This story comes third in the sequence. Please read the campout and science fair ones first.

“Music! Why do we need to study music?” groaned Bob, as we headed out of art class and down the hall.

“I don’t know. I was looking forward to art class. It’s a bummer that they decided to change it to music instead. I wish we could get out of it.” I shoved books into my locker and took out the ones I would need at home. “Are you going to the shop this afternoon?”

“Nah. I have to stay home and wash the car, since I forgot on Saturday. Tomorrow we can hang out.” Bob viciously slammed his locker door. “Music! Pfaah!”

We went out to the bike rack. The usual handful of bike people were there, unlocking touring bikes, mountain bikes, and stunt bikes. They watched as Bob loaded his pack into the basket and straddled his bulky electric bike. He pushed forward off  the stand, glanced down the street, flipped the power switch, and goosed the throttle. The bike lurched forward, leaning sideways, and Bob bounced on his left foot a couple of times, then on his right as the bike wobbled dangerously in that direction, and then he dropped off the curb into the street. The rear wheel spun in the dust, grabbed, and Bob sailed off down the street.

The spectators clapped and cheered. Three of them held up signs: 7.5, 7, 7. “He’s starting to get the hang of the thing,” sighed Joe regretfully. “I haven’t seen him drop it since October.”

“Yeah, but in December he went through the hedge, remember?” said Clyde, his leg hitched up on his mountain bike. “That was hilarious!”

“My favorite time, except for the big one last August, was when his backpack fell out and dragged behind him all the way down the block,” said Eddy. He was unlocking a Trek touring bike. “I heard his folks had to spend a hundred dollars for his torn-up textbooks.”

“$85, actually,” I said. “And he paid it himself.” I hopped on my mountain bike and rode off down the street.

Music class was the fly in the ointment for an otherwise pretty decent semester. Somebody somewhere had the bright idea that the honors program had to include fine arts, and they hired Junia’s mother to teach us music theory and performance. I didn’t actually mind singing, and the theory was pretty cool once you got the hang of it, but Bob groused continually, especially when Mrs. Schmidt made him sing in class. She made all of us sing, scales and intervals and timings, but Bob took it very personally. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, which seemed surprising to me in someone so bright.

“They think music is so special,” he grumbled, leafing through the theory book. “A fine art. Pfaah! Most of it is science, if you look at the theory. All these kids and their lessons. Nora’s always going on and on about youth symphony and her precious bassoon, and Doug’s been taking lessons on the trumpet since kindergarten, seems like. Junia’s studied piano since she was born. I don’t know a thing about music, but I bet you by the middle of the semester, I could be playing an instrument and writing songs, without any lessons. There’s really only a few principles you have to understand to be able to write music. I’m going to show them.”

“You? You can’t carry a tune in your bike trailer,” I said.

“So? You don’t have to be able to sing to write music. Let’s go over to the pawn shop. I saw an electric guitar in the window. We don’t get many guitars through the junkyard, although I did get a pretty nice amp a few months ago.”

We rode into town and stopped in front of the pawn shop. It was a seedy place, with bars in the windows and gaudy notices painted on the glass, and the few times I had been in there, it seemed like most of the stuff was junky and overpriced.

There was a blue electric guitar in the window. “Speical today!” said the sign stuck to it.

Bob walked up to the counter. A wrinkled old man looked down at him and said, “How can I help you?”

Bob asked, “How much is the speical guitar in the window?”

“The what?” asked the old man, folding his face into even more wrinkles.

Bob pointed. “The electric guitar.”

The man stuck a toothpick between his teeth. “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a genuine imitation Stratocaster, with original case and five good strings. It just needs a little loving and it’ll be worth several times what we’re asking for it.”

“What kind of loving does it need?” Bob asked.

“Well, it’s got a good strong steel-reinforced neck, and the finish and body are great. But there’s a small glitch somewhere in the electronics,” said the old man. He sucked air between his newly cleaned molars.

“So it’s broken.” Bob said.

“Well, it just needs a small repair. But it’s a real collector’s item. I could let you have it for $125,” said the geezer, squinting at Bob.

“Nice talking to you,” Bob said. He turned and walked toward the door.

“Well, hold on a minute, young fella. What’s a fine instrument like that worth to you?” asked the old man, leaning over the counter.

Bob stopped and looked at the guitar. The pawn ticket was hanging from it, and I could see that the loan value had been $25. “Maybe thirty bucks,” said Bob. “I would have to have it repaired and restrung before it would be usable.”

The old man snorted. “Well, like I told you, that there’s a genuine imitation Stratocaster, specially built back in 1973. But since you seem to be knowledgeable of such things, I’ll give it to you for the low low price of $95.”

Bob sniffed and walked on out to his bike. I looked the guitar over and then turned to join him. As we got on our bikes, the geezer came outside. “Don’t be so hasty! I could let you take it on payments,” he said.

Bob looked at him. “Forty bucks. Take it or leave it.”

The geezer sighed. “Times are tough. Tell you what. I’ll let you have it for fifty, since you want it so bad. Cash only.”

Bob nodded. “All right. Let me get to an ATM and I’ll be right back.”

We rode down the street to a grocery store, and Bob pulled $50 from his savings. When we returned to the store, the old man was laying the guitar in a tattered, dusty case. “I hate to part with it,” he said wistfully. “It’s a real beauty.”

Bob said, “Yeah, a genuine imitation Stratocaster is a rarity. You don’t get many of those in a town like this.” He gave the man the $50 and took the guitar.

It looked pretty funny, standing in the basket opposite his pack on the back of his bike. He bungeed it to the bike frame and headed for the junkyard. I went on home to do homework and chores.

The next day at music class, Bob looked cheerful and absorbed. He was reading near the end of the theory book, and taking extensive notes. “I’m getting the hang of it,” he muttered to me.

After school, he dragged me to the public library and poked through the music section. He checked out a stack of books, about classical music, baroque, blues, jazz, country, and a pile of albums. “I’m going home to read this stuff and listen to music,” he said. “You can come if you want.”

I looked at the recordings of Dizzy Gillespie and B.B. King and Hank Williams. “I think I’ll work on my history paper,” I said.

Bob was totally absorbed in his music project for the next several weeks. “It’s like a math formula,” he told me. “So many measures, so many beats, certain combinations of chords that work, frequencies. I’m really getting into it.”

He still couldn’t sing, but he did the class homework and answered questions in class, albeit abstractedly. And when Tony made a wisecrack after Bob botched a scale, Bob didn’t do more than punch him when the teacher’s back was turned.

I went to his house one afternoon. Bob was surrounded by blues albums.

“This is my favorite stuff,” he announced. “It’s very simple and methodical.”

He put on a B.B. King album, and closed his eyes to listen to the wonderful guitar licks and to BB complaining about his woman leaving him.

When the album was done, Bob pulled the old guitar case out from under his bed. “I had to replace the pickup and some wiring,” he said. “It looks like someone spilled beer in it sometime back. But otherwise this genuine imitation Stratocaster didn’t need much but new strings.”

He pulled out an electronic pitch finder and plucked a string on the guitar. He turned a knob until the pitch was right, then went to the next string.

When he had all the strings in tune, he plugged the cord into the old amp that he had found at the junkyard. He carefully put his fingers into position for a chord, and strummed the guitar.

“Hey, not bad!” I exclaimed.

He nodded. “It’s just a matter of procedure,” he said. “The chords are all listed in a book I got from the library, and a guy at the music store sold me the pick and showed me the basics. I’ve learned three chords.” He gingerly moved his fingers to another position and strummed a couple of times, then moved again to a third position. It didn’t sound quite right, but he strummed blithely on.

“Uh, something’s wrong,” I said. “I think some of your fingers are in the wrong place.”

Bob looked at me, then his left hand. He fished out a book with his other hand and flipped it open to a chart. He looked back at his hand. “Right. These fingers are on the wrong fret,” he said. He adjusted them, and strummed again.

“Much better,” I said, relaxing. “Don’t you hear it when it sounds wrong?”

Bob looked at me blankly. “What sounded wrong?”

“Never mind,” I said, sighing. “Anyway, this sounds right, and it didn’t sound right before. You’ve learned a lot, for a guy who hates music class.”

“Oh, I don’t hate it now that I see that there’s science behind it,” he said, strumming as he talked. He shifted to another chord without looking, and I winced. He looked at me, then down at his book, and moved his fingers again. “How did you know that was wrong?” he asked.

“I have ears,” I said patiently. “I don’t know anything about music theory, but it just sounded wrong.”

He looked at his book and shifted to another chord. “Well, I’m getting the hang of the fingering, but I don’t hear it when it’s wrong. Anyway, I’ve decided to write a song for my class project.”

Our class assignment was to carry out some sort of musical performance. I had figured I’d hide in a small choir, maybe a barbershop quartet or something, although I wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Oh, yeah? What kind of song?” I asked.

“Blues,” he said promptly. “It’s pretty simple, and you don’t actually have to do all the fancy stuff BB does. You just have to play a combination of certain kinds of chords, with flatted third, fifth, and seventh notes. The lyrics have to be sad, and generally you have two lines the same, then an elaboration with some kind of zinger. You're also supposed to use twelve bars, usually.”

“Blues are good,” I said. “Only problem is that you can’t sing.”

Bob strummed the guitar a couple of times in his painfully slow, methodical way. “No, but you can,” he said. “You’re also pretty good at writing. I was thinking I could write the tune and play it, and you could write the words and sing them.”

I laughed, and then laughed harder at the thought of Bob performing in front of a group. I rolled around on the floor among the albums and books and roared. Bob glared at me.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked angrily. “What’s so funny?”

“Hoo hoo hoo!” I laughed. “I just pictured you dressed up as a musician and playing an electric guitar on a stage. It’s a hilarious image.” I tried unsuccessfully to stop giggling.

“Hilarious! Pfaah! I’ll show you,” said Bob, viciously yanking the cord out of the guitar and shoving it into its case. “I’ll have the song written by the end of next week. You’ll see.” He flipped off the amp, straightened up the books and records, and ostentatiously began reading a volume on baroque masters. I took the hint and left.

I went to the library myself a couple of days later and checked out several blues albums and whatever I could find about the blues. It did seem pretty simple. Some of the lyrics were funny. I assumed that was what Bob had meant by a “zinger”. I started scribbling down whimsical phrases that came to my mind at odd times during the day. Usually it happened when I was bored.

“What’s so funny, Mike?” asked Mr. Boyce in math class one day.

“Uh, sorry, sir. I just thought of something,” I said, suppressing a smirk. When he turned away, I jotted down, “You went and took the toilet paper and left me sitting here....”

Friday afternoon, as we left school, I said to Bob, “So, are you ready for me to come hear your masterpiece?”

“Yep,” he said smugly. “It’s all set. You’ll see.”

I followed him down the street and up the lane to his house. He made an elaborate ritual out of getting out the guitar, tuning it with the electronic pitch finder, plugging in, setting the amp just so, and putting the guitar strap around his neck. He cleared his throat a couple of times, studied the neck of his guitar intently, positioned his fingers, and strummed, painfully slowly, but with a deliberate rhythm: Rum, pa pum, pa pum, pa (two chord changes) pa pa (original chord) rum, pa pum, pa pum....

“Hey! That’s great! It sounds like a real blues song!” I enthused.

“Hold on.” Bob continued his strumming, then shifted to another sequence, then another, then back to the first one. “You have to have the three main chords, and within the main one, that little bit of change,” he said. He played it through another time, scrutinizing the neck of the guitar, then looked at me proudly.

I clapped. “That’s awesome, man! You learned all of that in just two weeks?”

“Yep. I painted cheater dots on the neck of the guitar, though, to show me where to put my fingers because I don’t have it memorized yet.” He showed me the different color dots and what they meant, and played the song through again.

“So,” he said. “Are you ready to write lyrics for it?”

I pulled out my scraps of paper. “Well, I have a few ideas here. The one that’s developed the most goes, ‘The sun is setting, and so is my chicken.’ I have a couple of verses to it so far. I also have some promising lines, like ‘My heart’s been glotched like a steam-rolled slug’ and ‘You took the toilet paper and left me sitting here,’ but I haven’t figured out where to go with them.”

Bob pulled out a piece of paper. “I have a few ideas of my own. How’s this one? ‘Don’t look at me like that, like I pooped inside your hat.’ I don’t think that would fly at school, but I’ve got several verses for it, in the same vein.”

I burst out laughing. Bob grinned and said, “Here’s another. ‘I’m gonna drown my sorrows in a Baskin Robbins double scoop.’ The only rhyme I could think for it was ‘poop’.”

I giggled. “You could do a whole poop medley. Here’s one I wrote this morning: ‘Don’t know why you went and left me. I cleaned the bathroom just last year. When I go by to see you, you throw me out on my rear. I moved the pigs out of the bathroom and the chickens off the bed. Don’t know why you went and left me, whacked me one upside the head.’”

Bob chuckled. “Tell Mr. Bosnick I ain’t ever been a cheat. Got some help on my homework from a friend named Pete. My gal Sheila was the one wrote my term paper on Crete. Won’t you tell Mr. Bosnick I ain’t never been a cheat,” he sang tunelessly.

“Hey, that’s great!” I said.

By the time I had to go home, we had settled on, “The sun is setting, and so is my chicken,” merged with the “Don’t know why you went and left me” theme. It fit well with the tune Bob had written.

After supper, I wrote feverishly. “Tell Mr. Bosnick” sounded like a great beginning to a country-western song, and I wrote verses about several more teachers and things that had actually happened in their classes. “The sun is setting” needed more verses and some serious polishing, and I worked on it late into the night.

Saturday morning, I rode my bike into town and bought a harmonica and an instruction book at the music store. After a few hours’ practice, I could make some of the sounds that I heard on the blues records. I went over to Bob’s in the afternoon, and heard him banging away on his guitar. His folks weren’t home, so he had the volume turned way up.

I played the harmonica along with him, trying to figure out what notes went with the chords he played, and I practiced singing the main song we had written. Bob liked the harmonica, although it didn’t matter to him whether the notes I played were appropriate.

We went through the song several times, arguing about the timing and some details on the words. “There isn’t much repetition, not like B.B. King’s songs,” I commented.

“No,” said Bob. “But not all blues is repetitive like that. Sometimes they come back around to the repetition at the end, like you’ve done. Sometimes they sing a whole ballad without much repetition. It’s the chords and rhythm that matter the most to make it be blues.”

I showed him my verses to “Mr. Bosnick” and said, “It seems to me these would be great for a country song. Do you think you could write a country tune?”

He frowned and scratched his head. “How long until we have to start performing?” he asked.

“About three weeks,” I said.

He scrutinized the lyrics like there was some great truth hidden in them. “I read a little about country music. It’s about as simple as the blues,” he commented. “I’d need to listen to some again to get a feel for it, but if it’s just a matter of three chords....”

“Three chords and the truth. That’s how someone described country music,” I said. “If you’ll work some chords around these words, I’ll sing it. That way we can have an encore, if we don’t get booed after the chicken song.”

Bob dug out his cassette recorder and held it out. “Sing it into this,” he ordered.

I looked down at the little machine. “I thought they confiscated that after the science fair,” I said.

Bob grinned. “Mr. Bosnick sneaked it back to me. He said not to let anyone know. He even gave me back the remote control that was with it.”

“Did you ever ask Tony for the one you put in his robot?” I snickered.

I clicked on the Record button, and sang the tune I had in my head for the Bosnick song. When I left, Bob was agonizingly trying to figure out what the chords would be.

At breakfast a week or two later, my mom said, “What’s up with Bob these days? You haven’t told us about any inventions in months.”

“Oh, he’s into music these days,” I said. “He’s teaching himself guitar.”

Mom laughed. “I heard him singing once when he was helping you with the yard. He doesn’t exactly have perfect pitch.”

“I know. He’s got an electronic pitch finder, though, so he can tune the guitar, and he follows his charts and it actually sounds okay. He doesn’t sing, he just plays.”

Mom looked pretty skeptical, but didn’t say much about it.

In music class that day, the teacher came up to Bob after he massacred an arpeggio. “Bob, I was thinking that if you’d rather do a paper instead of a performance for your term project, that would be fine. You definitely are mastering the technical part of this class, so I’m sure you could do something creative with a research project.”

Bob beamed at her. “No, Mrs. Schmidt, I’ll perform like the rest of the class. Mike and I have something that we’ve been working up.”

Mrs. Schmidt glanced at me, and I nodded, not very confidently. “Well, okay, if you insist,” she said. As she walked away, I heard her mutter to herself, “I hope I don’t regret this.”

Performances started a couple of weeks later. Bob still hadn’t finished the country song when the time came for Tony and Hiroshi and Eddy and Joe to sing a barbershop quartet. It was pretty lame, because Hiroshi sang too quietly and Eddy was loud and off-key, but everyone clapped, and Mrs. Schmidt smiled.

“Very good, guys. Now that you’ve settled your butterflies, let’s hear it again. Hiroshi, I’d like to hear you this time. Eddy, here’s your starting pitch.” She blew a note on a pitch pipe.

They grumbled, but sang it again, and it was much better the second time.

Then a girls’ choir sang an old ballad, and they were mostly so quiet we couldn’t hear them. Mrs. Schmidt had them sing it again, and they were mortified and sang even worse. Finally Mrs. Schmidt had them turn their backs to the class and sing it loud, and then it sounded great.

We all clapped, and then the school bell rang.

I was eager to get our performance over with, but Mrs. Schmidt had put us at the very end. “She’s saving us for last because she knows it will be something special,” Bob said.

“Speical like your blue guitar. She’s saving us for last because she’s hoping the world will end first,” I grumbled. I was getting more nervous every day.

Junia, Nora, Doug, and several other kids played a baroque piece on their orchestra instruments, which wasn’t really fair because they were all in youth symphony anyway, but Nora insisted loudly that they had learned this particular piece specifically for class. I don’t know if that’s true, because I saw it on a youth symphony program not long after, but in any case, they played it very well, and Mrs. Schmidt didn’t make them perform it twice in class.

However, on Monday morning in assembly hall, the ensemble was on stage, and they performed right after the announcements. It didn’t sound as impressive in the auditorium, with the bad acoustics, but it was all right.

We suffered through recorder trios, a wannabe rock band, several small vocal groups, and a jew’s harp (Bill almost flunked the class because of that), and finally everyone else had performed.

It was a Friday near the end of the semester. Bob used his bike trailer to bring the amp and guitar to school. We dragged the equipment into the music classroom, and I suffered through math, science, English, and history.

At lunch I could hardly eat. I made sure the harmonica was clean and ready to go. I feverishly rehearsed the lines to the chicken song and “Mr. Bosnick” in my head and in the bathroom. I wasn’t too worried about the chicken song, but Bob was still rusty on Bosnick and had a tendency to throw me off on the chorus by hitting the wrong chord.

Bob noticed me sweating, and said, “What’s the big deal? It’s just like any other class presentation we’ve done.” He looked in the bathroom mirror and put on a fedora and some blue sunglasses. “Our songs are applied research, that’s all.”

“So what are you wearing that hat and the sunglasses for?” I asked. “You didn’t wear them for any of our other class presentations, or to the science fair.”

He grinned. “Visual aids, like our ink-stained t-shirts. Hats and sunglasses are part of the culture of blues.” He struck a pose and admired himself.

We went into the classroom. Mrs. Schmidt taught about something, I don’t know what. Finally late in the hour, she said, “Well, now we’re going to have our final presentation. I believe it’s a song, and it appears to involve an electric guitar. Give it up for Bob and Mike.”

There was lackadaisical clapping, and some poorly disguised groans. I had made sure Bob had the guitar tuned before class, because otherwise he would have used up all our time on that. Bob sat down and fished the guitar out of its case. He plugged it in and carefully hung it around his neck. Then he put on the hat and sunglasses. I had my harmonica ready, and I was trembling.

Bob turned to the class. “This is a blues number we wrote together,” he said. He then scrutinized his guitar through his dark glasses, and put his fingers in place. He strummed, and I almost fell over.

It sounded terrible! I jostled him, and he glanced up. Then he went to his second chord, and that sounded even worse. Mrs. Schmidt sighed, and the class began to nudge each other and giggle. Junia hid her face in her arms, and Nora ostentatiously opened a book to read.

“Bob!” I hissed. “Those chords are all wrong!”

He glanced up at me again. “What do you mean?” he hissed back.

“They’re all wrong! You’re way off!” I said aloud. “Can’t you hear it?”

Bob looked closely at his fingers, moved a couple, and strummed a few more times. He glanced at me quizzically. I shook my head vigorously. “No!” I said.

He stopped strumming and looked at the guitar again. Then he flipped up his sunglasses up to his forehead. “By gum! You’re right!” he said. He put his fingers in place again, and strummed. I heaved a sigh of relief when the chord sounded normal.

Bob said, “Dern sunglasses made me get my dots mixed up. Sorry, folks,” and smiled at Mrs. Schmidt, who was looking at the clock and apparently praying under her breath for it to move faster.

Bob played slowly but accurately through his chord changes, and I began to sing. “Oh, the sun is setting, and so is my chicken. She got three eggs in the nest, and I got a lickin’. Oh, my baby she done left me, went back home to Mama. She say I am the filthiest man in Alabama.”

The class erupted in startled laughter, and Mrs. Schmidt’s eyes widened in amazement. I played a few harmonica licks, then went on. “When I go by to see you, you throw me out on my rear. Don’t know why you went and left me. I cleaned the bathroom just last year. Moved the pigs out of the kitchen and the chickens off the bed. Don’t know why you went and left me, why you whacked me upside the head.”

Bob played through the chords again, and I blew into the harmonica. Even Mrs. Schmidt was laughing now.

“Don’t look at me like that, like I pooped inside your hat. It was the dog that went and did that, or maybe it was the cat. I cain’t help it that the milk’s gone bad and the sugar’s full of bugs. But now my heart’s been glotched like a steam-rolled slug.”

Some of the kids were clapping along now. I went on. “You took the toilet paper and left me sitting there. You act like I’m responsible for the little bugs in your hair. Oh, the mice done ate the oatmeal and my heart is full of gloom. Got to go win back my baby if I can ever clean this room.”

I blew some melancholy notes on the harmonica, and Bob played the last few chords slower and slower and then reached the end. The classroom burst into applause, a standing ovation, and even Mrs. Schmidt was standing and clapping and laughing. The bell rang then, and we were surrounded by people laughing and slapping us on the back.

When things simmered down, Mrs. Schmidt says, “Well, boys, you certainly surprised me. That was a stellar performance.”

I grinned, and Bob said, “Thank you. But music is just like science, it’s just a matter of finding out the rules and patterns and working with them.” He reverently laid the genuine imitation Stratocaster into its case.

“I’d like you to play in assembly on Monday,” went on Mrs. Schmidt. “Without the dark glasses, please. Could you do that?”

Bob glanced at me. I swallowed. “In assembly? In front of everyone?” I asked uncomfortably.

“Sure,” she said. “We’ll get you a singer’s mike. The guitar amp is probably powerful enough by itself. Will you do it?”

I shook my head, but Bob said, “Certainly. But we’d like to be able to do an encore, if they ask for one.”

Mrs. Schmidt pondered a moment, and said, “Well, I guess so, if you get the kind of response you got today. You won’t have a whole lot of time.”

We went home, and I agonized all weekend. Bob was as cool as a cucumber. “It’s just like any other presentation,” he repeated. “Remember when we presented our science fair project in assembly? Or the time we were in the science bowl at the university? There were hundreds of people there, and you didn’t have any trouble.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “I also didn’t have to sing.”

I had three sleepless nights under my belt by Monday morning, and I was a mess when assembly began.

“Why are your eyes all red?” Bob asked. “You look like you’ve been crying or have a cold or something.”

“Humph,” I grunted. My throat was dry and a little raspy. I felt like I was coming down with something. I patted my pockets, and my heart began pounding. “My harmonica! Oh, no, I left it on my dresser! Oh, man!”

Bob looked startled for a second, then his face relaxed and he said, “It’ll be all right. A lot of blues have just guitar and voice, and the harmonica is just an extra. Here. You look like you could use these.” He flipped me the sunglasses, which had been in his guitar case.

I looked at the glasses, put them on, and drew a few deep breaths. There was a water fountain nearby. I took several sips, and my throat felt a little better.

Bob cheerfully got the guitar out and tuned it as the beginning announcements went on. The amp was already in place, along with a chair for him and a stool for me.

Finally we heard Mrs. Schmidt announcing us. “The people who are going to perform now are familiar to you all for their achievements in science, but they were a huge surprise and a big hit in music class this semester. Give it up for... Bob and Mike, the Blues Nerds!”

There was polite clapping when we came out, except for our music class which was standing and cheering. I was shocked, never having been cheered for anything, but Bob went to the amp and calmly plugged in his guitar. My knees were shaking as Mrs. Schmidt handed me the mike, and I almost dropped it. I slumped onto the stool. Bob glanced at me and grinned.

He squinted at  his guitar neck, and began hammering out his chords. As he came around to the beginning again, he looked at me and shook his head. “Hold on a minute,” he said. Then he bent over his guitar again, and began picking at the highest two strings very hard and deliberately, over and over. He shifted his fingers and continued strumming the two strings. What came out of the amp was very simple but sounded very bluesy, and not like anything I had heard Bob do before. He went through the chords again, then nodded at me.

“Oh, the sun is setting, and so is my chicken,” I began, and Bob plucked at the top strings for a couple of measures. I continued singing. My voice was raspy but steady, and the mike made it plenty loud. “She got three eggs in the nest, and I got a lickin’. Oh, my baby she done left me, went back home to Mama. She say I am the filthiest man in Alabama.”

Bob went into an ecstasy of high picking, while the auditorium erupted in laughter and applause.

We made it through the rest of the song, with a similar reaction to what we had gotten in class.  At the end, Bob played the high notes again, then ended with a big strummed chord.

Our classmates roused the rest of the auditorium to a standing ovation. Even the principal was on his feet. When things died down, Bob nodded to him. “This next one is for Mr. Bosnick,” he said.

He took off his fedora, reached behind the amp, and put on a cowboy hat. He began strumming, and I sang, “Tell Mr. Bosnick I ain’t ever been a cheat. Got some help on my homework from a friend named Pete. My gal Sheila was the one wrote my term paper on Crete. Won’t you please tell Mr. Bosnick I ain’t never been a cheat.”

The teachers laughed at that more than the students did. I sang the first verse. “Coach has got it in for me, says I am a wimp. I got hit by so many dodge balls that my body’s torn and limp. I got stuffed into my locker. Wrestling gave my nose a crimp. Trying to do all those chin-ups left me looking like a chimp. Oh, tell Mr. Bosnick I ain’t never been a cheat....”

There were a couple more verses, about being tone deaf in music class and about cafeteria food, and then we were done. We waved to the assembly and I tottered off the back of the stage.

“Well, that’s over with,” I sighed with relief.

Bob nodded. “You got over your jitters pretty good,” he commented.

I said, “Yeah! When you started doing that picking like that, it freaked me out, and then it was time to sing and I didn’t have time to think about being nervous. Where’d you learn to pick like that?”

He grinned. “There was a record of Mississippi delta blues, and they did a lot of that kind of picking. I analyzed it. It really wasn’t much but hitting the two highest strings over and over. I figured it out Saturday with my pitch finder, transposed it to our key, and put a few more dots on my guitar. I practiced all afternoon yesterday. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah. It more than made up for not having the harmonica,” I said.

As we dragged the equipment to the music room, Bob said, “They’re going to offer advanced music next semester as an honors elective. How about it?”

I snorted. “No way. I’m taking drawing and painting. Maybe it’s time for you to launch your solo career. Bob the Blues Nerd.”

“BB Nelson,” said Bob. “No, I’ll probably join you in art class. Let’s see if we can figure out the science behind the visual and plastic arts.” He whistled tunelessly as we walked down the hall, but it sounded very vaguely like “Tell Mr. Bosnick....”