Hold On!

I've read enough books about musicians to know that they form intense bonds with their instruments, even to the point of naming them as if they were people!

Keith Richards used a butter-colored Fender Telecaster guitar that he called "Micawber." Wilkins Micawber was a clerk in Charles Dickens's novel "David Copperfield" who was known for his optimism - he said "Something will turn up" when things looked bleak. In the book, Micawber revealed the perfidy of Uriah Heep, who had hired him as a clerk, and later had a whole band named for him.

Willie Nelson bought a guitar sight unseen in 1969. He still plays it today and call it "Trigger."

Jacqueline du Pré, a cellist, bought two tickets when she traveled by air. One for herself, you see, and the other for her cello, she listed on the passenger manifest as “Miss C. Stradivarius.”

B.B. King named his guitar "Lucille" in 1949 because he was performing in a bar where a fire broke out, forcing him to run for safety - but when he realized he left his guitar behind, he ran back in to get it. 

Later, he found that the fire was caused by a melee involving two men fighting over a woman named Lucille. He gave the guitar that name to remind himself never to fight over a woman or run into a burning building.

But Lucille the guitar didn't find a fine time to leave him.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Donald Rabin lost his flute, a $22,000 instrument. 

Funny thing about flutes: historians think the first ones were made from animal bones 37,000 years ago, while the earliest evidence of anything called a "song" dates back 4,000, which means that for 33,000 years, people were sitting around with flutes and no songs to play on them.

Most of the music of Jethro Tull sounds like that.

Back to Rabin, who is a grad student at Berklee College of Music who was visiting Chicago...he left his flute on a Chicago Transit train not long ago. So, as people will do, he took to Facebook.

“FLUTE EMERGENCY,” Rabin, 23, wrote. “My flute was left on the train. … I’m desperate to find it because it is my joy, career, and sole passion in this world. … I just hope that a kind soul is out there with my instrument.”

Well, a kind soul had his tooter for a while, but he pawned it. The guy is experiencing homelessness, so he hocked that pipe for $550, and so off to the pawn shop went Rabin, and the man, Lukas Mcentee.

Long story short: the pawn shop owner's wife saw a story in the newspaper about the flute. He in turn called the police, who hooked Rabin, Mcentee, and the pawn man, Gabe Coconate, who waived the fees and returned the instrument to its rightful owner.

Rabin met with the police (picture) and favored them with a flute rendition of "Over The Rainbow," a song that has long been a favorite among law enforcement personnel.

And he is trying to help Mcentee and his wife (who sleep nights on that same subway line where Rabin left his flute) back on their feet with contributions to their GoFundMe.

Question: if you had a $22,000 anything, would you let it out of your grip for a moment?