Balselhas, Cebu, and the Fender Stratocaster

by Tom Watson

People are usually surprised when they find out that the Strat Collector News Desk is published from a small farming village in northern Portugal. The village in which we live, Balselhas, is so remote that taxi company dispatchers from the closest big city, Porto, ask us for directions when my wife and I need a cab to get to the airport.

I haven't tasted sliced bread for a couple of years now. I don't miss it. Most days I walk to the village bread lady's one-room store and buy fresh, uncut bread. In September, I walk next door and pick grapes at my father-in-law's vineyard and six months later drink the fruits of the harvest.

As far as I know, there is no music store between here and Porto. There are also no strip malls, 7-11s and, until very recently, there was no McDonald's. A few months ago a McDonald's was built behind a gas station (you have to drive through the gas station to get to it) between here and Porto, where you can enjoy a McPork or a McNifico and then have an espresso or a beer with your cigarette.

I'm a transplant - a US citizen who prior to moving here spent twenty years in Orange County, California, birthplace of the Fender Stratocaster and still home to the Corona production and Custom Shop facilities. Living in Balselhas is a good thing. It keeps me from camping out in front of the Custom Shop with paper, pen and camera.

Every now and then my wife and I try to spend a day away from our preoccupations (she's a newspaper journalist) - no keyboards, cell phones, stories or Stratocasters. Yesterday was supposed to be one of those days.

We went to a nice café to relax and catch up on each other's hectic life. Have an espresso or two and a few cigarettes (sorry, California). A friend saw us and came over to our table with a newspaper and showed my wife an article she had worked on about the Stratocaster's 50th anniversary (she's not a fellow Stratoholic - it was mere coincidence that the editor gave her the assignment). Spent the next hour or so talking about Fender and Stratocasters.

Supposed to be our day away from mental addictions, but fate had intervened. No problem. The rest of the day was ahead of us.

We decide to go to an art museum (Museu Serralves) in Porto. Certain to be a Strat-free environment. Got lucky - two interesting exhibitions.

We go to the first - "Pintura". Included work by an artist named Helmut Dorner.

Good grief! This was done in the mid-eighties and bears a striking resemblance to the 1984 Fender Marble (Bowling Ball) Stratocaster. Coincidence or cross-pollination? Was there a story here?

[Left: 1984 Marble Strat (not on display at the Museu Serralves); right: lacquer on plexiglass by Helmut Dorner on display at the Museu Serralves. Image courtesy of Museu Serralves.]

STOP. A day off. Strat-less. Fender-less. Stress-less. Focus, Tom.

We move on to the second exhibit, "Living in Motion - Design e Aquitectura para uma vida flexível ", a large display of "practical" everyday items isolated from their environment and exhibited to highlight their aesthetic value apart from utility.

Fair enough.

This exhibit takes up several rooms. We work our way through it until we come to a small, dark alcove in a remote part of the gallery. I stop in my tracks.

What you see below was in my face and you know what grabbed my eyes: FENDER.

[Architectural model by Jones & Partners on display at the Museu Serralves. Image courtesy of Museu Serralves.]

All of which reminded me of something that happened in the late eighties.

Cebu is a small, remote island in the southern Philippines. I went there in 1987 to scuba dive and get away from "civilization". Made friends with a couple of the local divers, and one of them invited me to his house for dinner and a little drinking. Was great. Can't recall the name of the main dish, but it was basically raw fish (that we had just caught on a night dive) in some sort of oil and vinegar sauce. The homemade liquor (tuba) helped because I normally don't eat bait.

After dinner and more than a little drinking, my new friend decided it was time to party, and went outside to call a few neighbors over to liven things up. In they came, bringing more booze (large jugs of tuba) and fresh fruit. A good time. I don't speak Tagalog (I'm assuming that was the language in use) and they didn't speak much English, but nothing aids communication better than homemade alcohol.

A short while later, more neighbors arrived to join the fun. One of them brought his music gear - a mid-seventies Strat and some no-name single-speaker amp. After a few three-chord local tunes, it was my turn. Spent the rest of the night playing "La Bamba", "Satisfaction" and "Pretty Woman" riffs for an adoring crowd of drunken fishermen. I fantasize that to this day they talk about "The Night of the American Guitar God".

While my wife and I live in a remote farming village, we have a wonderful house with a high-speed Internet connection, and Portugal is as modern as any other western European country. However, this Cebu party was in what most of us would call a "hut" where the only modern amenity was off-again/on-again electricity powered by the hut owner's gas-driven generator.

At the time, and you can guess why, it seemed perfectly natural that this island villager was a Strat slinger, but yesterday, sober and unable to escape Fenderdom, it really struck me how pervasive Fender and its offspring are.

There's no escape from what you love.

Published March 9, 2004 06:55 PM.