Tondeleo: I was going through some of my recordings of talks with Doc and ran across this short little story. It typifies Doc's sense of humor and initial aggressive attitude, which mellows if you don't overreact immediately.

A lot of what Doc says is purely for effect, or because he likes to hear it said, and nobody else is saying it. Here’s an example is:

Doc: "So the boss man is tryin' to get me an' the other boys what worked there to come in on Saturdays and Sundays cause he cain't figure out how to make enough money Monday through Friday.

And that's with him already over charging the customers, and payin' us as little as he can get by with, and even then not payin' us our full paychecks every week. And that was only payin’ us minimum wage. You can’t live on minimum wage even if you got maximum hours. When they keep you broke, Tondy, they got you over a barrel.

So he says to us on Friday afternoon, as we was pickin' up our pay, "Hey, y'all's comin' in to work tomorrow and Sunday. Everybody is. Be here at 8 o’clock."

The other guys just moaned under their breath, but I weren't comin' in. I had a lady's car to fix on Saturday, and needed to go to the laundromat on Saturday nite. Sunday morning I was helpin' my buddy pack his things up, over to the trailer park so he could move, Sunday afternoon, I was invited to a Gospel concert and picnic with free food. I like Gospel music, and I like free food. Them church women can COOK! ANd they usually give out doggie bags full of leftovers, what become my lunch the next week. I ain't had no time to come in on Saturday or Sunday, Tondy.

So I said to the Boss Man: "I ain't comin' in. I ain't got time to work here for you seven days a week."

Boss Man points to a poster on his office wall. One of them ones with a picture of a eagle on a mountain and then at the bottom has a fancy sayin'. He had a lot of them posters what is made so bosses can take a vantage of they's workers.

He says, "Look at that, Doc. It says, 'There is no "I" in team.' What do you think of that? It isn't about YOU it is about US. We're a team and there is no I in team. You HAVE to make time to come in and work with the team.”

Suddenly I heard myself sayin' "MAKE time? Make time? Well, in the word 'time' there's a I and a ME, so I guess I am gonna have to quit to go work for ME, if you start this workin' all the TIME stuff."

An' you know what? He let us all not HAVE to work on Saturday an' Sunday, if we already had plans. An' he asked us not to plan much for the next two weekends. We could handle that, since he was givin’ us notice.

But sometimes bosses know what they’re gonna do and they like to show their power by not letting the workers know til the last minute.  He were a pretty good ol' boy after all, if you pushed him. No doubt. But you had to push him. A lot of bossmen are like that.

An’ I admit, I WERE kinda scared for a minute he was gonna fire me for sayin' that!

When I heard that come out of my mouth, I was scared, cause after the work on that lady’s car, I didn’t have no other work at the garage at the moment. I didn’t have no gigs to play, it was too cold and rainy to go to DC and sit out on the sidewalk and play… and the rent was due the next week. The landlord likes it when I work!

But somebody needed to say it and I guess it fell to me. That happens a lot. There’s something what needs to be said, and nobody’ll say it, and then I hear it come outta my mouth.