Once upon a time when I lived hand-to-mouth in Barcelona, teaching English and guitar lessons for a living, practicing diligently and taking lessons myself, and performing with a trio/quartet called Icarus- a fellow American said to me, "Your life is so easy; you don't work."

I suppose I wasn't working when I taught guitar and English lessons in various sectors of Barcelona, or at Casa Sors, a specialty guitar shop on Calle de Maria Cubí near the Via Augusta metro stop. The proprietor of the shop, Fernando Alonso, had the habit of stepping out each evening for a carajillo - a small cup of strong espresso coffee laced with brandy, leaving the clerk Montserrat "Montse" and I alone in the store. That's when my then wife negotiated the five steps down from the street level with our infant daughter in a baby carriage. She was wearing the suit she had worn in our wedding and a necklace with a diamond set in a platinum star.

Not long after my family entered the shop, two haggard young men came in and pretended to look over the store's stock of guitars and studio pianos. In retrospect, the two men were gracious enough to allow my wife and child to leave without stealing her diamond necklace; that's one of the items they took from Montse almost as soon as my family had left.

Immediately the two thieves approached the point of sale, produced shiny revolvers, and demanded the cashbox. When I hesitated, scrutinizing the guns to decide whether they were plastic or blued steel, the one who looked like Tony Curtis said,

Qué te esperas? Quieres que te vuelo la cabeza?
What are you waiting for? Do you want me to blow your head off?

We gave him what he wanted, but were herded into a practice room out of sight of passers-by just outside the store's plate glass windows. There, "Tony" proceeded to relieve us of our personal effects while his partner riffled through drawers and cabinets in the store looking for more cash. Holding his gun on us all the while, Tony took Montse's diamond wedding ring, wristwatch, necklace, and earrings. She was a very stylish and sweet lady and it was excruciating painful for her to hand over these treasured items.

Then it was my turn. The thief asked for my wallet and I passed it on over. This presented a bit of a problem as, with a revolver in one hand, the thief had only one hand free to open my wallet and extract the 2000-peseta note I had been paid by a private student earlier in the day. Pressed into creativity, he held open the wallet loosely, even precariously with his left hand and removed the bill with his lips and teeth, angling his head and neck to best advantage like a wolf tearing into a carcass. He had blue eyes, a rarity in Spain; the pupils were unnaturally dilated.

Noticing that I had no other bills or credit cards, Tony passed the wallet back to me, removed the 2000-peseta note from his mouth and said,

Yo no haría si no tuve una mujer y niño.
I wouldn't do this if I didn't have a wife and child, to which I replied,
Pués lo tomas de mi esposa y niño.
So you take it from my wife and child.

Tony did not respond. There really wasn't much more to say except that we should remain in the practice room for 5 minutes before coming out or we would be shot. These guys had obviously done this before. We did as we were told.

Fernando returned from his coffee break a few minutes after the thieves had left, while Montse and I were still shaking from looking at the business end of the guns. He seemed to think it was a rather novel experience, saying, "Did they really have guns? Were they automatics or revolvers?" as if he were almost sorry that he hadn't been there to see for himself.

Ironically, Fernando got his chance to share a similar experience the very next day! In the grand surrealistic tradition for which Spain is so well known, two well-dressed thieves with automatic pistols walked into Casa Sors and robbed the store again. Only this time, as the cashbox had been emptied the day before, the thieves simply checked the price tags on the guitar cases that lined the walls of the shop, and each walked out with the two most expensive instruments they could find.

These guys were gentlemen thieves. Before binding and gagging Fernando and his brother in the same practice room where Montse and I had been robbed, the thieves asked them if there was anyone they might call to inform them of their plight. True to their word, the gentlemen called Fernando's estranged wife Alícia, who managed yet another specialty guitar shop called Casa Luthier, and Fernando and his brother were soon released.

The double robbery made the papers and, except for the principals involved, was soon forgotten in the social upheaval of post-Franco Spain. I returned to teach at Casa Sors the following week, but Montse never entered the door or the shop again.

While the experience of being robbed at gunpoint cost me a few nights' sleep and haunted me for years, I am none the worse for it. In fact, I even profited from it. In a random act of kindness, the private student who had paid me with the 2000-peseta bill removed from my wallet by Tony's teeth-graciously paid me again. Fernando gave me a very special deal on a nice student piano which I enjoyed in my home over the course of the next year or so, and sold back to Casa Sors when I ultimately returned to the USA.

Both Casa Luthier and Casa Sors are still open for business in Barcelona, although Casa Sors is in a different location on Calle de Maria Cubí. If you're in the market for either a student model or concert guitar, I highly recommend that you pay them a visit.

In retrospect, the ten years I spent in Barcelona "not working" was one of the most productive periods of my life. Just as Paris served as Hemingway's Moveable Feast, as I push the boundaries of middle age at the wrong border, Barcelona serves that function for me.