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2001 GMC Sierra 2500 |S:03E.61
2001 GMC Sierra 2500 |S:03E.61
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About this episode
Jerry Wayne Longmire reflects on the 2001 GMC Sierra 2500, intertwining personal anecdotes about his late father-in-law, Ken. The episode delves into the complexities of their relationship, highlighting Ken's influence on Jerry's life and career. Listeners will hear heartfelt stories about Ken's love for music, his cowboy spirit, and the lessons he imparted. The episode balances technical insights about the GMC Sierra with emotional storytelling, making it a unique exploration of family, legacy, and the bonds that shape us.
Topics:
2001 gmc sierra 2500
personal anecdotes
family relationships
music influence
cowboy culture
life lessons
emotional storytelling
legacy
JW starts season 3 with a bang. Enjoy a deep dive into his father-in-law. A real-life Rodeo Cowboy. He worked on the Goodyear blimp as flight crew and ran around Houston with a classmate Billy Gibbons.
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Dodge Ram
"...neties, GM was sweating. Dodger just dropped that ram with the Peterbilt Cosplay front end. Ford was se..."
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Chevrolet Avalanche
"...amn near Cadillac leather. And then there was the avalanche. God help us. Jim said, what if we made a truck w..."
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Chevrolet Silverado
"...ke them too. But the platform carried everything. Silverado, Sierra, Tahoe, suburban, Yukon Cadillac Escalade..."
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"...ilverado, Sierra, Tahoe, suburban, Yukon Cadillac Escalade. The Escalade especially, it went from grandpa's ..."
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".... And the truth is, this thing is still on a GM's crown jewels. It's a balance right perfectly between wo..."
Select text to request an explanation
Welcome to the Reckon Yard, I'm Jerry Wayne Longmire and y'all presumably still y'all
are welcome here in the Church of Internal Combustion. We just asked that you show up with an open
heart. Sighting, here we are in season three. All right, who saw that coming? I wasn't sure
how many of these I was gonna do. And then, you know, year and a half later, we're trucking
on into season three. It's been a bit of busy week. I'm recording this on Wednesday
because I gotta go out of town at the end of the week. I'm going to Chicago Saturday and Friday.
I got my kids got a music performance. So I got stuff going on all day Friday and
tomorrow I'll mostly run around promoting the Chicago show, which I'm happy to say. I think
it's going to be great. We've got a good number of tickets sold already and the number keeps climbing.
So I'm real excited about that. But I also got to spend some time tomorrow. I condensed the first.
I'm doing a weird thing for the Chicago show because I didn't get to tour up there
when I was getting ready to film the Reckon Yard, my first special. So I thought, man,
here's what I'll do is I'm going to do instead of hiring an opener, I'm going to be my own opener.
I'm going to go out and I'm going to do a 30 minute condensed version of the Reckon Yard,
just the high points. And then I'm going to close it up by doing
my new hour. It's called the tipping point. And we're going to be filming that
in the spring. So I'm really excited about it.
You notice there's some changes here in the Reckon Yard. Those of you that are watching and not
just listening. But we did a little redecorate. Got my Castro sign in there and perform us a
little sticker wall. So the stickers you got to send me over here on my door.
Of course, St. Dell's back up there to watch over us, make sure we act right.
They'll, they'll senior and Leighi Koker to the patron saints of the Reckon Yard, Harley Earl,
also also also in the saint hood here for us. Man, I'm excited. I took a week off and
took care of some things. Fixed my lawnmower, tore the engine down, ready to put a cam in it.
I thought it needed a cam, tore engine down. Wasn't cam is just real bad vapor lock,
but it turns out carb was just dumping fuel and plug was so carbon fouled. It wasn't even funny,
was I got the carb straightened out, got tightened a little, little tight, tight on the
valve last, you know, just didn't even much. It was pretty close to 3000s already. I just
little, little quarter turn on each set of valves or you're in taking exhaust valve.
Well, John Deere running like a champ again. No breaking strut. It's gonna be all right, I guess.
At least till we completely crater the bottom end on that engine, which I hear they're notorious
for. Boy, I thought it's not a very good coaster. It's just soaking up moisture. I got
my little whiskey here. Having me a little whiskey this evening.
This is a, man, we were dealing with some people. Somebody tried to, hey, I could be wrong,
but I felt like they pulled an old trick. This is like a old, old, old entertainment
deal. People go out and contact the entertainer and talk to you about booking you and start
working on a prize, talking about that kind of stuff. And then they'll go quiet and they'll
ghost you. They'll go quiet on you. But they'll watch your calendar and make sure you don't
book nothing else. And then a couple of weeks or a week before that thing they want you to do,
they'll come back with some low ball offer. And I just had somebody do that to me and
I saw it coming a mile away and I just, I told management. I was like, I,
you know, tell them to get wrecked, which she will not. She will find a very polite way to say
we're not interested. But boy, I saw it. It's funny because I predicted it. When we first started
talking about this event and doing this stuff, I told, told me, I go, I go, no, man, I've seen,
I know this. I've seen this. They're like, oh, we hadn't heard back from them. You're not
going to, you know, I've been through this before. It's usually old rednecks and the
shit that tried to pull that crap on me. So anyways, that was a little,
was all good though. Luckily I had an existing offer already for something else at that time
period and it ain't gonna be no skin off my back. It would have been a nice lick to hit
if we'd hit it, but I just had a feeling. I had a feeling going there. Sometimes I just
got to go with my gut and it's a big gut and it's got a lot of opinions, but boy,
it just hardly ever steers in your own. Let's do a quick little sponsor copy
and we're going to do something a little different at the beginning of this podcast.
Not again. We'll talk about the truck. The truck I selected today is a
2003 quarter ton GMT 800, GMC. There's one of my father-in-law on the entire time I met him
and I only knew him about a decade, but in that decade, he shaped a good deal of who I am,
but I only knew him really about 10 years and this was a difficult one to go through,
because it wasn't all good. Sometimes father-in-laws and son-laws, boy, it is.
Sometimes they go together like peanut butter and asphalt. They just don't mix
and we were two very different people, but I'm excited to talk about him
for all our differences. He was very, very special to me and
looking forward to getting into that. Anyway, let's do some sponsor copy here.
This season of the Rick and Yard is proudly brought to you by absolutely nobody. That's
right, church. We're sponsor free, which means right now this whole production is powered entirely
by black coffee, stubbornness, and a portable AC unit. But listen, if you got a brand or business or
just a rich uncle with a guilty conscience, we got room at the table for you. Slide on in,
sponsor the yard, and let's tell the world you got better taste than your competitors.
Except that for keeping it short and sweet in season three, baby.
Well, no, I was only going for a week, but it feels like it's been a month since I talked to y'all,
so I'm excited to be doing this again already. Today we're going to talk
and we're going to do something else a little different, because I'm not going to spend as much
time on the technical stuff. You all got Google, you want to learn about something. And to be honest,
there are far better, far more knowledgeable men than me and people than me doing car
spec stuff on the internet. And you should probably go listen to one of them for that kind
of stuff. I'm very opinionated about vehicles and I let my emotions get in the way.
Birth of a platform. By the late nineties, GM was sweating.
Dodger just dropped that ram with the Peterbilt Cosplay front end.
Ford was selling F-series trucks like funnel cakes at the county fair.
And meanwhile, GM was still riding the old GMT 400. Good truck,
but it was looking like your uncle's wardrobe. Reliable, yes. Stylish enough.
So in 99, they pulled the tarp off the GMT 800. Brand new bones, brand new guts, brand new face.
This wasn't a facelift. It was GM throwing a whole new paradise and praying they didn't roll snake eyes.
Frame was fully boxed, stiffer, stronger, less flex than the old one. The kind of backbone
you want when you're dragging a cattle trailer or hitting potholes big enough to qualify a swimming hole.
Up front, they went with the independent torsion bars. I mean, you could drive it to work without
rattling the fillings out of your molds. Now back, they kept solid axle leaf springs because
let's be honest, leaf springs are like duct tape ugly, but they'll hold the whole damn world
together. And under the hood, that's where the legend got born. The LS based vortex come out of
nowhere. 4.8, the 5.3, the 6.0. And all that big gas, 8.1. If you're the kind of dude that was like
gas mileage, never heard of it. Those motors earned reputations. The 5.3, especially y'all
have heard me gush poetic about a 5.3. It'll run forever if you give it oil changes and
the occasional pep talk and everyone's while water pump.
Jim rounded the corners off, especially compared to the old square rigs. Some folks loved it. Some
said it looked too soft, but it was a truck. It was a truck you could drive to work
and park at church without anybody asking if you were moonlighting as a ranching.
The interiors got civilized. Cup holders that held actual cups, not just a loose Dr.
Peppercane. Dashboards you could read without a miner's helmet.
And if you sprung for leather, it wasn't vinyl and drag anymore. It was damn near Cadillac leather.
And then there was the avalanche. God help us.
Jim said, what if we made a truck with commitment issues? It had that midgate you could fold down
to turn it into a pickup. Great in theory, but it looked a little like a Tonka toy,
got left too close to a campfire. Still, it carved out its own little cult following. Probably
same people who like sports. I say that. I kind of like them too.
But the platform carried everything. Silverado, Sierra, Tahoe, suburban,
Yukon Cadillac Escalade. The Escalade especially, it went from grandpa's car to every rapper's
driveway. And we've talked about that. If you saw spinners and a TV in the headrest in 2002,
odds are you were looking at a GMT 800 Cadillac Escalade. And then in 2001, the heavy duty
trucks arrived with Duramax diesel paired to the Allison transmission. That was like peanut
butter meat and jelly. A peanut butter Catoa house. The jelly was rated for 500,000 miles.
LB7 can still kiss every bit of my ass.
The GMT 800 ran until 2006 and a half tons, a little longer in SUVs. And the truth is,
this thing is still on a GM's crown jewels. It's a balance right perfectly between work truck,
grit and daily driver comfort. You still see them everywhere. Sun-fated paint, headliner sagging,
but the old 5.3 humming along like it's got something to prove. They outlast the warranty,
the banknote, and sometimes the man that bought it. That's how you know GM nailed it.
And that's all we're going to talk about as far as the technical side of this truck. That's
enough. I'm a huge proponent of it. My father-in-law has had the six-liter,
which I'm not a big fan of. Boy, he sure had some issues with it and the transmission a couple
times, but he was so... When I got my Z71, he was so tickled to death that he was like,
Felly, you don't realize... He called me Felly, always. Felly, you don't realize
General Motors spent 10 years designing this truck. They spent a decade
putting this truck together. They went around and talked to mechanics and they talked to body
men. They talked to people that were in the truck market to see what people were asking for.
They looked at what Ford and Dodge were selling.
It was a well-designed, my little GMT-801, if not... It absolutely is the best little
pickup I ever owned in my life. I still kick myself for selling it. It was a fine little machine.
My second, my three-quarter-ton Duramax diesel, I hope that that truck is at the bottom of a lake
filled with every rock, sisyphus rolled up that freaking hill. Piss on that truck and that LB7.
With that little 5.3 Z71 half-ton, I worked hell out of that truck.
My father-in-law, Ken, he had this truck when I met him. His was clean. It was perfect.
He was a music guy. He had gone throughout this truck and put deadening,
what are the insulation stuff is, and the doors under the floor mat, under the carpet,
above the headliner. He had a nice speaker set up. He had gone some aftermarket speakers.
That truck dumped. He liked his music clear and he liked it loud.
He was an interesting guy. Before I spend a whole lot of time talking about him,
we're going to do something a little different today. My wife recorded something for y'all
because I really wanted her to talk about him a little bit and she said, well,
she goes, I'll write something and I'll record it and we're going to listen to that right now.
So this is my lovely wife, Rachel Carr, telling you a little something about her dad.
Because I felt like her words needed to be included. Hey y'all, I don't usually step into the spotlight
on Jerry's platforms and truthfully, I prefer it that way. He tells the stories I helped
behind the scenes, but today's podcast episode is different. It's about someone who shaped both of us
in ways that are hard to explain but impossible to ignore. It's about my dad. He wasn't just my
father. He was my foundation. He's the voice in my head that still tells me I can do anything
even when I'm at my lowest. I was his firstborn, his daughter, and he never once let me forget
how much he adored me. I don't use the word princess and neither did he because it was not about being
spoiled. I was sacred to him. He poured love into me like it was his life's mission.
And I believed him. When he told me I was smart, when he said I could do anything,
when he signed off every message with dad loves the baby, she's the best one. I believed
him because he meant it. And I knew he meant it because he always showed up for me. It didn't
matter where I was living at the time, he would just be there. He showed up in Lubbock when I got
mono in college and could barely move. He showed up in Houston when I had to be hospitalized for
a kidney infection. He slept on a chair beside me for three nights. He never missed even one
award ceremony, recital, sports match, or special event. More than that, he never
missed an opportunity to tell me how proud he was of me. We had a connection that ran deep,
music, art, creativity. He made mixtapes, burn CDs, and playlists that felt like little emotional
blueprints. Songs were how he said what words couldn't always convey for him. And he knew more
about music than anyone I've ever met. I want you to know I could spend hours telling you
about how cool he was because he was so cool. He was a real-life rodeo cowboy. Went to high school
with Billy Gibbons. Partied in river oaks with the bushes. Yes, those bushes. Was on the flight
crew for the Goodyear Blimp in Houston. Did beautiful leatherwork. Was a legitimate dog
whisper. And he even smoked a little grass with Jerry and I on the back porch from time to time.
But those are not the things he wanted to be remembered for.
He wanted to be remembered as a man who loved his family more than anything. And he did.
He was silly and fun. He sang with his whole heart.
Danced and played and laughed. Oh, how we laughed.
It's really because of him that I love comedy. We watch more comedy specials before I hit the
age of 17 than most adults do in their entire life. We love to joke and rib each other.
And unlike my mother, he beamed with pride and admiration as my sarcasm skills blossomed into
something downright operatic in my teen years. So when I took the job as operations manager at
Houston's Laugh Stop, it felt like a dream. And he was the first person I called.
He came to many shows during my tenure there. And of course that's where he first met Jerry.
Before Jerry and I were really even friends yet. And this is where Jerry's part of the
story begins. It's funny how things work out, right? Every child deserves a parent like the one I had.
And every day I try to parent our kids the way he parented me. With presence, with joy,
with marvel at their individuality, and with total belief in who they are.
And of course, with the unwavering, unconditional love and support they deserve.
The truth is, I'll miss him for the rest of my life.
But I'll always carry the love he gave me. It's still here. It's still guiding me.
Thanks for letting us tell you about him.
That was a lovely rate.
Can't tell. She liked dad a little bit.
He really was. He was on the flight crew for the America's Good Year Blink.
He had a set of these glasses. Mine's a little worn out and sweaty, but
this is a glass that I always drink my whiskey out of.
One of his good year. He was on the good year of America's and
absolutely loved that job. He had so many stories about it.
Everybody wanted to ride in a blimp, so when they went to places,
you know, always local celebrities was trying to figure out how to score themselves a ride on the blimp.
These are those in Memphis and old Jerry Lee Lewis saw them in their flight suits,
had to come to, how do I get on that blimp? They told him who he needed to talk to.
Of course, Jerry Lee marched over there and had himself a conversation.
Before they knew it, they was on the blimp, soaring above Memphis, Jerry Lee looking down
on his little defunct kingdom. Ellie could probably see all the way to disgrace land from there.
He had a pistol in his pocket the whole time. Nobody knew until they got up there,
old man had a pistol in his pocket, whooped it out and show everybody.
I said he was kind of a hoot. I first met again.
When Rachel was hired only at the club, I was on, I mean, I was just on all the shows back then.
I was basically, I was the club emcee. I was featuring for people. I was there every week and
Pop, as I come to college,
Pop dug my sense of humor. He always liked it when I was on the show.
Got a little moth here, so he always liked it when I was on the show.
He would hang out. I hung out many times after shows, talking to him and
occasionally Rachel's brother would be there.
I always enjoyed his presence. He always had good questions. He was always
interested and he was funny. He was funny. Sorry, my heart is killing me.
He was funny. He had plenty of jokes. He'd get a laugh.
He's had a great sense of humor. He was always looking cut up about something.
In the early days when I met him, I just knew him as Rachel's dad.
Rachel had a boyfriend at the time and so I wasn't trying to, you know, stop my type of shit.
To me and her, we're just kind of becoming friends. We just knew each other through work.
He was always good to me. He was always good. I always made sure to come up after a show,
talk to me. Every time he was there, we'd sit there and have a beer together.
Tell stories about old Houston. Both of us had a little bit of
a little bit of old Houston knowledge, much older than me.
There wasn't long after that.
What was? I knew him probably a year or so before me and Rachel dated. Me and Rachel
had known each other a couple of years, the time we started dating.
The time I made my move finally got off my ass and went after her the right way.
But very early on in being her dating, he still didn't know. He didn't know we was dating.
And I had basically been living at her apartment. I've been staying at her
apartment for a month. I hadn't left. We were having fun.
He came into town. We was all going to go to the rodeo.
The cook-off, big cook-off, Houston livestock show in rodeo. It's a huge event.
All these big cook-off teams come out, throw a big ol' soiree. You know what I mean?
It's a big deal. He had tickets to cook out. He was going to take Rachel and all her friends.
He showed up at her apartment that night. I'll never forget.
We were getting ready to leave and we were all just goofing off and that kind of stuff.
And I went to walk out of the door with Rachel's friend, Andrea.
And Rachel goes... I think she called me babe. She said,
babe, did you take your key? And he looked at me. I'll never forget the look I got from that man.
Whoa, fella. What the hell's going on here? You know what I mean? He's an old cowboy, for real.
Oh, fella. What's going on here?
And her stupid-ass friend, Andrea, just burnt out. He doesn't know y'all are dating?
Like, well, shit he does now.
And then I got drunk at the damn cook-off and told him all about my love for his daughter.
And then y'all have heard that story. We went to Sherlock's and Rachel and Andrea got a little drunk
and tried to recreate the scene from the Alamo where they lost.
And he kept it together all night. He was cool. Cool heads prevailed.
But he started watching me a little closer after that, like then he knew, you know.
He said, he smoked a little weed back then. That was his thing. He like smoked a little weed.
He's one of them. He grew up, so he grew up over here and not in this house.
This was his grandmother's house, but he grew up kind of like West University,
you know, pretty close to downtown Houston. He used to hang out at Oak Forest.
And he ran around. He went to Lamar, which is one of the big high schools downtown.
He did go to, he went to school with Billy Gibbons,
told me all kinds of stories about hanging out with Billy Gibbons, you know.
Billy Gibbons had like a, I think it was a 56 Ford truck back then that he was always
working on and building. He's always been a hot rod guy and they would hang out at one
of their friend's house in River Oaks and work on Billy's truck and Billy would get his guitars out.
In fact, he told me, so Billy's first band was called Move and Sidewalks,
before he formed ZZ Top. And Move and Sidewalk played
Pops High School Prom. They were the band at the High School Proms,
Billy Gibbons and Move and Sidewalks, which that's cool as shit, you know.
He loved Billy Gibbons.
But he did. He grew up right here in Houston. He got into rodeo. He was a steer wrestler.
He was a hell of a good steer wrestler. Took a bad tumble, broke his back in a bunch of places.
Damned him there, ruined him. He had to go through all kinds of crap to get his back
back. And it plagued him the rest of his life. He was on Celebrex for
God knows how many years, you know. And that's one of those ones now they tell
you to stay away from because it causes heart problems and all kinds of other stuff.
But his only thing gave him any belief.
But he accepted me early on, being Rachel Dayton. He would, you know,
he pulled me in tight, tell me something every once in a while.
He accepted me and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I didn't have a lot.
All I had going for me was comedy at the time. And it was all up in there.
But he just, he just accepted me. He accepted me when him, when his daughter and I decided
to go rent a house together, move in together, an old forced, his old stomping ground.
He come over right when we moved in that house. He come over and helped us fix that house.
It was a house of such peace. It was all we could afford. And he come over and worked on that house
for a week. Being Rachel went to Aruba, we went on vacation. And he spent the whole week at that
house working on stuff around that house trying to help us out. He's a good dude. So when I
met him, he was in college. It's kind of weird. You don't meet to me, you know,
50-something-year-old dudes in college, but he was going to college at Lone Star.
Lived up there and not Lone Star. Sam Houston State lived up there in Huntsville.
Had a little trailer house off campus. He was renting a nice little place.
And what had happened is his father Raymond died of dementia. I talked to y'all a little
bit about that, but his father died of dementia. They found out the nursing home was mistreatment.
Ken and his brother and his mother sued that nursing home and won.
And they got him about, I think Ken got him about $250,000 out of that.
He was going to college coincidentally at the same time Rachel's younger brother was also
going to college at Sam Houston. And that's when that kid started really getting in
trouble and things started going downhill for him. And we'll get to that in a little bit.
When Ken's spending there every dime he had trying to keep that kid
in school and all his bills paid, then try to get him through college and keep him all right.
He did. He could have been, I mean, $250,000 ain't a shit ton of money, but you could set yourself
up pretty well for it. But he worked so hard trying to protect that kid and keep that kid
on the right path. And that kid went down a dark path. We still don't have a lot to do
within your day because the way he behaves and the way he treats his sister.
I finally decided I wasn't going to be able to talk to that kid anymore because I was going to end
up hurting because I don't give a shit if she's your sister. She's my wife, bro. And you're not
going to raise hands at her and holler at her and all that kind of stuff. I can't figure it
out to be honest with you. Ken was so respectful. So he was a cowboy. He was a real live hippie cowboy,
but he was not a disrespectful man. He was not a loud man. He was very quiet spoken.
I don't know how his other kid became the way he did. I really don't. It just blows my mind.
What do you know? There's a dirty doctor giving away meth to people, basically.
We had a good time in that Althea house. He spent a lot of time there with us.
He was living in Huntsville at the time, but Bill didn't finish college. He finished college
and he was going to go start looking for a job.
He would come down and hang out. He would never let me pay for anything.
He would come down. He would drive down Huntsville and pick us up in his truck
and like, man, we're going to go to his favorite thing,
shipply donuts on Ella. So way back in the 60s and 70s, the Ella location of shipply donuts,
they would stay open 24 hours. So when you were a stoner back then, that was the only game in town
was go over there and get lying at the donut show. That was one of his favorite things to do.
About nine to 10 o'clock at night, we'd
smoke us a little. We'd get in his pickup. We'd head over to the shipply donuts.
Sometimes we'd just go to a restaurant and get dessert. That was another one of his favorite
things to do and he never would let me pay for damn things. He wouldn't let me pay for
nothing. Never, ever, never got to pay. I tried it so many times. He would get so pissed at me.
Never ever let me pay for anything.
That was a good time for us in that little out of your house and we saw him out. He would come
over and he'd hang out. That's where I was doing my growing up, learning how to be
a man. I knew some things but I hadn't put them into practice. I was living with a woman.
I hadn't learned what that's like for a real long-term commitment.
He was dropping little bits of truth on me here and there.
Some of you guys have heard my story about him in the Adderall Hill that time.
That was in the early days working on the house. What had happened was
Dylan was having trouble at school and Dylan goes over and sees this psychiatrist in
freaking Midland, this junk doctor named Dr. Ben Hinkins. He's had a stroke since then,
thankfully, because I used to spend a lot of time thinking about catching this doctor in the
dark alleyway and just putting an ass whooping on him for the damage he did to Rachel's family.
He started describing her little brother a bunch of Adderall.
Ken was having fatigue. He was going through some stuff. His back was all jacked up and
he was depressed. He thought, well, I'll go over and see this psychiatrist, too.
The psychiatrist put him on that damn Adderall mess, too. That shit's basically just speed.
I don't care. You frame it any way you want it. I don't think there's a lot of good in
it. I've known doctors that got through med school using the mess, and even they'll tell you, man,
I wish I had messed with it because it's a... That thing is a get you.
And it did. It got Dylan. It got Rachel's little brother triggered schizophrenia,
and he went off the deep end hearing voices and stuff.
Ken did everything he could in his power to try to stop it from happening and help that kid.
They ever spent money on doctors, spent money on psychologists. Just everything.
Preachers. Anybody could help that kid.
And he kept it all to himself while he was doing it. He didn't complain about it. He didn't complain about him.
When he got out of college, he didn't have a lot of money.
And he also knew that I had gone to him one night
and asked him for his blessing to ask Rachel to marry me. We've been together
about six, seven months at that part.
I knew I was in love with that girl. I knew I wanted to be married to her.
And I caught him out on the porch one night. He was over there hanging out and came over the house.
Showed me how to cook chicken on the grill because I kept drying out the chicken.
He was tired of eating dried chicken. So he showed me how to grill some chicken without drying it out,
which means he grilled the chicken and I watched like a dummy.
And there I was,
nearly 30 years old, making a little money, tearing motorcycles apart and
parting them out and selling them for parts and fixing up some motorcycles and selling them,
making a little bit of money, making a little bit of money bartending, making a little bit of money.
I was bartending in a place called the Kentucky back in.
And I went to him like a man because I knew how important he was for Rachel.
And I asked him for his blessing to ask Rachel to marry me.
And he gave it. And it always surprised me. I just, I was just sure he was going to tell me I don't,
I don't think it's a good idea, fella. I think you need a little more stability, things like that.
He didn't. To his credit, he knew how much his daughter loved me and he knew his daughter well
enough to know that she's probably going to do what she wanted anyways, whether he agreed to or not.
And I kept that a secret from her. I bought the ring, I had the ring for months
and I was going to ask her on Christmas Day to marry me.
That was the whole plan. And I asked her on Christmas Day to marry me because I wasn't very
original at the time. We were gearing up, Christmas was coming along and
things weren't going great for him. He went and stayed at his,
he went and stayed with his mom and his brother here at this house.
But him and his brother just couldn't get along. Him and Jerry were
just as different as two souls could be and they couldn't get along and Jerry had been
the man of the house here for a while and was the older brother and wanted to make sure Ken knew that.
They were just at each other's throat, couldn't order to get along.
Rachel was upset. It was Christmas Eve. She was upset and she was like, I don't know why
my dad, I don't know why he just doesn't come over here and hang out with us. Well, I knew why.
He didn't come over here and hang out with us because he knew I was going to propose to her in
the morning and he wanted to let us have that moment.
She's telling me all this. She'd been on the phone with him. She was upset
and she was holding, we had went to KFC and got some chicken. She was holding this box of
KFC chicken and I ran off the bedroom and I snatched that ring and I run right in there
on December 24th and got down on one knee in the kitchen there while she was holding the box of
chicken and asked that girl to marry me and she immediately said yes and after we got over the
little excitement I said, now call your dad because already he's not coming over as he
thought I was doing this tomorrow. Call your dad telling him to come over and he came over
and he spent that Christmas with us. We had an extra room at the time when
we ended up just inviting him to stay there, just move in for a little while until he got
him a job. He had his fresh college degree. He felt like he had been held back a lot in life
because he didn't have, he didn't finish college the first time and he thought
he hoped that having that degree was going to help him out some.
It didn't because it's all mythology but
problem is when you're that age employers take a different look at you and it's like
how much of a liability is this guy? He's going to have health problems. He's already in his
late fifties. How long is he going to be with us? That kind of stuff. It's ages,
happens all the time and nobody would give him, nobody, I mean he would go to interview, interview
and a man was brilliant and nobody would give him a supporting chance. He ended up taking a job
at Frickin' Target, stocking at Target with a bachelor's degree. The years of experience
and knowledge under his belt. The man had owned his own car lot. He'd built up a huge
landscaping and tree service here in the Woodlands. That is if you have the original
Woodlands Monopoly game, his tree service is in there. He knew everything. He really was a dog
whisperer. The man had bred dogs and trained dogs. By the time he came to live with us,
we already had a dog he had trained. He had trained this little dog named Tina, this little
old Jack Russell. He had bought her as a puppy and trained her and then gave her to Rachel one
night while she was visiting him in Huntsville. Never forget she brought that dog home at night
and she was so excited. She called me on the phone on the way. I got a big surprise.
I was like, hell yeah. I thought Poppy gave her some good weed or there's going to be a sexy
surprise when she got home and then she walked in carrying this dog and this dog carrier and I was
so bad. I didn't want no damn dog. I don't want no damn dog. I like dogs. They don't live long enough.
They just hurt you. She came with that dog. Boy, I didn't want nothing to do with that dog.
Three days later, that dog's in the shop with me every time she got.
You know, I've heard me talk a little bit about her.
Back when that dog died, I was mad all over again. 13 years ago, I told you I want no dog and then
I'm heartbroken over a little old dog.
But he's living with us where we start bumping heads a little bit, you know.
That's where things got a little too cozy, you know.
You know, he didn't like the way I did much of anything. I kept shop a mess. He didn't care for that.
He didn't like the fact I didn't keep the yard up probably as good as I should have.
And he didn't mind telling me.
I mean, I decided I was going to plant some plants one time. We went and bought some plants.
We're going to plant some plants down inside that house. And he knew everything about landscaping.
I didn't know nothing. I was digging these holes and he's, I'll never forget.
You're about to put an eight dollar plant in a six dollar hole, fella.
Why are you going to waste your energy? That plant's just going to die.
You got to dig that hole out. Give them a root for room to expand. Walk me through it.
Boy, by God, I know how to plant stuff now, you know.
I went out and sprayed weed killer on the lawn one day and actually sprayed some of his truck.
Boy, I thought he was going to come under and do something out of me.
He went out there and washed that damn truck, muttered something about it.
That spray shit don't work worth a damn, no house, you know.
You just spray and say, if you don't know what you're doing, you probably just
killed half the grass. Boy, I was mad at you. You don't know what you're talking about on me.
It's your enough big old fricking circle that grass by his truck died.
He's telling me shit all the time. I didn't want him telling me all this shit, man.
By God, boy, he had an answer for everything.
Always.
I don't think he knew what to make of me all the time.
Well, we had a lot of good time, man. He took us one night. We all went and saw Robin Trower
and Jack Bruce live. It was cool as shit, man. One of the best shows I've ever been to in my
life. He would turn me on to music. Rachel wasn't kidding when she said music was his
language. That's why he was talking. He would give me mixed CDs, man, that had music.
Music I still listen to. I can't hear two notes
of Greg Altman's cover of
Forty.
I can't remember the name of the song right now. I can't hear. I can't hear two notes.
This is a Jackson Brown song that Greg Altman covered.
Count the time and quarter comes
My friend
I might listen that night.
I might remember what it was.
It was all kind of he gave me he had a whole he found out I like Jethro Toll, but I didn't
know any of Jethro Toll's early music. So he made me a CD of all his favorites of the early
Jethro Toll. He turned I was a I was a surface level ZZ top fan when I met this man.
And he turned me on to old Billy bluesy Billy. Blue Jean blues, good stuff and really made
I'm one of the biggest fans of Reverend Willie G you ever meet in your life. I'm hoping the hell
I get to meet that for one day just so I can talk to them all about Ken and see if
you I know he remembers him. They had too much time growing up together.
He turned me on. I grew up during the grunge phase. The grunge was popular when I
was in high school, but I just never got into it when I was in the country music.
He turned me on the Pearl Jam. I was not a Pearl Jam guy until he turned me on the Pearl Jam.
He bought us tickets so we'd go see ZZ top at the rodeo.
Like I've seen ZZ top so many times and about half of them was because of him.
You know, I'd seen him when I was younger. Uncle Bobby was infatuated with him.
I probably told y'all this story, but when when the Crohn's disease like jacked me up
real bad before our wedding, we found out I had Crohn's disease and I damn near died.
It was in so much pain and screwed up and I got out of the hospital and they put me
on one drug and that drug made my kidney shut down. So we had to switch to another drug and
that drug was I forgot what it was making something else not work in me.
And then they put me on the last drug they put me on. I was fatigued so bad I couldn't
even hardly get just get up go to the bathroom took me like 15 20 minutes.
I was miserable. I wasn't eating. My hair was falling out. My fingernails were turning to
paper. That shit was trying to kill me. And doctors, nothing they were coming up with
was helping. I remember he said one night, I got something make you want to eat fella.
He rolled us up a big old joint and we spoke that joint right there in the livery big old
big old hog leg of the day. And Rachel still she's like that. I remember she was so happy
because I looked up there and said, can I have peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
And she made me about three of them. I walked them down four days later. I was back at
work doing construction.
He's a good man.
I think about him and most things I do nowadays. I think I wish he was here to see who I am now
the calmer guy who's kind of got it figured out. I mean, I figured out that kind of
I'm starting to figure it out. And if I don't wish he was around to see this part,
he'd be right here with us.
This was the first time I went to see him in Huntsville. Rachel was like, hey,
we're going to visit my dad tonight and we get up there and
he was smoking his old one hitter and he offered me something. I was like, I don't really like
I don't really like pipes. I just like to join some kind of old school.
I was talking out my ass. Hey, I didn't really smoke weed that much.
He rolls this joint and hands it to me to light it. And it's long. It's big old joint.
He had these special papers that came out of a roll. He could roll these joints just
about as long as he wanted to. He rolled this. I mean, it would look like a straw.
When we started smoking that thing, and I remember I talked about three hits off of it
and he put on, he wanted us to watch his documentary about the band. I think the
documentary is called The Band. Leave on Helms and all that. It's The Band.
And we're watching documentaries along the shit. We're watching the documentary.
And I took about a third or fourth hit on that joint and he offered it back to me and I
go, ah, I'm good. He goes, no, fella, you said you want to smoke the joint. We're smoking a joint.
And we, the three of us, spoke that damn thing and watched that whole documentary about the band.
And then I had to drive his daughter back home to her apartment in Houston.
I was driving that monster. I felt like I was driving a damn spaceship at night coming down 45.
I never been so thankful to see the Houston skyline in my life as that thing
coming to view, coming out for it. I'm almost there, baby. I made it because if I wreck and
hurt his baby girl, this son of a bitch will comb the ends of the earth and make sure I have paid my dues.
He lived with us for a little while there in that little house and
we had bumping heads a little too much. He decided he was going to go do something else.
He was also, he wanted to come back to you, so him and Rachel's mom had moved out to Midland for her job.
He had this thriving business here, all this stuff, but she got offered this really good promotion in the oil industry and that's the,
she didn't really give him a lot of option. We got to take this job, we're glad to do this.
He had a rough time when they got out there in Midland because he didn't have his friends and his connections and all that stuff.
He struggled and then she,
the way they divorced was ugly. They waited, Rachel was in college
and
her and her dad and her younger brother went on a trip to go do something.
Him and Gail had been fighting and they come back to the house and
all her stuff was packed up and in the garage, but she'd gotten the flu and couldn't finish moving out.
She was just going to move out while he was going out of town with his kids.
I ain't here to bash Rachel's mother.
We don't see eye to eye on a good many things right now because of stuff involving her younger brother.
But she was very important to me for a long time and I would get, Ken would tell me stuff about her.
He was mad at her, you know, viciously betrayed by her and he was still angry about it.
He would tell me stuff. Me and him would bump heads about it. I'm like, don't tell me a shit about my mom, man.
I mean, lo and behold, he turned out to be right about a whole bunch of it.
I wish I'd just shut the hell up and listen to it.
But we'd bump heads a little bit, but he, he had wanted to come back. He never wanted to go to Midland.
He had always dreamed about coming back to Houston and so he came back to Houston and realized
Houston had changed a great deal and it wasn't the same town he grew up in
and him and his brother didn't get along and they were always sort of fighting and arguing and
they'd cost him his relationship with his mother. He had a hard time having a relationship with his
mother because he was so angry about stuff with his brother and he decides to go back to Midland.
Because the one thing he had found in Midland was it was kind of small town back then.
He still knew folks around town. It was a little slower pace living.
And he decided that was for him and he, he went back to Midland
not too long before we got married.
Marriage day, our wedding. We got married in Vegas at the Nation Hotel.
The day of our wedding, I was staying back there in the pastor,
pastor Jack, come back there and talk to me a little bit about the ceremony.
I was to make sure I had my vows ready and
Ken walked up to me and grabbed my hand and shook it. He said,
Well, Phil, it's all yours. You better take care of it.
And then he went and walked his daughter down the aisle to meet me, married me.
And he never gave me a lot of judgment. I mean, he would correct me and stuff like that, but
I'm sad that we bumped heads as much as we did, especially for Gene.
We would go out to Midland and visit him. He'd be sad every time we left because there just
wasn't enough time and he was, he was out there. He was working for a TV station, doing all kind of stuff.
He came when both our babies were born and time at the house with us
and time walking in those babies in the world. He loved and grand babies.
Him and a little Noah, boy, they had a bond. Even though that kid was just a little squirt,
boy, they had a bond. He was tickled at everything that kid did. Love that little Junie.
The whole time he was taking the Adderall and the Adderall was messing with it.
He would get, you would see it any, you know, in the afternoons. He would just be
teeth gritting and
he always felt like he wasn't doing enough or he didn't have enough and he was frustrated with life.
A lot of men can become. It's really easy. I've been there. It's really easy to get into that mode.
He would tell me these stories that felt, I don't know when I became the old guy on the job site.
He used to tell me that all the time. I don't know when I've, all these dudes call me the
cool old dude. I don't know when I became the old guy on the job site. And when it happened to
me later on, I was like, damn it. When the hell did I become the old guy on the job site?
I go into comedy club now. I feel ancient. All these kids gunning for my job.
All that time, me and Rachel kept persevering. You know, we moved up to spring. I started
the business. He was out there middling.
He had a couple of different things he did and
he'd come visit us every once in a while for the holidays, whatever. We'd kind of switch
out between hanging out with mom and him on the holidays.
He was there at our house that day. Me and my dad almost coming blows in the driveway the day out.
They whooped the shit out of all them Christmas lights. And he told me then,
he said, man, if something's making you feel like that, you got to cut out your life. It's
going to make you sick. It's going to ruin your health.
When my mother got sick
and it just kept getting worse and worse, he would call and he would ask to talk to me.
And his whole message was love. You got to be strong for your mom, fella.
You know, it sounds like your dad and your sister ain't...
You got to be strong for your mom. You got to let her know you're okay no matter what's
happening to her. She's got to... She can't be this sick and not think you're okay, fella.
You got to put on stiff upper lip. You got to let your mom know you're all right.
He'd been feeling bad. He'd been having...
This is off in January. Rachel's birthday is January 21st and it's coming up on her birthday and
my mom had been in a coma for a day at that point. And he was real sick and he had been
talking to Rachel. He's feeling real bad and she's like, dad, I want you to go to the hospital.
And we... I just told Rachel, I was like, let's load the truck. Let's go to Midland.
Yeah, my mom's in a coma. You can't do anything for her.
And we drove out there in Midland and they had him in the hospital. He had had a heart attack.
And they put a stint in him.
And then he went home to recover. And the day that he had... After he had the stint put in
is when my sister called me and told me mom was awake. She had come out of her coma
and we loaded up the truck and he's like, well, go be with your mom. I'm okay now.
I got some recovery time but your mom's awake. You need to go. We drove through Texas that night.
Get there and have that last day we had with my mother,
where she was awake and conscious. We took the kids over to see her and
he just told me, he said, go, go.
I can't tell y'all everything about the man but
he sure meant the world to me even when we was fighting and arguing.
He was driving a concrete truck at the time for a company called Ingram Concrete out there in
West Texas. And then trucks inside him, concrete trucks out there in Midland,
they'd get to be about 110, 120 degrees. You know, the air conditioners can't hold up to that with
all that heat from the concrete behind it. They might have got better trucks now.
Well, it started... He had another hard attack when he went back to work trying to drive a truck.
He just couldn't do it no more. We had an extra room at the time. We had moved to Conroe.
Business was going pretty well. I had a big major contract and I had a lot of side work and
Rachel told me, she's like, Dad, just come here. Come stay with us and
we'll put you on the payroll. Get you a little money every week.
You can just go up there a couple of days so I can focus on some other things and
hang out the mountain and shack. And this is where
boys started bumping heads because he thought I should be running my business a different way.
But also, he was just supposed to take a break. He was just supposed to take a break. The man,
just like any of most of us, he'd know how to take a break. So he'd get up there and he
overworked himself and he'd get all hot and feeling bad and stuff. Pop, why are you doing it?
You don't even do all this. We had a big fight, man. At that time, I was running that whole
property and I was the face on the property. I was the one that had to talk to all the
residents to deal with them. Because the people I worked for didn't generally fix a whole lot of
things or have the budget to or claim they didn't have the budget to. I was the guy that had to
explain why things didn't get fixed or put people off. And he got real frustrated and
he quit talking to me for about a couple of days. He was just mad as helped me. I couldn't
figure it out. And it was Memorial Day and I just wanted him to hang out with me in the
thing. I wanted him to hang out with us and the kids and have a good time. But he was just pissed
off, wouldn't have already talked to me. And I just, he was a very, he wasn't a
confrontational guy. And I just walked up to him in the garage and I go, Hey man,
are you going to be pissed off at me forever? Or can we just talk about whatever the
shit you're mad about and get this out of our system? Because I would really love for you
to hang out with your family. It's Memorial Day. We're going to grill some food and
have a good time. I'd like you to just enjoy it with us.
And he, he said, boy, I just, he said, when I tell somebody I'm going to do something,
I do something. When I tell somebody I'm going to do something, I do it.
And you, I watch you go around that property and you tell these people, all these things
you're going to do, you don't ever do them. I was like, well, I'm not allowed to do them.
I don't have money to do them. But I have to tell them something, put them off. He goes,
well, tell them it's not getting done. Be honest with them, Phil. Man ought to be able to say,
if man says he's going to do something, man ought to do it.
I was like, I don't think you understand my job. He said, well, then you need to find a better
job if that's what your job is. It's just going to ruin you. Boy, I was mad at him,
but we, we sell it off. We all have Memorial Day together and hung out.
Me and him, we, we got the, he had another heart attack at work and I was like,
I can't have you out there on property. You're too much liability with the heart problems.
And I'm sure in some way, he suspected that was disrespectful. And he got to where he wouldn't
even hardly talk. He'd just glare at me. He was so mad at me.
He wanted me to cut my hair. He didn't, he didn't, he really can't have long hair all
your life. First time to grow up. But I got, I found a little nugget to wisdom on,
still not about the hair, but about, it wasn't long after that I decided I was going to become
the man who did do what I said I was going to do. And I started telling them people the
truth and did not make me popular at that property. And I did end up quitting that gig
sometime afterwards.
Here he died. Actually, I quit that gig. So I didn't want to put up with them people anymore.
Then I fell off a roof and broke my body all the hell. But
it was all, he was always, he wasn't even mad at me. He was giving me lessons.
I regret, I regret that little, that, that whatever that was, that thumping chest
shit we were doing and bumping heads. He ended up moving out. There was too much for Rachel.
And we arguing all the time.
You know, he went up to, he had a buddy in college station, his buddy, Tom, that he grew up with
that ran all the maintenance out at A&M and went up to college station. He worked for Tom for a
little while. And eventually made his way back to Midland.
Got him a job with the water company, found him some good housing.
And Rachel would get back on even kill. Me and them hadn't really spoke a lot, you know.
We bought the house when they moved in.
Come about January, 2015. He was feeling bad again, feeling sick.
Rachel, he's going to go back to the hospital.
They decided they were going to do another stint or something. I don't remember 100% what it was.
They told him he had to stop taking that medicine. He was taking his cell bricks
all that shit.
Damn, Madderall was jacking with me.
And I couldn't leave work at the time. So Rachel flew out. I took the kids, kept the kids and
Rachel flew out to Midland to be with him while he had his operation. She had to fly home the next day.
And he never woke up from his operation. He had a stroke on the table and
never woke up from the operation. Y'all heard that story.
We lost him that, I believe it was February, early February 2015.
And it destroyed my wife. It broke her heart a million pieces.
Pieces that will never be, but she'll never be the same person again that she was before that
happened. She'll never be the same person without him in this world. That kind of loss changes you.
I think we're going to wrap it up right there.
Do some testimonials, you know.
A few testimonials. I got my act together today.
Oh, sister Amy Irish, look at her. Oh, sentiment girl. So happy to hear for these testimonials from
last season's last podcast where I told the story about Mr. Forrest.
So happy to hear Forrest found you and he was able to articulate how profound and meaningful
directing our podcast has been and to give you clarity that it's not just for you,
it's for us with each and every episode. Thank you Forrest. I'm glad Forrest found me too, Amy.
Forrest affected the entire way I was looking at this thing. I was looking at it in a very
selfish manner and Forrest showed me that that was not the way to go about it.
They made me new eyes, brought me into season three feeling renewed.
At ATX Nomad 698. Hey, man, found you through your AC monologue. Just want to say you're
incredible writer and storyteller. I know nothing about cars. I still find myself glued
to your stories. Thanks for sharing your life with the world. Thank you, man. I appreciate you
listening, brother. A lot of these stories ain't about cars. I love to talk cars, but a lot of
these stories are just about where I was in my life. And that's the whole thing. We're working
on the book right now. I hadn't even told y'all this. So now instead of one book deal, I
have two. So I had so much from the first podcast that we decided that to cut it. It was at a
thousand pages and we'd cut any more of it. It was just going to be so we made two books
and our publishers on board with it and just totally excited about it. And so it looks
like it's going to be two books now instead of just one.
At James Norman, J.W., it's not necessarily the cars that draw me to your podcast,
much as it is the life stories you share. I relate so much to your childhood stories.
It's almost like you're talking about my childhood in a way. That being said, I'll
still be watching your podcast and following you even when you run out of car stories to
talk about. Like you, there are certain cars or pickups I can look at and remember a
part of my childhood and thought I was the only one that was like that until I found your YouTube channel.
My poor wife, I swear, thinks that I've lost my mind because we'll be going somewhere and I see a
car or truck and I'll think about a certain memory or era of my childhood or teenage years and
go into a long drawn out story where they're about that memory and whatever family member
owned that type of vehicle. Keep on keeping on brother. I hope this continues to be a
success for you as many years as you're able to do this. You relate to so many people like me
that it's almost like we have found another home. That's how I feel about it. Thank you
very much for that. Enjoy reading that. That's all. I'm just trying to be a little light
in the darkness here, folks. I know I'm not splitting the atom. There's a better podcast
out there. I'm sure that y'all can spend your energy and time listening to.
But I just, I like thinking, man, if I can just be a positive voice in the dark, then that's,
I can be a little light in the dark for people. Maybe they won't struggle as much as I did
to find some peace. It took me a long time to find my peace and it was right in front of
me the whole damn time. The thing about life, church, is you never know who you are to somebody else.
You ain't allowed to. It ain't, it ain't written down anywhere you can read it.
Oh, you can, you can hear what they say about you. Sure. You can catch a whisper when your name rolls
across somebody else's supper table. But you'll never, not in this life, see yourself the way they see.
Every man, every woman, every passing soul carries a different version of you in their mind.
Hundreds of reflections in a hundred cracked mirrors and somewhere in that swarm of reflections,
a whole mess of folks got you figured for nothing but dust and failure.
And that's all right. That's all right.
Because the truth is, you don't live in everybody. You live in the few, the few who love you,
the few who know your name in their marrow and call you by it even when you're stumbling.
I confess to you tonight, I've lost night staring at the ceiling wondering what pop thought of me.
He was never shy about telling me what he didn't like. He was never stingy with correction.
And still, I like to believe
that when the dust settled, he loved me.
He loved me enough to hand me a blessing, loved me enough to open his hand and place in it the most
sacred life he had on this earth. Rachel, Lord have mercy. When I was 30 years old, broke down and
bent more boy than man, more fool than husband, I looked them in the eyes and asked him for
that blessing. And I'll tell you plain, he didn't take as long to say yes as I might have had. I've
been the gatekeeper. So maybe I'll never know the full weight of his thoughts, but I do know this.
There was a moment in his life where I was good enough, good enough for the most precious thing
he had. And I like to think tonight that he's watching, nodding, enjoying these small victories
being hurt or stacking up together. That's why I stand here every week and I tell you I'm rooting for
you. Because sometimes it don't take the world believing. Sometimes it just takes a handful of people
betting on you, lifting you, carrying you into the next chapter. So hear me. There is room at
this table. There's room in this family. There's room in this life for every single one of us.
I'm J.W., and I love you.
These days I sit on these days. That's the name of the song. These days. These days. Greg Allman
covered it. It's a Jackson Brown song. Go listen to it and think about everything you ain't
ever done right and then get over that shit. But listen to that song these days.
Welcome to season three, boners. I love you.
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