sunday 12:59 p.m.

THE 12-STRING GUITAR was just $15 at the Maxwell Street market, but to Juan Salazar, 63, it represents far greater value. "My life and my love was my music," he says of his youth in Mexico. He has lived in the U.S. for 45 years, but before then, in Durango, he would play the accordion in bars for a peso a song. Salazar lives in Pilsen, has a wife and five children and works in a factory that makes cleaning supplies. He found the musician's life at odds with having a family. "In music," he says, "there are no pension plans." He's sanding the guitar, which he says is made of fine wood, or, as they say in Mexico, pico de pajaro (beak of a bird). When he retires to Mexico in a few years, the guitar will be "as good as new," and will go with him.