Congratulations, Michael. Sounds like you've got a real keeper.

Stories like his always make me green with envy, but the one that damn near turned me green for life happened in 1970 when a friend and I were in grad school at McMaster U in Hamilton, Ont.

Dave Smith (really) was a fuzzy-cheeked, bespectacled little Englishman, but if you closed your eyes when he was playing, you'd swear he was black and straight out of the delta. Extraordinary guitarist, but he had a really nothing guitar. Always claimed a GOOD guitar wouldn't play blues right.

Dave took a trip down through the States during Xmas break and came back into Canada via Detroit-Windsor. But before he crossed the border he did a tour of all the old pawn shops, looking for his ultimate blues guitar.

After three or four shops, he told me later, he was about to give up. Just seeing junk or things that were way out of his poor-student price range. He was about to walk out of a shop when he noticed a dust-covered soft-shell case up on a shelf and asked what it was.

"You don't want that," he was told. "It's an old metal guitar."

Dave always swore he didn't pee himself. He played the dumb foreigner — "Gee, a metal guitar? I've never heard of that. Can I see it?"

The nut of the story is that he came back to Hamilton with an absolutely pristeen National Steel. I don't remember details of how old it was, but it turned out to be one of the originals.

Needless to say, I couldn't talk to the boy for weeks, but damn! it felt good to see somebody that happy.

Hope you're feeling about the same.

Cheers,

ddw