A measure of success |S:03E.76

Still remembers fire, Grasse remembers rain, Everybody's scar tells us to wake, heart out of pain. If you go dig and song, best mind what you find. Welcome to the wrecking yard. I'm Jerry Wayne Longmer, y'all. Zoom with me.

Jerry and Fog, everything else, make my voice sound a little cloggy, just wanna show my moisture in there. You can almost see it sitting out there.

So it's a little warmer day, but it's supposed to be back down like 38 tomorrow, so we'll see. 38's too cold for me. So, you know, I don't...

I thought part of the deal was like I live in the South and I get the piss cooked out of me all summer long and well up into the fall.

But the tradeoff was that was I don't have to have a parka or heavy jacket, but it's bull crap. Last week down here's been cold as piss.

I don't want here for you nor there's like 45 degrees ain't nothing. I go out there in my t-shirt and shovel the driveway with my nose, you know, bullshit.

First off, second, I've been up there. I've lived up there in that kind of cold. I lived in Wisconsin. Yeah, 50, 45 degrees in Wisconsin. I was running around t-shirts, 45 degrees in Wisconsin, ain't 45 degrees on the Gulf Coast for the humidity.

Ain't the same thing. Ain't the same thing by any stretch and I'll call any man a liar as soon as it is. Ain't the same thing.

He come down here and walk around 40 degrees.

Tell me all that bullshit, but I don't believe it. I don't believe it. You tell it to me all you want.

I don't believe it.

And it's some sort of Indonesia, Sumatrian, I don't know.

In fact, I made out tree root. Anyways.

Alright. That's an interesting flavor profile right there.

Notes of shit.

Oh, am I going to mood this more? I don't even mean to be. I actually feel great woke up early and

I look bad kind of late, but this we were watching TV show, Mom and Pants of Dreams hanging out on the porch.

That sort of thing, howling at the moon a little bit.

We got all our Christmas decorations out and got the house all decorated for Christmas.

Got the tree up. And of course, little Ophelia, the cat, of course, is taking a great deal of interest in the tree,

immediately climbing up and getting out of it.

I think this will be another year. We keep the broken ornaments in the box.

I mean, the breakable ornaments in the box.

There's all these cat people that are right to post some picture of it, all the cat people.

Nobody can just appreciate anything anymore. Everybody's got to, I got to tell you how to do that.

Everybody's got to, you know what I mean? You can't just, you can't post picture yourself fishing.

Everybody, oh, I wouldn't use that bullshit test line. I wouldn't use that rod.

I wouldn't be running that kind of bait. Oh, here's what you're doing wrong.

Like nobody can, everybody just has to be an actually Adam nowadays.

You never see, very rarely do you ever see somebody comment and just be like, oh, that's cool. Thanks for sharing.

You know what I mean? Or something like that. It's always just some jackass that nobody else listens to ever.

Gotta come in there off of their two cents and share to somebody who's like, oh, you already even over the time to have a cat.

No, but we got kids. We got kids and one of them's autistic as all hail.

And we've had to do all kind of crazy shit with the Christmas tree over the course of the kids development to keep the Christmas tree intact.

Well, one year we had no ornaments to like four feet up.

Sorry, we're all the snorting guys. Just a little clogged up this one.

Anyway, so we got all the Christmas stuff out. Feel pretty good about that.

There's real proud of myself the way I put it in the garage a certain way last year and had it organized such a way that this year when it come time to

it. It's like on that side of the garage over there. So I got my y'all can't see it from here, but straight across that way.

Behind the camera on that side in the second bay of the garage is where I have my green screen set up.

And that's where I film all the truck straw any any of the videos I do the green screen truck straw.

Yeah, right. I feel over there. And I leave that set up all the time. And I usually same lights that I use for this set, but I just move them back and forth across garage.

And it's not really that big of the I've got the cord set up for I can just drag them over there and flip them on.

Then I've also got a bunch of garage sale and a bunch of stuff over there stored that like a lot of that stuff that's going because Ricky when he comes down with mom's car.

A bunch of stuff I promised him was a table full of tools and all kind of shit I'm getting rid of.

And but last year, I mean, I was smart last year. We've been putting this crap in the attic and just getting that Christmas tree in and out of the attic.

One, I don't trust that attic ladder. I'm a smaller boy. I'm a smaller boy than it was.

We're first start working on this house, but I don't trust that attic ladder.

But I don't like ladders in general and I don't like that attic.

And also, we live in the seven circle hell and shit you put an attic just gets cooked the smithereens.

So last year I organized such a way that I could I could get in here quickly when mama said I need Christmas decorations.

Boom, boogie, boom, I come off in here got them. I mean Halloween that great. Got them Halloween directorations out.

Halloween box in the house.

When she started the Halloween box, she's ready for that Christmas box. Bam! Halloween back out here.

And I was able to get all the Christmas stuff and the tree out like 10 minutes yesterday.

She's like, we're on the way home from a family event.

If she's like, I really want to do Christmas decorations just get late. You feel like doing it.

I was like, I got you, boo, I got you.

And literally just ran out here.

And in 15 minutes I had it all ready to go in the house and had the Halloween stuff put up.

So I was really proud. I'm not an organized guy normally.

So I was proud. I was proud. I was like, look at what you did, buddy.

So worked out pretty good.

We, uh,

well loaded up, went down to Kima yesterday.

See my little niece, my little Vivian, my brother Joey's kid.

I can't remember how old she, I think maybe five, maybe six.

This kid is a,

I call her my little sweet pea, but she is just a bouncy ball of energy.

She's just the tiniest little old thing and she never stops moving.

And she never stops talking.

And I just adore her.

I absolutely adore her. She's tremendous.

My brother is one of those. I'm never going to have kids guys.

He had said that for years, years, years.

You're never going to have kids.

No interest having to get them.

And, uh, brother, y'all met him.

Kind of quiet spoken.

A little reserved.

Not what you would call a hyper person or prone to flights of fancy.

Ended up with a child that is this bouncing ball of energy

who only lives in flights of fancy.

I just love it.

She's a riot.

We went down there, so she's in dance.

And, uh, we went down to the San Jacinto College to watch the dance recital.

Which, you know, I'm not much of a dance enthusiast.

I guess you would call it.

I couldn't tell you the difference between a.

A pirouette and a panéra bread most of the time.

Sorry, I was the next P word I could think of.

But, of course, they had the older dancers.

The older girls come out and do their dance.

They were going to dance in a parade later that day.

It's all holiday things, all Christmas things.

And, I was worried.

We were in this pretty good size auditorium.

I was worried.

I wouldn't be able to tell which one was my niece, you know.

Because I was having, I couldn't really see the little girl's faces.

And, they did all ages.

And, they had this one age group that I suspect maybe these old girls were two or three years old.

And, they were in these little shimmery ballerina costumes with big dresses on a big skirt, two, two, whatever.

The shit that thing's called.

And, they were dancing to a very slow down tempo version of do you want to build a snowman.

And, I mean, my wife were talking.

We suspect they slow the tempo down because they're very, very young kids.

And, you can tell they were all looking at a teacher off in the wings who was telling them when to do their little.

Do, do, do thing and all that good stuff.

I learned some shit yesterday.

Those y'all listening to this, y'all missed out on my bad ass dance moves just now.

That's what you get for listening to.

You know, sorry.

I'm clogged up.

Weird.

The weather change.

Anyways, they were doing it.

It was five little girls.

And, they were doing the thing.

They were okay as far as time and, you know, most of them are relatively within a few seconds of each other.

And, but there was this fourth little girl on the line up.

Well, blonde had a girl.

And, she was about a minute behind everybody else and then sometimes a minute ahead of everybody else.

And, she was adorable.

And, she was looking for cues and I think she was probably the youngest one.

So, I was watching this.

I was listening to that music.

I was thinking about my kid, especially my oldest was young and was so hooked on that movie.

Frozen.

And, I was watching those little girls dance.

That fourth one was just so out of sync.

She was just doing her best.

She was just giving it her all.

She was going to show her stuff.

She just kept on keeping on.

And, even at the end, one of the other little girls had to help her figure out which way to go offstage.

And, it's delightful.

But, also, I realized I'd like going through my entire life like that fourth little girl.

Just out of step, out of time.

Don't know to stop.

Just keep going.

And, it tickled me.

It was kind of a moment of beauty.

It tickled me endlessly.

I giggled through the next two dance sets thinking about it.

Like, this is exactly how you've gone through your life, sir.

Just little out of time.

Little out of step.

Not quite keeping up with the crowd.

That's okay.

The most important thing is that you do not quit.

But, I was worried because I couldn't see a little girl's face is that I might not know when my little niece, my little baby, came on stage.

And, you know, she's there who I'm there to see you.

My brother, whispered in my ear, told me the two songs she was going to dance to.

And so, I was like, okay, well, at least I know I hear those songs I'll be looking for on stage.

Which was ridiculous.

Because when it came time for her little group to dance and they bring the lights down.

So, they can get out there on stage and get into their, whatever you call that, their little setup, you know, on stage.

I saw this little shadow run and do five extra bounces to get in their spot.

And I immediately was like, oh, that's my niece.

There she is.

There's that sweet bee.

No, immediately.

I didn't need to see her face.

And she was a ham.

I mean, that little girl is the enthusiasticus, little dancer you ever seen in your life.

She's always dancing and grooving and jiving, you know.

She's always moving and grooving.

And she would spin so hard she would throw herself off kilter and have to recover.

But she would recover in epic fashion by doing this little river walk type dance to get back in the line.

And it was just, it was just fantastic watching her performance.

And she had two little songs that she was a part of.

And both of them were just delight.

They did the first one twice.

They did three actually because they did the first one twice.

And then they come out after another set of a different girls dancing and they did it again.

And we were all trying to figure out what happened.

And one of the little girls had had not been there for the first dance.

And they wanted to make sure she got to dance on stage so they just redid it.

And that's the joy of doing live performances.

And certainly the joy probably of live performances involving children.

You can always just have a little empathy in your heart and go, hey, let's do it again.

Them other old girls, you think they cared about having a dance again?

No, they were excited.

Of course, after Joey had brought her a big thing of roses.

I love, I was in theater in high school.

I love for all that sort of thing, you know, live performance, that kind of stuff.

She was just carrying her little roses and just dancing all over the place.

And she was still dancing after the show.

She's still just moving and grooving.

There's a big hill out there.

She's got to run up on top of the hill.

I remember her grandmother said, have her go up on top of that hill.

Get her to go up on top of that hill so I can take a picture.

And I laughed like, get her.

I knew the minute I saw that hill, that kid was going to be on top of that hill.

And sure enough, seconds later she's on top of the poses.

Get her to go on that hill and take a picture.

Little lunatic.

No.

Of course, we've had some lunch with my brother and his wife Sarah, her mom and kids.

This is a good time.

I screwed up, though.

I have not been eating.

I have not been eating fried food.

I've not really been eating much in the way of fast food, except when I travel.

I usually try to go light on that.

My stomach don't like it anymore.

After going period of time without eating a bunch of it, my stomach doesn't much care for it.

And I made a mistake of eating tater tots and chicken strips.

And oh my god, my system revolted on me yesterday.

I thought I was going to spend the rest of the night in the bathroom.

It was not good.

Well, not be doing that again.

I looked at my wife.

I was like, next time I'm thinking about eating fried food, just remind me of this day.

Remind me how terribly this went.

It's been a little bit about my week before you.

It's been a good week.

Been a good week.

We had a good Thanksgiving.

My oven part came in.

I fixed my oven without cussing.

It's nice to have a good fix.

I talked about that before, but sometimes it's just nice when something works.

Like I said, I ain't mad at that.

It's 20 year old oven.

And after 20 years, I had to buy a hundred dollar part to fix it off eBay.

And I fixed it within about 25, 30 minutes.

Change out that little oven.

Motorized latch.

Plugged it in.

Let it go through.

It's diagnostic.

Everything works great.

So if I get another 10 years out of that oven, then by god, I just don't want to have to buy any appliances before we move from here.

You know, I don't want to have to take any appliances with me.

When I leave here, most likely probably rent this place out.

And then I have some appliances in it that work.

That sort of thing.

And not have to tote a bunch of shit.

Because I have a film we move from here.

It's going to be a long distance movie.

And we both give a wife both would like to get out of Texas.

For a number of variety of reasons.

But I'm not.

I've been real disimpressed with Texas leadership for a long time.

Even before.

Current fellow running things, but.

It's not a lot of a lot of things going into the direction that make me feel like.

Texas will continue to be a good place for my.

And we will bring for a different climate.

You know, people like, oh, you don't like the cold.

There you go.

It'll be somewhere like Colorado.

But I've been in Colorado in the cold.

It ain't like here.

It's.

That's why when we make those comparisons, they're ridiculous.

You know.

In the same way, I've worked in 112 degrees in Arizona.

It sucked.

Don't give me wrong.

Sun was cooking you.

But it ain't like 108 here with humidity.

Yeah, 108 here with the humidity of the Gulf Coast changes all the weather.

That's the, you know, it's the bad thing.

It ain't the heat.

It's the humidity.

It ain't the cold.

It's the humidity.

Yeah, I've literally worked above the Mississippi River shooting a two inch pipeline.

It was cold.

It was like negative 20 with windshield.

And it made up in that cold.

I'm probably exaggerating.

But it was ridiculously cold hovering down in the next to nothing.

And still would take that over some of the weather we've had down here.

With that extra moisture in there, that extra moisture in there makes a difference.

Extra moisture air means that cold cuts you like a knife.

Extra moisture air means that you're not just getting oven baked.

You get sous vide.

It's just, it's just different.

And.

Whoo.

I think I'll be all right.

I'm just, I'm just going to wear a sweater always once I get somewhere else.

Also, thanks mostly to you guys.

We went, made our first donation.

Friday.

For the driven dreams dot org thing we've been collecting the hot wheels and the die cast cars.

So we ended up like 1885 cars.

And I split that up three ways because I want to spread it out.

And three ways that still breaks down to like 624 or something.

I'm not good at math.

I did it on the calculator.

Like 624 cars.

And then one of y'all sent a bunch of these track creator sets.

And I threw a couple of those in each one of these three piles.

It's good I split them up that way because it turns out about 624 cars

was what the Mazda trunk holds.

I probably could have got more in there but it's been a tight fit.

And.

I took those over to the the film.

I'm going to talk y'all about it today.

I've told you a few stories about him here and there over the years and over the years.

Over the year year and a half or so.

I've been doing this.

About my good buddy Randy Lee.

And Randy Lee has a tattoo business, a tattoo shop here in Houston.

And he's had it for.

And I think over at least over a decade for sure.

He did.

So I have a tattoo of my inner forearm and I think he did that at his first shop location.

Yeah, definitely over 10 years.

It was when me and Rachel got married.

So like 2008.

He already had that shop running.

It's a nice shop.

He's a critically acclaimed artist has his own style.

Very unique.

I love his artwork.

And.

Over the course at time all his years, he's always run a toys for tots drop off toys for tots courses.

Affiliated with the United States Marine Corps.

And he's all these years.

He's run a toys for tots drop off and tries to gather up a big donation from his customers and people in this community every year.

So I wanted to take one of those loads of Randy.

He's been he's been a good steward of his community.

And I see the work he puts in.

And I wanted to go take one of those donations over there for the driven dreams and leave with him for the toys for tots.

And then I'm going to take one of the other splits.

There's a there's a fellow here will talk more about him next week or maybe a little closer to Christmas.

That we call poncho claws Richard Reyes.

Richard Reyes has been a community outreach leader in Houston, Texas as long as I've been in Houston, Texas.

Like just.

Good 30 years or more.

He has made it his absolute mission to make sure under privileged kids get Christmas every year.

And he has they have a low rider convertible.

And he wears a red suit and red hat.

It's poncho claws.

We save on the news all the time where kids doing stuff and.

Rich Reyes is a huge ambassador to the comedy scene in Houston, Texas.

He supports a lot of live formats and he he promotes shows and not for money just for the good of the community.

And the man has worked tirelessly for years through his own health problems.

I mean, he's almost died a couple of times and.

You know, he doesn't live a life of luxury and lives a life of a servant for the people.

And.

So I'm real proud to take go take him.

Find me up to kind of do something with him and go take him a big donation for the driven dreams.

And.

Him and toys for tots give out stuff locally in the community.

And then there's another charity here in town that's also done a lot of good work for years, years, years.

Called the Houston Children's charity.

And they are partially.

They get some of their funding from the children's hospitals.

There's a big mattress company that provides beds for kids.

Texas mattress makers are here in Houston.

They're a big mattress building company and they give out beds for children.

They do Christmas stuff for them.

They're usually going to take them.

The other part of that donation.

I'm feeling pretty excited about that.

And in you know,

98% of those donations came from y'all.

You got to.

I'll put a lot of joy out in the world this year.

And I'm just so happy to kind of be the messenger and.

The delivery man for it.

It just tickles me to death.

Randy shop is beautiful.

First, Randy's art.

There's nothing short of stunning to me.

There's a period of time where you watch a young artist draw and draw and draw.

And they mimic the styles of other artists much in the way as a writer.

As I've learned to write, I've mimic the styles of other writers.

I learned how to mimic Faulkner.

I can mimic Kormack McCarthy pretty good too.

I just don't like Kormack McCarthy.

That I don't like.

But the very first Kormack McCarthy book I ever read was called The Road.

If you're familiar with the book, it is bleak.

It is.

It is bleak.

And I'm not into bleak.

And so I just don't.

I don't enjoy his writing as much.

And I haven't read a lot else by that.

That book kind of turned me off on him.

And my buddy Adam.

Editor is always telling me.

You got to give Kormack another try.

You know, you have to read this.

And I probably will at some point.

But I just haven't spent a lot.

But I'm very good at mimicking him.

His his Senate structure.

And kind of old school biblical language and resoluteness is something that's easy for me to mimic.

If I would like to.

Something I enjoy.

Like I said, I don't like it as much.

But you see that would create it.

You see everybody's inspired by something.

A lot of my early stand-up comedy.

You can really see Ralphie May's fingerprints all over it.

And Sam Kinnison's fingerprints on it.

And a little bit of Richard Prior on it.

And, you know, even my comedy, even my stand-up now, you can still see evidence of Ralphie's influence on me.

Like there's no doubt about it.

So many times I've had old friends of his coming.

You know, man, I won't bet you do.

You got to measure Ralph.

You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

I've been a lot of time learning from the dude.

But there comes a time where you find your own voice.

Either as an artist or a woodworker.

Whatever it is where you find your own voice and you stop relying on mimicry.

And your art takes a form of its own.

With its own signature and its own style.

And I've come into that in the last four or five years that my art is starting to take its own signature and style.

And people can kind of recognize when it's me doing something.

Not just from the voice, but from the style, which I do think.

A really stumbled on it and writing what was working on the record yard.

And Randy hit his own style 20 years ago.

But what has happened as a result of that is he has just further, further developed it.

And his artwork just, it stuns me.

He did my tattoo on my hand and it was based on an idea I had my head and one little image I had drawn.

And then he took it and just gave it kind of this bigger than life quality.

And I just couldn't be happier with the work he did for me.

And he's going to start another tattoo for me that I've talked about a little bit about.

But we're going to do a full sleeve on my left arm.

And the sleeve is going to be dedicated to the record yard.

It's going to have all the cars from the first season peppered into it like a junk yard with Cudzu and a little record yard sign.

Of course, my more prominent cars.

I want to be displayed a little more clearly.

And I have this Phoenix tattoo up here on my left shoulder that is something I drew.

And I had another tattoo artist do when I was younger.

Because I was too busy doing cocaine, I never went and got the tattoo finished.

And then that young artist was in a car wreck in Hawaii, killed him.

So that tattoo is kind of unfinished.

I've been walk around for 20-something years with this unfinished tattoo on my left shoulder.

So Rady took pictures of that and traced it all out and all that good stuff so that he can come up with a way to beautify it.

Because I think the Phoenix, the whole time we were writing the record yard and the whole time I was writing it and working on it going back and forth.

But there was always this symbolism of the Phoenix that is associated for me in my mind with the records.

That's why I got the original tattoos as being where I was rising from the ashes.

They're taking things that are broken and putting them back together.

Then I'm getting no more Phoenix than that.

And so I want to keep that imagery, but he's going to tie it in and just really put his own it and make it something special.

So it's good to sit.

I had very rarely I get an unencumbered afternoon where I don't have other stuff I'm supposed to be doing.

And I had myself a good three or four hours to just go over there and visit the Randy and he didn't have much clientele.

And it was just a good afternoon to catch up with this fellow that I've known since we were 13 years old.

His shop is beautiful.

It's a curation.

It's like an art exhibit when you walk into a shop.

This art he's collected over the years.

Art other people have done for him.

Art he's he paints wooden signs.

He does these wood cutouts and there's a bunch of that in there.

And it's just it's really beautiful.

It's a beautiful place to go into.

If you're ever in the Hueshtair, thinking about getting some artwork done,

you should look up by you city tattoos.

And Randy Lee Woods is a tremendous artist.

There was a moment when I was talking to him just catching up on the stories of being Randy or estranged for many years.

And we don't get to see each other very often any more usually when I go get a tattoo.

Because he works all the time and I work all the time.

That's what you do when you're growing up.

And though we live in the same city, we live on different ends of it.

You know, he kind of lives up there close to A-Leaf.

Well, he lives in Cady.

And I'm on the north side of town.

And the old joke is Houston's an hour away from Houston.

Well, Cady's like two hours away.

It's not that bad, but it is a miserable trip to get out there and bad.

Oh, that coffee.

Lord, I don't know what my sister's drinking.

Indonesian sumonatra, whatever the hell.

So we're catching up when we really got to hang out much since the pandemic.

Just one time when I went and had him do my tattoo on my hand.

And he wants to tune it up. He wants to dress up some of the color and twos up.

Hand tattoos are difficult because you're the skin on your hand.

I forgot the word.

Skin on your hand acts differently than the skin on different parts of your body.

And so sometimes it makes it take the heart to take hold.

Even though he put plenty of black on the bird's beak on my knuckle.

It didn't, you know, it scarred a little bit and I lost some of the black there.

And so he's gonna just tune up some of the black and some of the white highlights and stuff like that.

There's a moment when I was talking to him.

I was just catching up on the stories you don't know about each other.

And the people we do have in common.

And in the course of the conversation, talking about our careers and stuff.

He told me he was looking forward to moving out to a piece of land out in the country in the next five years.

And it's weird to hear guys my age talk about not shutting it down but moving on to the next check.

And he's like, you know, I'll probably keep the shot, hire somebody to run it.

But I'm ready to go out there so I can just hunt and fish, have piece of land, shoot the guns, do that sort of thing.

I must have looked at him funny.

Like I got him, you know.

Because then he said, he's a dude, we're nearly 50 years old.

And when he said, when he said we're nearly 50 years old, I started giggling uncontrollably.

The absurdity of it just tickled the shit out of me like I couldn't wrap my head.

It's weird, like it's one of my wife gives me, I'm five years older in my life.

My wife gives me grief all the time about my age, you know, but it's just joking.

And it doesn't really, you know, I always joke back.

No, no, no, no, no, I'm still in my mid 40s, you know, that kind of thing.

But somebody your own age, somebody your own age, go, dude, we're nearly 50.

It struck me in a way.

I couldn't stop laughing about it.

And I just looked at him, I go, somebody lost money and he started giggling to.

He's like, your dad and my dad, I was like, you ain't kid, you know.

We have damn never made it to 50.

I mean, that feels like something itself, you know.

But it was weird to think about that, like look at your buddy that you were teenagers with.

And go, we're nearly 50.

Shit struck me.

My father-in-law used to tell me all the time he was in his late 50s, early 60s.

And the guys that worked would refer to him as the old dude.

And it would get under his skin a little bit.

And he would tell me all the time he said, you know, I don't know when I became the old guy.

I don't know when that happened.

I still feel the same inside.

And I couldn't, I was too young to grasp what he was saying when he was telling me that.

But I get it now, like I remember when it happened to me, especially like in the convicings,

like young dudes, you know, and all of a sudden you're kind of one of the grandaddies of a sudden.

And it is that moment yesterday or Friday just struck me so deeply.

I couldn't stop laughing.

The absurdity of me being there 50 years old was just too much for my brain to comprehend in that moment.

It's something different when you're here.

Somebody your own age says it.

And you have to just stand there in the light of it and bear witness to the truth that they're dropping on you.

I was probably 13 when I met Randy.

We lived in Michigan, Bend and Houston.

I was always hurry friends with Melissa and had my little crush on her.

I met Randy at school.

We both went to Albright Middle School.

I was a bit of an outcast and Randy also bit of an outcast.

And he was a big kid, big kid, heavy.

I don't want to call him fat because I was kind of a chubby fat kid.

But he was, he was just big.

He was big all over.

He was big.

He was taller than us, broader than us.

He was a big kid, overweight, sure, but big.

He was a bruiser.

I kind of had red hair.

And was goofy as shit.

Was silly, dude.

We would have so much fun together hanging out.

He would always make me laugh.

I just always really enjoyed him when we were that age.

And we would spend our days just running around doing,

going hang out in the bayou and looking for stuff in the bayou

and catching giant bull frogs down in the bayou.

I would spend the night at his house.

He's been the night at our house.

We had another little friend named Johnny Skoggins

that Randy and Johnny had been friends for a while.

My parents were strict.

Randy's parents were pretty authoritarian back then too,

but a little more lax.

And Johnny Skoggins' dad was an authoritarian nightmare.

He was kind of abusive, not kind of, or fairly abusive.

And really rough on Johnny.

Johnny Skoggins played the drums like nobody's business.

He was a drummer.

We'd hang out, but Randy had procured this magazine

and some of you guys might be old enough to remember these cartoons,

but it was basically like a thick cartoon book magazine

and it was called The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

And it was these hippie dudes that run around,

screwing girls and smoking dope,

and probably all the stuff at 13-year-old should not be reading,

but Randy had procured a couple of these.

Back then, porn was harder to come across.

And so this was the closest look we were getting at boobs at that time,

and of course, me and him and Johnny were in Johnny's room looking

through these magazines.

And Johnny's dad comes in and sees the magazine,

and yanks it out of our hand, sends me and Randy home.

And of course, Whips Johnny yells at Johnny all night,

and Johnny's not allowed to hang out with us anymore.

Well, first Johnny wasn't allowed to hang out with Randy,

and then me and Johnny would still hang out a little bit,

and then at some point his dad didn't want me coming over anymore either.

Randy was always kind of getting craft on like that.

Treated as less than.

I didn't realize them were kids, but I realize it now looking back.

It's one of those things that, you know,

when you look back through the kaleidoscope

and the long-viewed lens of your life

that you can see things differently,

and I realized that he was treated less than.

And I didn't understand it when we were that age.

I wish I had them.

I might have been a better friend.

It might not. I was a pretty selfish kid.

But me and Randy, we would walk up down the railroad tracks every day,

just talking. We were friends.

Randy was really into him and his younger brother,

and they were really into WWF back then.

I was not the biggest wrestling kid.

Wrestling something I got into later on,

but they loved WWF,

watched all that sort of stuff.

And so my first real memories of watching wrestling

was watching wrestling with Randy.

In fact, we were watching wrestling at their house one time.

It was going to date, held, I am.

As if I've not already talked about that for 36 minutes.

We were watching wrestling, and it was Jake the snake,

versus a fella they called the earthquake.

He was a large, large human being.

And the earthquake beats Jake the snake in this rowdy match.

And at the time, at that age,

I did not understand how much of wrestling was scripted,

and how much of it was performance, and how much.

I mean, obviously, even though now I know it requires a great bit

of criticism to do what these guys do,

but I didn't realize how much of it was performative back then.

Jake the snake, if you remember,

of course, had this big ole snake.

He'd get the bag, and then every razzle somebody wrapped snake around him.

Let's snake tongue kiss him in the ear,

or something, I don't remember all of it.

At some point, earthquakes winning this match,

he takes Jake the snake snake in the bag.

You don't see it, and sets it up in the ring,

and then goes back and forth,

calls for ring three times, and does his earthquake,

but slam or move on the snake.

Effectively, in our minds, killing the snake.

He does it several times while Jake the snake mourns

from the sidelines, because he can't get there to help his snake, buddy.

And I ain't like snakes.

I'm not a snake guy.

I've not somebody ever have a snake for a pet.

They a nerve me a little bit.

But I cried about that damn snake.

I don't know the cruelty of...

It just seemed like cruelty,

and I'm softhearted about animals,

and I cried about that snake,

and I remember I got my stuff, and I went home,

because I didn't want to hang out anymore.

I want to watch him more razzling.

And my dad convinced me it was all fake,

when he found out I was upset about it.

But that stuck with me for a long time.

You know, like it's certain things like that stick with you.

Randy's a lot tougher than me and Johnny was.

Randy had two older sisters used to beat shit out of him for sport.

As one of his sisters, the one closest to us,

a few years older than us,

her name was Teresa.

And boy, when I was 13, 14 years old,

I just thought Teresa was the prettiest thing that ever walked around.

She was kind of cool and punk rock,

and she wore combat boots and cool clothes,

and she was just cooler than everybody else I do.

And boy, I kind of had like a little teenage crush on her.

I thought she was some kind of something.

I remember she had them combat boots,

and Randy borrowed them without telling her,

and he came over and spent the night at my house,

and then we had to walk back.

So his neighborhood was like, we moved.

At one point, we lived in the same neighborhood,

like a street apart from each other,

but then we moved to another neighborhood called Forest View,

and it was about two or three miles away.

And so me and Randy got up the next day and walked back to his house.

It was mostly just fields.

You had walked a bunch of fields and a railroad track,

and then you're back in Mission Ben,

once you got over A Leaf Floating.

Back then, A Leaf was very sparse.

You know, there was just big, empty fields everywhere.

There wasn't as many sugarcane fields left,

like most of that had been cut down and was gone,

but there was still just empty swabs of pasture everywhere,

and plenty of woods and stuff to go run around in.

It's all subdivisions and cookie cutter tracked homes down.

Now we walked back to his house.

Houston's was hot.

And he walked into the house with those combat boots on,

and Teresa realized he had her boots,

and she came on the hinge on his ass,

maybe taking boots off right there.

And then she fed her, he wasn't wearing socks,

so he'd been sweating in her boots,

and she was so pissed.

And she was just railing him and slapping him,

and he's like, well, Jerry ate my socks, you know,

just being funny, just being Randy,

but I was mortified because now the hot cool punk rock girl

thought I ate a pair of socks,

and then she yelled at me a little bit,

went off to her room and slammed the door.

I was so mad at Randy,

like I don't know why I thought that was what threw me off.

This is the first time,

the first time I ever watched Saturday Night Live

was at Randy's house.

I didn't stay up at late.

My parents didn't stay up late, you know.

My parents weren't big TV people back then.

We were kind of fresh out of the Pentecostal church,

and they still, you know,

hear their too much TV late at night,

and anything risky.

The first time they had VH1,

and the first time my dad saw the,

my dad likes Madonna.

He thought Madonna was something else.

But then when he saw the Liker Prayer video for Madonna

with the Black Jesus in it,

and all the suggestive,

whew!

That was ready to get VH1 taken off there.

He was like,

boy, we ain't gonna have that felt in my house.

I'll be damned.

Well, video don't even scratch a surface no more.

But I watched Saturday Night Live the first time

at Randy's house.

We were spending the night,

and his parents made us,

his parents,

I think they were from New York

or somewhere up in the east coast

that they made garlic,

cheese, homemade pizza.

And to this day,

some of the best pizza I ever had in my life

was at Randy Lee's house,

when I was a teenager.

And we would go to the lake a lot

in the summer,

we would go up to Lake Tyler

where Granny and Puffalls barge was,

and a couple of times,

the year I turned 13,

or 14,

and we've been 13.

Year I turned 13.

Randy went with us a couple times,

for one time,

went up there and hung out for like a week or two

at the lake.

We had the best time,

swimming,

cutting up.

Then something happened right after,

his parents split up right after that.

And I don't know all the details.

Ain't none of my business know how.

But it wasn't good,

whatever way it was a pretty rough event.

I don't think divorce was ever good,

but there's a particularly bad one.

And I think Randy and his little brother

felt the brunt of it.

And Randy got kind of mean.

And I think when you get bullied enough,

eventually you become the bully.

It happened to me.

It's happened to other people I knew who were bullied.

And Randy became the bully for a little while.

And he might not see it that way.

I might be wrong,

but that was my perspective at the time.

He got mean and a little unpredictable.

He started fighting more.

We didn't hang out as much.

And I was all,

I was real hung up on Melissa.

My dad took me and Melissa on a date to a haunted house.

I told you all the story.

I got scared and accidentally pushed Melissa into a wall trying to get away

from the guy with a fake chainsaw.

And banged her face and Melissa had a bruise on her face.

She was also one for the dramatic herself.

So I don't know what story she told people at school.

Of course, I told everybody what had happened.

You know, obviously I did not hit a girl.

That's not what happened.

But I don't, me and Randy weren't that close at the time.

And to this day, I don't 100% know.

And I don't care enough to ask.

What was behind what he did?

But he walked up behind me in the lunchroom.

And I like turned.

When I turned to the right,

he punched me in the side of the face with a big old fist.

And knocked me down.

And I bawled like a little baby.

And I said,

when you think about regrets in your life,

like that's one that I was like a little,

I cried bald and the teachers ran over to me.

And of course, another little girl,

like make fun of me about it later,

did a mockery of it.

And it's like one of those things,

one of those turning points in your life,

or I wish I just jumped up and started fighting back.

He would have woke my ass,

and I'd feel better about that situation.

But that's not what happened.

I cried like a little baby

and me and him stopped hanging out.

You know, his kids' friendships with kids,

it's how it goes.

And I would hear stories about him

because we were still,

you know, I had kind of found my little bunch of outcast,

and he kind of found his little bunch of outcast.

We're still in this little community.

As we grew up,

I would hear stories about him,

you know, beating somebody up

and getting in trouble at school.

You know, he started kind of going to

the dark route.

You know, we're in the black clothes

and shaved his head.

I remember it was three miles from him.

I remember this.

I was probably 16 or 17

a few years later.

And I had this friend down the street

named Justin Webb.

And Justin or his brother,

one, had been picking on Randy's old brother.

Chris, Chris is a giant now,

but Chris was kind of a tiny little thing back then.

And one of them had been picking on Chris at school

for something.

And Randy got his little brother

and walked three miles to that neighborhood

to knock on Justin's door

and went just over the door,

just knock him on his ass,

just punch him, knock him right on the ground, you know.

Split his lip.

I would hear these kind of stories, you know.

Not really thinking,

you know, we're a kid,

you're not that introspective.

Of course, years go by,

and we all live our own lives.

And I would see him here and there.

He would be hanging out with these dudes,

and I'd be hanging out with these dudes.

We'd run across each other.

There's different places where everybody

and they lived sort of partied and hung out.

I would see him with his group,

and he'd see me with his group.

Been working on this particular story.

It goes in the book.

But I had that little high school girlfriend, Amy.

And we split up in high school.

She broke up with me in high school.

And blamed her on me

giving this other girl a ride home

that was not like anything like that.

This girl got shit on all the time.

She needed a ride.

I gave her a ride to her house.

But I had found out there was this other dude

that we went to school and named Tray.

And Tray looked like a 30-year-old when we were in high school.

And Tray had a bad crush on Amy.

And Tray was kind of a loser.

He always was kind of a loser.

And he did manipulate the shifty things

and he had a crush on Amy.

Now, I later found out that he was the one

that went and told Amy he saw me.

And he of course made it much more salacious,

trying to break me in.

Yep, he did a good job because it worked.

Years later, after I've been working in Mexico

and stuff, Amy reconnected.

We date for a little while.

Of course, she's looking for somebody to be a grown-up.

I had no interest in that at that period of time.

And I did something really awful

and I just ghosted that girl.

And just stopped talking to her

and just went on with my life.

Rather than having an honest adult conversation

with her about why we were going to work out

like any rational human being would,

as young and dumb.

And a couple of years after that,

me and Tray happened to just be out one night drinking,

doing our thing.

Me and my early 20s,

at this point.

And we go to the eye hop

after a night of debauchery.

Two o'clock and more.

And we go and eye hop drunk and lead our breakfast.

And we were walking towards the cashier

to go pay for our meal and leave.

And I remember off to the left here,

there was one of those big round tables

with the round booth around it.

And there was Randy shaved head,

you know, tattoos.

Looking like he still beat anybody in the room.

And at that table,

as part of his group of outcasts,

of course, also was Tray.

And some other dudes that I had known

for many years growing up in Aley.

And there I was, my cowboy boot.

They were looking kind of death metal and punk rock

and I had kind of fallen into the group

and fell into one of the cowboy boots

and belt buckles and the cowboy hat.

And we're walking by

and it was like seeing somebody across the chasm.

I looked at Randy and Randy looked at me

and he kind of nodded.

And I remember thinking in my head,

like, why aren't we friends anymore?

What happened?

Why aren't we friends anymore?

And I just kind of nodded back

and I walked up to pay for my food.

Of course, right when I get up to register,

pay for my food.

Another ghost from the past, Amy,

comes walking up with her mother and her sister.

And she hollers at me.

I thought you were dead

because I ghosted her.

And before I could say another word,

she just hauled off and slapped the piss out of me.

She slapped me open-handed across the face.

So hard that I dropped my change

and money on the ground

and heard her mom and her sister just stormed by me.

And I heard Randy and all of them at that table

just fall out laughing.

And I bit down to pick up my change

and I was standing up and I looked at Joey.

And Joey just kind of gave me one of these like,

eh, you had it covered.

You know what I mean?

Because I did. I had it covered.

I got off light really.

She was merciful.

That's all I got out of my behavior for that.

I got off light.

She was merciful to me.

For the anguish I put that girl through

for no reason.

Other than being stupid and cruel.

But it was one of those turning points for me.

That whole night was kind of a weird night.

But it was like one of those turning points

because that was one of those times

where I felt like Uncle Bobby

and not in a good way.

I had seen literally almost that same interaction

happen to him.

And I remember saying,

I don't like the way this feels.

I don't want people to feel about me that way.

And I don't see Randy again for many years after that.

Sometime after Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Hike.

Sorry.

2008.

After me and Rachel were married.

I went to work.

Being Steve were working together, my buddy.

I've been telling him stuff about Steve

also grew up in Adely.

Being Steve started working together.

Doing construction.

One day we go over to Home Depot

to pick up a big-order construction materials.

And this giant of a man comes walking up.

And I realized that it's Randy Woods.

And at the time he was running the pro desk

at Home Depot.

He was in charge of all the builders.

Big orders and all that stuff.

He was the pro guy.

And he knew Steve.

And Steve's like,

do you remember Randy from school?

I was like, yeah, I remember.

Randy, like, I know Randy, like, yeah, bro.

I know Randy.

And we talked to him a little bit in Home Depot.

He tells me at that time,

this is 20-something years, 2008.

However long ago that is.

He tells me at that time,

yeah, I'm getting ready.

I'm not going to be here much longer

because I'm opening my own tattoo shop.

He had already been doing tattoo work for many, many years

and kind of developed his style at that point

and had interned under another artist.

And I believe I may have that screwed up.

I don't want to say for sure that's how it went down.

But he had taught himself and he was,

he's getting ready to open his own shop.

Yes, he's been saving up and preparing for that.

Of course, Steve got excited

because he's got a friend that does tattoo work

and he thinks he can get some cheap

by God he's going to do it, you know?

And Steve was going through his divorce

and he was going wild.

So Steve started going to his tattoo shop

to get artwork done.

And I had wanted to get this piece made for me

and Rachel, it's me and Rachel's initials.

And I had it put on the inside of my forearm.

And so I went over me and Rachel and Steve

all went over the Randy shop,

his first shop location one night

and he did that tattoo work for me.

And we reconnected a little bit.

It was good.

But then me and Steve were going through our stuff

and we were, you know,

our relationship was coming to a head.

Somewhere in that time period,

so Steve had a younger sister named Law, Sheila.

And law, my sister had been friends

and we're really close for a long time

and law had a son

from a guy who wasn't really a very good dude

or at least I didn't think he was.

He wasn't much in the way of fatherhood

and that sort of thing,

a bit of a screw up.

And law had been raising her son

on her own with the help of her family.

And her and Randy met,

and they, I don't know their exact love story

because it happened while I was away,

but they fell in love

and they got married.

But that also got Steve deeper in the Randy.

And of course,

back then, I don't know who Steve is now.

Maybe a wonderful human being,

a business person now.

Back then, entanglement was Steve

used to went bad for whoever was entangled with Steve financially.

And I think him and Randy's situation came to a head.

I mean, I know it came to a head

in that.

But I kept up with Randy.

I loved his artwork.

And I loved seeing this dude like,

some of you had been in trouble a lot

and all this kind of stuff.

And I had this view of,

I had seen like a remarkable

that first time I went and got that tattoo

and we had such a great conversation.

And I would follow him on Instagram

and follow him on social media.

I watched him evolve.

You know, like turned into this,

he was inspiring.

He had lost a bunch of weight.

He was losing weight.

He was working out and getting his fitness.

And he inspired me to start working out

and start working.

Randy's the reason I grew my beard.

Randy had a big, old, long beard back then.

I thought it looked cool.

And I was like,

and that's why I started growing my beard.

It was because of Randy.

I thought it was cool.

And then he cut his all off.

But I like mine still.

So I keep it.

And we would talk a little bit,

you know, through social media stuff like that.

And push a few years after,

you know, you have kids and life just keeps rolling along.

And I would keep up with Randy in law.

And I was so happy.

And Randy really, like, took on,

I hate to use word, stepfather,

because he's more like a father than that kid.

But her little son, Randy,

took to that kid.

And you just saw that kid blossoming

to a good young man underneath Randy's tutelage.

And he also saw that kid wasn't going the direction

of maybe me and Randy and Steve had gone as young people,

because he had some good guidance.

So maybe it was taking the time.

Randy became a Mason in that time period.

And I really watched him flourish after becoming a Mason.

Masonry's not for me.

It's not something I have any interest in pursuing.

And they probably wouldn't want me anyways, honestly.

But I just watched him continue to evolve.

It was really cool.

And a few years after my mom had passed,

I went to Randy with this tattoo idea.

And he of course wanted to do it.

He knew my mom.

And he did this beautiful artwork for me.

And we had a great reconnection that we spent a lot of time.

It takes a long time to do a piece like that.

We really got to spend some time talking

and interacting with one another.

And I started following him more closely.

And then during the Whiskey Brothers podcast,

I had him own as a guest to talk about his shop.

And the dude, I just watched him during Harvey,

his shop on Highway 6 flooded five foot of water inside it.

The whole time, Randy's doing him in law

would get in clown makeup

and go do clown work for the Shriners

at the Shriners Hospital for the kids.

And they would go do the Shriners circuit.

Just doing stuff for his community.

Doing toys for tots.

We had another friend named Peter

that this dude went through all kind of crap.

And I just found out like the enormity

of everything Randy did for this guy,

while this guy was in prison.

This guy was in prison.

His son dies.

That he gets deported to Poland.

And they don't accept his education.

And Poland and Randy spends just hours

getting this guy's transcripts

and getting the international notary to help this dude out.

He just goes and tells him in prison that his son has died.

He just continues to be this person in the community

this better person than I ever dreamed of being honestly

in his works.

In his attitude.

When I saw him when he did my hand tattoo,

he was so zen.

He was such a remarkably different guy

than the guy I do as a teenager.

He just seemed so deliberate

and in control of his life.

He had a child that was taken from him by the mother.

And I don't know all the details of it.

But I do know that Randy

moved heaven and earth to try to get that baby back

and get to a point where he was able to have a relationship

with his child.

And that says something about a man's character.

His father is sick.

He takes care of his father.

He says something about a man's character.

He looked after his little brother always.

That says something.

It was a beautiful thing to watch from a distance

and to know this person may be proud to know this person.

And he said something we were talking about

Masonry in his shop Friday.

And he said something that struck me.

He told me that he said you know one of the things

he really enjoys about Masonry was there's no other place

where he would have friends that are men that are his age

and older and much older.

You know, some of them 80, 90.

And he said they're far more successful

than I ever dreamed of being.

And I don't know what kind of success those guys have

or what benchmark they're using to measure success

or even what benchmark he does.

But what he said that I kept thinking

now you're the successful one.

You gave this kid, I mean his steps on

has had a different life because of him.

And anybody denies that's a fool, a fool and a liar.

He gave this young man guidance,

gave him a path.

That young man I think is about to go in the air force.

I don't think that's the path that young man would have had

under the guidance of his uncles.

You know.

That's wrap it up right there.

Let's do some testimonials.

I got these already.

We're going to do something special in the testimonials today

because I realized something that

I'm going to do this one first.

For those y'all listening, you're not going to get much out of this,

but this is for the people who like to participate.

So when this episode, when my episode's air on YouTube

on Sundays at 5.30 p.m. Central time,

when you go to YouTube and you go to look at the video

and underneath the videos, the comments,

you can swipe that to the left.

You can just click right there and swipe left

and it'll put you in a live chat.

And I like to hang out in the live chat on Sundays at 5.30

while the episode's airing just a bullshit with folks

and have some fellowship with you guys that want to show up.

So I know the listing guys can't do that,

but you fellas watching, you know,

some y'all in the chat right now.

But there's a guy that comments on my video every Sunday

without fail.

And I can tell he watches it right when he comes home

because he's always the first comment.

There's a fellow named Mike Flysner.

I've read some of his comments before,

and it dawned on me reading some of his comments

on the last couple episodes

that I think Mike's trying to get into the live chat

and it's not working for him.

So I'm going to show a little video right here

over my shoulder that shows,

and Mike, I hope you're watching how to get into the live chat

because it's not very clear.

It took me a little while to figure it out.

And it's not very clear.

But this, if you watch this video,

it shows you how to get into the live chat

in case you ever want to show up

and hang out with us in the live chat.

And because Mike just leaves me so many comments

that I was like,

man, you would have such a good time in the live chat

with this market.

I would love to chit chat with you, you know,

because he's very, he always comments on everything.

And I can tell from his comments

that he's commenting along with the video

as he's watching it.

And you just ought to be in the live chat with his brother.

And there's for anybody that doesn't know

how to get into the live chat.

So I'll show this quick little video

and I'm just going to guess that it takes about 10 to 15 seconds.

And I'll probably just keep talking

while that's happening.

But if you need to know how to get into the live chat,

that little video shows how to do it.

And I just wanted to do it because Mike comments every week

and I'm like, brother, you ought to be in the live chat with this.

And I think you're trying to get there.

But YouTube's not very clear about how to do it.

So if you're in the live chat,

we're all chatting in real time.

And it's always a good time.

Sometimes, some weeks it's quiet.

I've learned,

funny enough that the better the podcast is,

the quieter the chat is,

because y'all are busy watching.

And if the podcast is a little boring,

it gets real chatting.

They ain't all winners.

I know they ain't.

I write this thing every week in between likes

and creating all my other content.

And I know I've been dragging while I've been working on this book.

So I get it.

My feelings ain't hurt.

Nobody has the like every episode.

There's some of y'all.

I lost some fans during that second season

where I was doing all the voices and the characters.

And it was just too much for everybody.

All right.

There's been enough time to watch that video.

Fear how to get in here.

Let's go.

All right.

Good.

The cron cat.

The cron.

Oh.

At the cron craft show 4227.

This is these are testimonials.

These are comments from last week's episode.

Testimonial.

If you read.

Cron craft show.

I was talking about language last week.

Talking about the Scott's Irish and the Welsh.

Or your Celtic cousins.

You have some of the same speech patterns as ourselves.

You say batteries instead of batteries for the word batteries.

I can't wait to read your book.

And with your blessing,

I'll read it aloud in my Dublin accent.

I'm not a voice actor.

I just think it'd be a fun project.

I would love to hear my words read in a Dublin accent.

I wish I could do accents so bad.

I think we do have some of the same speech patterns.

The Appalachian speech patterns.

I'm not, you know,

I'm never trying to claim that I'm Appalachian.

But my family.

Oh, Appalachian.

Really on both sides.

Come from that place.

And so I was raised in Texas.

You know, we had a lot of red necks.

And I was raised by hillbillies.

People that come from the hills and that have those speech patterns.

And I think they do closely resemble.

I love reading stuff from Scotland and Ireland.

And I can tell the writing similarity

and the similarity and the way you put words together to make a sentence.

So I see that too.

I did not know y'all said to wear a battery, though,

which is delightful to be.

The battery is, because my papa Longmire,

who is very much a hillman from Tennessee.

And he's a reason I say battery,

because it was just a battery, you know.

Let's see.

What else we got this week?

At Jacob Altrey, Joe Buddy Jake.

I can't stand when some mouth breather

decides to pace the car next to him and block the FN Highway up.

I don't get mad about much, but I think it's because I get my anger out in the highway.

Yeah.

And you drive a bunch.

If you're the guy, nope, I'm confusing you with another guy.

Maybe not.

I don't know.

I know two Jake's from that area up in the Midwest.

And I get y'all confused sometimes.

But I know one of these mobile mechanic drives all over the place.

See, probably spent a lot of time on the highway.

That drives me baddie too.

Use the left lane like it's supposed to be used.

You don't just stay out of it, man.

Why in the hill would you drive the exact same speed as the car next?

You don't make no damage.

Unless you're just directly trying to be an antagonistic monster.

Why would you do that?

If you're not past somebody, get the hell out of the left lane.

Or if you're in Ireland, I guess you'll get the hell out of the right lane.

Is y'all's left lane still the past lane or is your right lane the past lane?

It seems like it's probably the right lane.

Yeah, I drive me baddie.

It drives me nuts.

Really, really drives me out the deep end is the truck drivers now.

And I grew up around truck drivers and no disrespect to the job whatsoever.

I'm aware of the value of the service that truck drivers provide to our country

and our communities and giving us the goods and making sure we get the things we need

when we need them.

But so many of the trucks are governed now.

And so you got this guy who's going one mile an hour faster than this guy.

And now he's going to pull out and try to pass him.

And now you're stuck behind the longest most boring drag race in history for seven miles

while this truck going one mile an hour tries to get over in front of this other guy.

But first of all, the dude going slower, you seem getting around the passing.

Tap your brake.

You know he's going fast.

You let him get up in front of you and clear, keep the highway clear.

No reason to dog everybody up over that.

Also you guys that's going one mile an hour faster.

Is it that big deal?

Clocking back mile.

I don't know how your money works in my business, but it's infuriating.

I was stuck.

I was coming out of Nashville on my way up to Louisville one time.

And it's coming out of Nashville about six o'clock in the morning.

I was stuck behind one of these that I shit you not went on for 12 miles.

Just stuck behind these two.

Most of them barely doing over 65.

Good Lord.

Took me six hours.

Get the Louisville that day.

I was so hot.

Time I got there.

How many Jake?

I know I preach a message of kindness.

But whoo.

It's not the message I preach when I'm behind the wheel.

Everybody but me is a dirty rotten low down son of a bitch when I'm behind the wheel.

I cuss everybody on that highway.

Oh, that is some terrible cost.

My God.

I kept thinking it was going to get better like maybe it's an acquired taste.

I don't know what the hell you got to do to acquire that taste.

But I ain't got the stones for it today.

All right, let's wrap this thing up.

Yeah, I told you that about Randy saying that about the success.

It struck me and I had to sit down and write about it.

Not only that, but the reconnection.

There's a deep kind of value in having folks who remind you where you come from.

Not the ones who try to haul you back into the mess.

We've talked about that.

God knows I got blood relatives who can drag you into 1998 faster than a relapse.

But the ones who survived the same storms you did and even worse storms and came out on the other side

without turning into a cautionary tale on a billboard.

Folks who can look at your past with that quiet knowing grin that says,

yep, we should both be dead.

Yet here we are, miracles happen.

I've seen all kinds of definitions of success floating around out there.

I think most of us, most people measure it with money.

Hell, hell, hell, I've done it too.

I thought if I ever hit financial success, I'd turn into the kind of man

who sleeps through the night and doesn't panic when the phone rings from a unknown number.

Turns out money doesn't fix your demons, it just buys them nicer shoes.

And depending on the demon they might buy a gun too.

These days I find myself pointing my ship towards the kind of success Randy's carved out.

Randy's not rich.

He's not flashy, but he's deliberate, solid.

Kind of man who knows exactly who he is and doesn't apologize for it.

He took a stepson, a young man who could have gone sideways in a dozen different ways,

instead of preaching or posturing, he just showed up steady, reliable, stubborn

in all the most holy of ways.

That boy didn't need a superhero, he needed a man he could anchor to and Randy was that anchor.

He helps his community, he minds his business.

He absolutely does not go looking for a fight, but if a fight shows up on his doorstep

and threatens the folks he loves, he will turn into a cautionary headline real quick.

He's respected by his peers, appreciated by his neighbors,

and watched very closely by anyone who wants to get out of line that values their dental configuration.

You can't buy that kind of success, you gotta earn it the long way,

the bloody, uncompromising, grown man way.

And if that isn't success, I don't know what the hell is.

The truth is when you start measuring success by character instead of cash,

the list of successful people in your life gets real damn short.

Most folks are one bad week away from lighting their life on fire.

Some don't even wait for the bad week, they just keep matches in the drum door just in case.

Don't get me wrong, I'd still like to try financial success.

I've heard that money can't buy happiness and maybe I was true,

but I also know poverty can't buy shit, so I'm willing to run the experiment.

Worst case scenario, I buy a boat and ruin my life in a fun new zip code.

The real point is you gotta watch how you measure success.

If you use the wrong parameters, you'll swear your life is off course,

when really you're doing just fine.

Some of y'all think you're failure because you ain't rich,

but I know plenty of rich people who aren't successful.

Not if you judge by who they are when the lights go out.

A lot of them couldn't got a house plant, much less a child.

Success ain't shiny, ain't allowed.

Half the time, I think success just looks like my buddy Randy.

Stead isn't of dangerous wind provoked, general wear counts,

and unwilling to let the world to up someone who's counting on them.

Kind of man who give you the shirt off his back while modern dammit don't bleed on that,

I've only got three.

That's success, that's Mark Worst Jason.

If I can manage even half of that before my time's up,

you know, for the time of day, they lay me out nice and tidy

and pretend I look peaceful and say a bunch of nice things about me.

If I can achieve half what he's done, I call it a win.

I hope you're measuring success in the right ways.

I hope you're not comparing your life to others based on financials

and more so based on respect and how you treat people.

You know, it's that Sturgel Simpson song where he says,

everybody shake hands, everybody you meet and cheat and greet along the way.

We all got some flaws, we all made some mistakes, but by God,

it's what you continue to do that matters.

That's how you measure your success every week.

I hope that's what you're looking for in life.

I'm rooting for you, always.

Always will be.

I'm JW and I love you.

Bunge.

Oh my God, I got a lot to do.

I keep getting lost.

I got to give him the nit and stuff.

I got him.

Y'all be safe y'all see you next week.

A measure of success |S:03E.76

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