Ed. note: The "Son" guitar in Gibson Montana's new Woody Guthrie Father & Son set is a reissue of a Gibson flat top that Woody gave to his son Arlo in the early 1950s. The model was a -sized version of Gibson's smallbody LG-series flat tops - officially called the LG-2 . Prior to World War II, the -sized model was called the L-00 , which is the way Arlo refers to it. Here's the story, as told by Arlo.

I received my first guitar as a birthday present fifty years ago. I was five years old when my father surprised me with a Gibson L-00 3/4 - a kid sized guitar. I banged on it for a few minutes and ran out the door of our apartment in Beach Haven across the street from Coney Island Hospital. There was a vacant lot on the corner and a little candy store nearby with a counter and some stools where we consumed egg creams and sandwiches. I took my new guitar there for some reason and banged on the thing until someone gruffly said "Why don't you get that thing outta here until you learn to play it."

I ran out in tears and hid the guitar in some weeds in the lot. I returned to the apartment empty-handed. My mother was furious with me for abandoning the present which had cost them dearly. We were poor people in those days and my dad had spent $70 on the guitar. I ran out in a state of shock and confusion. I remember hoping beyond hope that it was still where I had left it. It was! And I returned again with the guitar in hand. I've kept it with me ever since.

Even today $70 spent on a five-year-old kid seems like a lot of money. My mother was angered beyond words that my father would spend that kind of money on a little kid. Not only that, but as he left to purchase the guitar, the neighbor said "If you're getting one for your kid, pick one up for mine." He certainly thought, as did my mother, that he would come home with a $15 toy and not a real instrument. The neighbor went ballistic in sync with my mom's utter disbelief.

My father told them "If you buy a kid a toy, he'll play it for a day and lose interest in a week. If you get him a real instrument, it'll never let him down and it'll be a friend for life." Both me and the neighbor kid are still playing.

Years after my fifth birthday, when in my late 20s or so, I was visiting an old friend of mine, Jerry Jeff Walker, who was playing in a place nearby my home in Massachusetts. We got to talking and I was telling him the story of my first guitar. The old guitar was still hanging on the wall in my home unplayable after the years had taken their toll.

The front had cracked in a few places and I had to remove the strings a decade earlier when the pressure had pushed the neck into the sound hole. I was telling Jerry Jeff the sob story of the little guitar and it must have made an impact on him. He got up, walked away and came back a few minutes later with an exact same model. He said "Here! Take this one. I'm not using it that much." I couldn't believe it! I took the gift home and eventually gave it to my second daughter, Annie, who loved it above all her other possessions. She played it for years until some fifteen years later I got a call from Jerry Jeff

"Remember that little guitar I gave you? I need it back."

"I gave it to my daughter years ago."

"Well, I need to get it back because I want to give it to my kid." I called Annie on the phone and told her the news. She broke down in tears. I told her I would get her another guitar, but that if Jerry Jeff wanted it back there was nothing I could do about it. We sent it off to Texas shortly after that and I found Annie a beautiful old Martin D-18.

My old guitar was still hanging on the wall and the years went by. I visited the Gibson Factory in Bozeman recently and made friends with the entire crew up there. I repeated my sob story about that little L-00 3/4 with the added pain and suffering of having to send its brother off to Texas.

I must have told it well. By the time I visited them again on a trip through town, they had made a brand new L-00 3/4 and told me to give it to my daughter. Not only that, but they decided to reintroduce the line so that even Jerry Jeff's grandkids could have one!

I don't know how successful those little guitars will be, but I can't wait to see my daughter's face when she gets a brand new one soon. She has kids of her own and it was the best little guitar for a kid to learn on. I took my old one back to Montana and within a day they had fixed it up, patched the cracks, reset the neck and put it back together. I sat there and played my old friend for the first time in decades and the memories flooded back to the day I first got the thing.

My dad was right. You get a kid a real guitar and it becomes a friend for life.

Arlo Guthrie