a civil-rights believer who still moved his family from the integrating city to the suburbs. So I had no idea how this guitar hunt would end.

Julius Meyers, the owner, saw us enter and ambled over to greet my future father-in-law. He ignored the stack of instrument cases I had piled on the counter, though I would bet they were part of some trade or sale. Before I could work that out, the real ritual began.

Laurie’s dad greeted Julius as “Mr. Music,” and then, suddenly, they were grappling mano a mano. I soon learned that Laurie’s dad hand-wrestled everyone. The two men grunted and grimaced like Jewish sumo wrestlers in a blood match When the episode ended with both men red-faced, my future father-in-law pointed me out to “Mr. Music” as a future member of the family.

“This young man, who is marrying my daughter, is looking for a guitar.”

Julius turned to me, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his brow.

“Congratulations,” he said, damp and panting. “What’d you have in mind?” I pointed to an inexpensive Gretsch on the wall, and Julius retrieved it for me to try.

As I tested the Gretsch’s moody, thick strings, Laurie’s dad asked Julius for the best guitar in the store. Julius pointed to a large, lovely, curvaceous guitar hanging beyond even the tallest customer’s reach. “That is the best money can buy: Martin Rosewood Model D-21. One of a kind.”

Martin guitars were the holy grail of folk and country music, built by musical monks and acolytes in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, since 1833. They are the Steinways of the guitar world: responsive, resonant, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

“Well, let’s get it down,” Bill said.

Julius slid a ladder beneath the Martin, lifted it down, and handed it to me as carefully as a newborn.

Wow. Holding that Martin took my breath away. It felt as light as a cumulus cloud; the dark, liquid red-brown rosewood back and sides, the saucy engravings around the spruce top, the slim mahogany-and-ebony neck vibrated ever so slightly.

I plunked at its metal strings; my fingers, slowed by excitement, quickly forgot the Gretsch. The Martin’s tone was startling: loud, fluid, and full, a sumptuous mix of baritone wood and filigreed tenor steel. I kept playing, not wanting the moment to end, talking nonsense to the beauty in my arms, feeling it, caressing it—no, fondling it—while feeling like a car thief holding the keys to a stolen Ferrari.

Then I saw the price tag fluttering from a string on the neck: $750. It was far beyond my reach (I paid less for my car) and I started to say so, but Laurie’s dad cut me off.

“So, Mr. Music, we’ll take this one.”

“Oh no!” I yelped, my throat suddenly dry. “I can’t afford it.”

My future father-in-law took center stage.

“I’m going to get it for you,” he said. I began to object, but he waved me quiet. Embarrassment over the price, my pride in self-reliance, and my uncertainty about my father in law to be all collided. Then he said something I have never forgotten.

“I’m making you take it,” he said, “because you need to learn that taking matters. You may worry that if you accept this guitar, I’ll ask something of you someday. You’re right. I will. But that is how it works. You learn to take, knowing someone may later ask you to give back. First you take; later you give—and you’ll want to. Yes, that’s it exactly.”

He delivered this adage with great conviction, as if quoting an ancient maxim rather than inventing one on the spot.

Long after his death, I still think about Bill Warshal’s slapdash, backward logic, which he seemed to believe he had plucked from the shelf of time-tested homilies. “It is better to give than to receive” must have been somewhere in his mind, but he had rearranged it to fit the moment and the new person standing before him.

He was right. I didn’t know how to accept a gift and simply say thank you. I didn’t know how to feel grateful without also feeling trapped by obligation. I had been raised to take nothing for free, so I would owe nothing to anyone. In trying to be independent, I had learned to refuse the generosity that teaches gratitude.

His solution was to reverse the lesson. “It is better to give than to receive” became “When you learn to take, you learn how to give back.” Like a great teacher, he made the point with the aim of a marksman, the speed of a bullet, and the gift of a dream guitar.

My Martin D-21 is still a beauty. It has never stopped preaching congruity between instrument, music, and fingers. It is a little banged up now; some serious scratches reflect not only my use, but the periodic tinkering of others who couldn’t resist its beauty.

But I learned its lesson. When it was time to give back, I gave the guitar to Bryan, my guitar-playing son, along with this story. In passing it on, I was not repaying Bill Warshal so much as continuing the lesson he had meant for me. 

I’m sure Bryan will always be aware of his role in this chain of take and give. Each time he  pops open the case latches, reaches for its dark mahogany neck, slips its strap over his shoulder, and feels its rounded rosewood back against his belly, a certain riff will rise, sometimes mantra-like: a wise, funny tune, exasperatingly direct to the heart. He’ll hear a musical guitar lesson from his granddad—Bill, Mr. Bill, Faz, Fazio, or now just plain Grandpa Bill—full of charm, layered with harmony, rich with perceptiveness, and, above all else, delivered with love. Nobody could ever give enough back for that.