In 1961 or 1962, I purchased this guitar. A Fender Stratocaster. Actually I traded it with a Fender Esquire ( it looks like a Telecaster only with one pick up) probably manufactured around 1960. I paid $150.00 for the Esquire in Montreal. At that time I was 17, in 1961. Darn time flys by!

I moved back home to Moncton New Brunswick Canada at the age of 18 or 19 and really wanted a car really bad like so many teenagers do. I advertised in the local paper to trade the guitar and an old cheap huge amplifier for a car. I had a bite. A fellow named Curtis Rogers, and also a personal friend of a famous singer named Hank Snow traded me the guitar for a 1959 Pueguot station wagon. The station wagon went down the road a lttle sideways. You guessed it, the frame was bent from a previous accident.

A week later I approached Curtis and asked him if he would trade back. he said, "I am sorry, I was on vacation and the guitar was in my trailer and I had an accident. It was smashed."

Right on up to 1992, I was left with the feeling that this guitar was destroyed. It was the first and only big "bad deal" I ever made as a teenager to present day 1997. And as a teenager I learned my lesson very well.

In 1992 I was at a friends summer lodge and there was Curtis Rogers. Now in his late 70's. He said, "I knew a Jim Houssen once". I traded a guitar for a car with him. I said. "That's me!" I asked. "What ever happended to that guitar? (thinking he would say it was destroyed)" His answer. "I still got it!" (he was a collector)

I asked chillingly. "Would you sell it back to me?" He said "No!"

Well at the moment I felt sick to my stomach. Seriously. I even went to the bathroom thinking I may be sick.

Here, in front of me was the worst deal I ever made in my life. I tried submissively to revert it. He said bluntly, "No." I remember many nights as a teenager falling asleep with this guitar waking in the morning with it still in my arms as I fell asleep playing.

I did not give up. I pestered him in a nice way for 6 months. Eventually he said OK. "But I want $2,500.00 for it.., he said" I immediately gave him a deposit of $300.00 and went home with my paper receipt. I soon I returned, paid the balance and have been a very very happy camper playing this fine instrument, a 1960 Fender Stratocaster Guitar. I also fixed a youthful mistake after a period of 35 years.

Yet, there is more to the story!

Because of the return of this guitar, I have increased my playing abilty by 10 fold. I now play every week with a contemporary Christian band in a local large Wesleyan Church. A stone in a life left "not" unturned.

Want to see a 1997 set of pictures of this 1960 Fender Stratocaster?

Cheers, Jim Houssen