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My grandfather Irv was fifty-one years old when I entered the world on a cold January evening in 1977. He had been working his whole life fixing and maintaining mechanical equipment, starting as a car mechanic and then later helping to keep the ancient machines in an old crayon factory running.As a child, I remember studying his hands, as we sat at the veneer-topped table in the small kitchen of my grandparents’ home. I spent a lot of time there growing up, while my mom was at work. Those hands …

We received a note recently from Gitty Customer and Cigar Box Nation member John Moore, who a few years back purchased one of the two handmade electric guitars Ted Crocker built for the "Honeydripper" motion picture. Ted sadly passed away earlier this year.The movie starred Danny Glover and Keb' Mo' and really is quite good. You can learn more on its dedicated Wikipedia page.Wanting to do something meaningful with the guitar to honor Ted's legacy, John decided to pass it on to Susan Antone, …

CigarBoxNation.com has been the online home of the cigar box guitar and homemade music movement since Shane Speal launched it back in 2008. In the fourteen years since, over 22,000 people from all over the world have joined the community to ask questions and share their photos, videos and advice about these amazing instruments.Ten or so years ago, after I took over ownership of the site from Shane, we implemented some membership questions to try to weed out spam accounts. The third and final que …

Not too long ago we had a surprise visitor here at C. B. Gitty. Being an e-commerce company without a physical retail storefront, it is always a bit of a surprise when people show up here in person. We always do our best to accommodate folks whenever we can.On this particular day, the visitor was an elderly lady, who shuffled down the hallway leading to the warehouse portion of Gitty HQ. As it happened, I was the first person she ran into. As usual, I was caught a little off-guard but as she beg …

Early in the summer of 2021, I embarked on a two-week 8,400-mile solo journey around America by train. This adventure was equal parts post-modern walkabout, mid-life crisis, and long-awaited escape after two years of COVID lockdowns.My sole companion throughout this momentous journey was my trusty little Hobo Fiddle, a style of cigar box guitar I created a few years back. It’s a funky little thing, a cross between a ukulele and a guitar, envisioned with the goal of building the sort of instrumen …