Tondeleo: I was able to call on Doc Stevens and Marilyn briefly on my way to Dulles International Airport (in VA, about an hour and 45 minutes from Doc and Marilyn's place in Nanjemoy, MD) on Saturday the 27th. I rang them up to let them know I was coming, because Doc is suspicious of anyone coming down the twisted dirt drive that 
leads to his house, and after dark he comes out with a fully loaded 12 gauge shotgun if he is not expecting visitors. "Aint nobody come down this road by accident, Tondy. If I aint invited them or Marilyn aint, then they got no business down here and need to be run off." That seems to be an attitude that is common among rural Americans.
I pull down their long winding dirt driveway, wondering how they ever found this place to live in. I am a regular visitor and still drive right past it sometimes, and each time I come down the driveway at night it seems longer than it did the time before.
I pull up near the front of the house and honk my horn a couple of times and cut the engine off. Doc's dogs, Dale Junior and Stubby are barking and growling and charging at the fence, hoping that they can devour me for their evening meal. Marilyn comes running out to greet me shouting over her shoulder, "Doc! It's TONNN - DEEE-EEE - and he's in a RED rent-a-car! A RED one, Doc! Ha ha! They gave him a RED one! " and she opens the front passenger door and begins mucking about with the tuners on the radio of my rented Ford 500.
The Ford 500 sounded (by it's name) as if it would be an exciting Yank car to drive, when I contracted for it. It isn't fun at all. It is designed more for the infirm, the elderly and the cluelessly boring. It is a poor handling, underpowered and unimaginative and unflavoured piece of rubbish that Ford US has been attempting to sell to Americans unsuccessfully, so they have unloaded bulk of them to the rental companies and fleet buyers.
Anyway, Marilyn is trying out the stereo and going from station to station, and adjusting the balance, tone and fade. I hear the screen door open and close, but Doc is nowhere to be found. Then I look into the rearview mirror and see him coming from behind my car, fumbling with his trousers a bit.
"Doc you weren't whizzing on my rent-a-car, were you?" I ask incredulously, fearing the answer.
"Naw, Tondy, I was lookin' at the sight of you in a red car instead of the sissy green ones you always get... Yeah, I DID give it a little "country boy car wash" back there ... just the bumper. How was your Christmas? Didja get anything from your family over there in England? Did they send you some crumpets?"
Doc knows a few English terms that he's picked up somewhere, and uses them as often as he can, usually in an effort to take the mickey out of me. I tell him Christmas was ok, but that I am waiting to return to UK to celebrate with my mates. Doc and Marilyn invite me in, and offer me some leftover turkey, ham, turkey "stuffing" and some American food I am not familiar with.
"Tonnnn- dyyyy! You oughta see the HARPS I got for Christmas! Good ones, this time instead of Doc's old ones from when he played harp! He got me some real PROFESSIONAL ones! Lee Oskars! Eight of them! Now I can play like I want to instead of suffocatin' on Doc's old wore out harps...!"
Marilyn is so happy she is squealing in a singsong fashion that I have only heard in females of the Appalachians and some parts of North Carolina. This makes sense of course, because Doc and Marilyn's family come from the Appalachians and they have lived in various places in North Carolina and still have relatives there.
Doc says that he called his old friend and bandmate from the 1970's, a Dog-mess Jonny (whom I have just looked Googled and discovered is a real person! He was a harp player for Vigilantes of Love, and now resides in Athens, GA, and teaches at University of Georgia!), and that Dog Mess told him to get Marilyn the Lee Oskars. So he did.
"I painted a boy's 29 Chevy rat rod and used some of the money for them harps. Got 'em off the innerweb. This gal down the road showed me how to do it and paid for it on the innerweb too, and I gave her the money to take care of it. Them's the ones what Dog-Mess Jonny said to get Marilyn and I done it. He's a pro on that harp."
I ask about the name "Dog-Mess" and Doc says that back in the 70's he and Jonny played in a band called the Colored Man Blues Band and he gave that nickname to Jonny and... "he still uses that name to this day. But he aint playin' blues all the time no more. He went to college and then to that next kind of school and is a professor at a COLLEGE down Athens, Georgia! He's a teacher down there, and he is Jonathan Evans to them! That is all they know him by, Tondy! He got 'em fooled and they don't even know he plays the blues. They think he's just a geek. But me an' Marilyn know better. She played for him over the cell phone and he said she is real good. He's right. He's a pro, and Marilyn is real good. But them college boys thinks he's a professor, and we know he's a bluesman! "
I ask Doc what's so funny about that, and he says it "just is." I remind him that people don't know all the things that HE does and he tells me that it is different for him 'cause he has a lot of things he had to learn to put food on the table, and "it don't mean nothin'."
Doc goes back into his bedroom and comes back out, displaying a garish black and white polka dotted guitar strap at me. I have seen pictures of a blues singer with a white guitar with black polka dots on it, on a CD cover at Doc and Marilyn's, so I suss that this strap MAY have some connection to that CD cover, by the way Doc is handling it so gingerly.
"Lookit that! Lookit that, Tondy! Now THERE'S a Christmas present! You know what that is? That's a BUDDY GUY GUITAR STRAP and it's signed by BUDDY GUY! Bu
ddy Guy SIGNED it, Tondy! Look! It says, BUDDY GUY '08. 08 is when he signed it. That means he signed it this year! This woman what I know went to see Buddy and me an her is kinda close, so she bought it for me LAST SUMMER and kept it a secret since July - an gave it to me for Christmas! A BUDDY GUY guitar strap with his name on it what he wrote himself! With a SHARPIE!"
I ask Doc if he's going to use it, and he said that he HAD planned on using it, but then his friend Bruce "what's got the innerweb, only it's doll up only" looked it up on Ebay and found one just like it selling for $300. So now Doc says it is a family heirloom and is going to be put in his strongbox just to be shown to people who are blues fans and no one else will be allowed to handle it.
"Tondy, something like this, people'll steal. You leave it sittin' out even in your own house, your friends'll steal it. I got customers what would steal this and then look me dead in the eye and swear to God they never even seen it. No, you don't take something like this out in public, Tondy. It's too dangerous and it might get tooken."
Doc carefully folded the Buddy Guy autographed guitar strap and put it in an old billiards cue case. Then he carried it back to the recesses of their house, to hide it somewhere, or to unpack it and lock it in his strongbox to protect it from would be burglars. I am not at all certain that he would totally trust ME with the actual location of this new Stevens treasure.
"Yep, Tondy, I don't know what they got for you when you get back to England, but you tell 'em me and Marilyn sends them American Christmas greetings, and a happy new year and that Marilyn got the harps she been prayin' for and hintin' at, and that I got a Buddy Guy guitar strap what he signed hisself and I did not pray for it or hint at it, but the Good Lord and that woman knew I'd like it and they was both right."
I assured Doc and Marilyn that I would convey their message and that I was getting quite peckish and could we eat. Marilyn let me know that the microwave would ding soon and that my first plate of food would be ready. I DO miss home, but they do their best to treat me like family. Happy New Year.
