Everyone has that “what could have been” moment” in their lives; the date with the perfect gal or guy that somehow slipped away before you could get the phone number, the chance at the break that might have changed it all if you’d have heard opportunity knocking, the glimpse of the sunset that brought the great American song or the epic poem just soooo close to the surface.

For me, there were two.

One day, I stood outside the Cartoon Network studios holding in one hand a paper carton with the unduplicated master copies of every episode of Squidbillies ever made, and in the other, a five gallon can of kerosene. In my pocket was a blowtorch.

What could have been.

And the other? The Martin D45 that my college English major advisor had picked up at a Greenwich Village flea market in the late sixties for about $100.

Today, the brand-new ones run between $7,000 and $11,000. The classic ones, from the thirties through the sixties (Dr. Blake’s was from the late forties, if I recall correctly, and I may well not) go for waaaay more than that.

I used to noodle around on Dr. Blake’s D45 when I was over at his place for English department get-togethers.

Keep your heroin. Nothing can top the D. The tone was like something Peter Jackson would have used CGI to generate for some deity speaking to Gandalf – rich, nuanced, with harmonics that played about your perceptions like little pinpricks of joy – and an action so smooth it felt like I could sit back and let it play itself for a while.

As I go through this Hot Gear Friday series I’m rapidly figuring out how I could burn through a big Powerball purse.

(H/T to Anti Strib, who are finally featuring a genuinely hot chick)