The new (old) fiddle

It was in sad shape when I found it. The vendor was running an estate sale in a sixties-vintage house in north Dallas, just off Coit Road. The fiddle was lying on a couch and looked as bedraggled as much of the other junk stuff up for sale. It hadn't belonged to the now-dead inhabitant. The vendor had had it sitting around for some time, in its old, wooden case.

The bow had been attacked by bow mites. Only a few strands of horsehair stuck out of the frog. The sound post was loose inside the fiddle. There was no bridge, and only two strings out of the four it should have had. It had been "rode hard and put up wet," as I learned to say in west Texas years ago. Not literally, of course. The fiddle had, I was told, been in the top of someone's closet for years, maybe decades. I looked it over. Inside was the obligatory label: Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis 1726. Of course it was a Strad, just like every old fiddle made between 1800 and 1950. (Note: snark alert). But it seemed fundamentally sound—no obvious cracks. The neck seemed straight and secure.

He wanted $125.00 for it. We agreed on $85.00. I think he was glad to finally move it. I was taking the risk I'd been wanting to take for months—buying an old fiddle for next to nothing in the hope of getting something playable.

More to come.