Thursday, November 12, 2015

Donating, Benefitting and Polite society



SOMETIMES IN SMALL business, you can't win for losing.

Pepper Spray played in the Veterans Day parade last Saturday and had a blast. Check out the awesome video Adam Yates put together. We were part of the Six String Heroes parade entry.

There were some guys from our local Machinists Lodge 822 watching the parade. They liked what we were doing (goofing around and rocking out, I presume) and they came into Second String Music the other day and presented us with a $50 check for Six String Heroes.

We can't tell you how much it means for Six String Heroes, and the men and women it helps. The members of Pepper Spray gladly donated their time for the event, as did Frank Haxel, Tournear Roofing, Steve Stoner of Six String Heroes and many, many others.

Then, of course, somebody had to chime in with an insipid Facebook comment. Unfortunately, people that should be more sensitive are not always sensitive. There are some incredible ironies when you consider this person who made the remark.

As usual, no good deed goes unpunished.

The gist of the comment was, "Remember this the next time a veteran asks for a benefit donation." It has since been removed from the post, thank you. But, puh-lease. You are chiding us about donating to causes? Second String Music? Sheryl or me? You may not be paying attention to everything we do but at least give us credit for what you have benefited from personally.

Not a week goes by that we don't have somebody coming into the store asking for a donation - some weeks it is daily. We do the most we can. We are a family owned, small business and we simply don't have the resources to help everybody. So we pick our causes, benefits we have a link to, people we care about, like helping out the legendary Sonny Settles for his benefit this Sunday.

We've donated guitars, baskets, money and other items to many a benefit, and never asked for anything in return. I give free guitar lessons to veterans as part of the Six String Heroes program and it's not because I'm such a great guy. Far from it. It's just something we believe in and it's a very small way to show our appreciation.

So yes, I will remember. You are welcome to come into the store, shop a little, tell some friends about us, and ask us to donate to your cause. We will consider every request.

But not because someone bullied us into donating.


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