April 26 of 2017 was a very long and tiring day for me. It was one of those days when the clouds sat right down on the top of my mountain that the Lord has blessed me with to spend the final years of my life upon. It was one of those cold, light misting rainy days that mystery writers long for to give them inspiration to write a world-class mystery. But today was no mystery for me because I knew it held a visit to my dentist to have a crown install on a molar. My dentist’s office is in Arnold’s California, an hour and a half drive up Highway 4, so it is always wise to allow about two hours and 15 min. for the drive, which always includes a couple of stints of slow driving behind flatlanders in a new big motorhome they don’t know how to drive, and at least two heavily laden logging trucks. Thankfully, the logging truck drivers know how to drive their rigs and will always pull over to let you pass at the first chance they get. If it were up to the mountain laws of justice, flatlanders would not be allowed to drive BIG motorhomes in the mountains until they have had at least five years of experience driving their big land yachts on level ground, let alone mountains ! There, I have vented ! ! ! I left my dentist office at one o’clock this afternoon, and after doing a few mandatory stops at the bank, post office, etc., my son and I finally got back to our mountain home around 430. By then, the anesthesia had almost worn off and I settled into my chair which is covered by a big buffalo robe, and immediately fell asleep till about 1130 this evening. So now here it is at three o’clock in the morning and I am wide awake writing this welcome message for you folks. What to write about? That is the question every month for me. This months welcome column probably won’t interest all of you folks but for some of you, it will be pure gold. I can’t remember where I came up with this information, but I’m sure glad I wrote it down. It has to do with Gibson mandolins, specifically those signed by Lloyd Loar.
I don’t know who compose this list, but I’m sure glad they did. I was going through some papers on my desk here a while back and I found a notepad with the date July 9, 2013 on it with the following information below. It has to do with serial numbers of Lloyd Loar mandolin’s and who owns them. Here we go.
Serial number 73987 owned by Mr. Bill Monroe
Serial number 72051 Frank Wakefield
Serial number 72207 Joe Val
Serial number 73006 Ronnie McCoury
Serial number 73481 David McLaughlin
Serial numbers 73731, and serial number 73982 Ricky Skaggs
Serial number 75316 Chris Thile
Serial number 71635 David Grisman
Now you have to remember that I cannot swear to the authenticity of this list, but if it is true, it appears to me that Frank Wakefield as the oldest one on this list followed by Joe Val. I’m sure you mandolin players who find this very interesting. It is interesting to note that there were 935 mandolins made by Gibson instrument company between Frank Wakefield’s and Bill Monroe’s. How many of those were Loar’s is anybody’s guess? Anybody out there have any better information than this? Maybe my friend Butch Waller can add some info to this article. This is yer friend the old mountain man wide-awake at 3:30 AM on his mountain. Hell, I usually get up at 4 AM anyway so it’s time to make coffee and put a pot of grits on the far.
