I managed to pick up an interesting keyboard a while back. It's an Ace Tone Top 5 combo organ with one four-octave manual, it's garish red and white with screw-on stainless steel legs, it only makes five sounds and generally speaking is the kind of instrument that I can't stand. I paid way more than it's worth, but I would have gladly paid even more than I did to own it.
It's where I began turning into me. It's the very first instrument I ever played on stage in a rock band, back in the winter of 1969. Not one like it, but the exact same one. It was owned by the guy who played bass and ran the band, and I borrowed it on and off for four or five years in the 70's until I finally started getting some real keyboards of my own.
Even with the collection I have amassed in the meantime, I have wondered about this humble little instrument all these decades and a few months ago I decided to see if I could track it down. I succeeded and it's home with me now for good. Amazingly, it seems to have been in a time capsule and it looks like nobody has even played it since the last time I did, it just sat in closets all these years. The little black scuff mark that I accidentally made on the cover looks like it just happened yesterday.
And now it's mine. Forever. I almost cried when I opened the box and saw it for the first time in thirty years. I still can't look at it without getting a lump in my throat, and I've had it here for a couple of weeks now.
I feel like I just married my high school sweetheart. And she is exactly the same as she was the last time I saw her.