If I could only fly
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LIVE
Are you really digging for peace?
Or is that just a light tale to help us sleep?
Sure that you really want real behind all the stories that go.
Still remembers fire.
Press remembers rain.
Welcome to the wrecking yard.
I'm Jerry Wayne Longmire. Y'all, presumably still y'all.
All the welcome here in the Church of Internal Combustion.
We just asked that you show up with an open heart.
Oh, I hope y'all are doing well today.
It is about one o'clock in the PM on Sunday.
Today I'm running a little behind.
Excuse me.
Oh, man.
We are here in lovely Houston, Texas.
It's already pollen weather.
Tree pollen's going crazy.
My sinuses are inflamed.
I'm eating honey and taking a leg run.
Hoping for the best.
A little elderberry.
All the home remedies.
I don't really like a whole lot of pills.
I used to like a whole lot of pills.
Down days I don't like a lot of pills.
It reminds me of that old Mitch Hepburn joke.
I used to do drugs.
I still do, but I used to also.
It is a balmy.
What is that?
There's 70 degrees here.
In the wrecking yard today.
Sorry.
Man, it's been a good weekend.
Actually, I'm kind of...
It's hard to tell sometimes.
Rachy made a joke about it this morning.
About my resting bitch face.
It's hard to tell what I'm happy sometimes.
She knows how to tell.
She can always tell when I've done something really good.
Or I'm really proud of something.
I think maybe this happens to a lot of us.
There's just certain songs programmed in your head.
Somehow throughout your life.
I don't really remember the Wizard of Oz.
This is what I remember about the Wizard of Oz.
I saw it when I was a kid.
The witch and the flying monkey scared me.
I cried.
All the grown-ups tried to...
All the beings were like,
Oh, it's fine. She's going to get melted.
That kind of stuff tried to make me feel better about it.
I just remember I bawled.
I was terrified of the flying monkeys and the witch.
That's all I remember of the Wizard of Oz.
But, anytime I do something good.
Anytime that I'm proud of myself.
This song.
It's the Scarecrow song.
If I only had a brain.
I don't know where that comes from.
I don't know who drilled that into my brain at a very young age.
But that song is there.
And Rachel's always said throughout 17, 18 years of being together.
She can always tell when I'm particularly proud of myself.
Because I'll be humming or whistling or singing if I only had a brain.
It'll just pop up.
I would wow away the hours conferring with the flowers and sulting with the rain.
Anyways, come Friday night.
Boy, that song was just bounce.
I just had such a good Friday.
The stuff was bouncing out of me.
Had a good day yesterday.
Had a bunch of good writing yesterday.
Felt good.
We had this little bit of late night.
We had some drinks and hung out.
Finished watching Tombstone.
We started watching Tombstone this week.
And we're bad about movies.
We'll start watching movies, watch part of it, and then watch the next part of it the next night.
Our favorite thing to do, especially right now, we got some balmy weather in Houston.
And then we only get a week or so of that here and there.
So our favorite thing to do is go sit out on the screen porch at night.
Have some drinks, set the iPad up, watch something, maybe listen to music.
Lately we've been, like I said, watching.
And we had a list of stuff we'd been wanting to watch as soon as we finished Fallout.
So we finished Fallout and jumped right off into, we watched Tombstone.
And man, that movie holds up.
I've kind of gotten, there's a thing, you know, here's the deal.
We were talking about this last night, actually.
We ordered pizza and the pizza was pretty good.
But I remember I was kind of laughing at the guy, the Barstool sports guy.
I don't know if y'all know, I can't remember his name.
But one of his big gags was he would go around and try pizza from places and rate pizza, right?
And that always seemed like such an asinine thing to do because pizza's pretty hard to screw up.
If you screw up pizza, you have really gone out of your way to take some basic ingredients and just undo that.
It's basically, you know, it's the same as every great food.
It's meat, some cheese, some bread, maybe a little sauce.
It's sandwich, it's hot dog, it's any great food.
It's meat, it's cheese, some bread.
But you screw pizza up, you have to really work at it.
You have to work.
I've had some bad pizza.
I've had some weird pizza that people try to do weird things and screwed it up.
But you have to screw it up.
But to go around and decide what is the best pizza seems like an asinine task.
I mean, really think about what's your favorite pizza?
I know what my favorite pizza is right now.
It's this little pizzeria that I've been going to since I was like 16.
It's called Brothers Pizzeria.
They had a couple of locations here in Houston.
They had one in the West Oaks Mall.
And that was a big deal.
My mom would take us, we'd get a slice of cheese pizza.
And that's still my favorite day, just a slice of cheese pizza, man.
That lets me know if I like a pizza place right off the bat.
I just have a slice of cheese pizza.
I know if I'm into what they're doing or not.
But to try to decide what is the best just seems asinine, right?
Because there's so much great pizza out there.
There's so much.
And also your taste in the things you love are subjective, right?
For the most part, they're subjective.
What I love is not going to be what you love.
In my mind, there's no better pizza than the way Brothers Pizza tasted when I was 17 years old.
It don't taste like that now because I ain't 17 years old anymore.
Now I'm worried about heartburn, other bullshit when I take it by the pizza.
I've got other things on my mind.
17-year-old me could just enjoy pizza.
And so no pizza will ever taste as good as that pizza ever again.
It's impossible, right?
Because that's a perspective-based taste.
I think a lot of things are like that in our lives.
And I don't know, it's just kind of a weird thought I had about that when we were talking about it.
And so a lot of times I'm hesitant to go watch an old movie that I love growing up
because they don't all hold up.
Sometimes you watch an old movie and you're like,
damn, this kind of ruined this for me.
And I'm thankful Tombstone did not.
I fell into Tombstone.
And my God, how I cried when Bill Paxton's character died
because it dawned on me that Bill Paxton was gone too.
And I just adored Bill Paxton.
So watching Morgan die this time was just way worse, way worse.
You know what they say about seeing a light white?
It ain't true.
I can't see a damn thing.
I was just on the corner, just done, right?
Anyways, so go watch that one again.
It holds up.
My God.
You know what's sad is they made another movie at the same time called Wyatt Earp.
I think it's Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid.
It was Dennis Quaid for sure.
It played Doc Holiday.
I don't remember if it was Kevin Costner.
It played Wyatt Earp.
And that movie was a little more true to real life, like got past some of the fiction about
Wyatt Earp and really talked about, you know, some of his dirty dealings and stuff.
But what sucks for Dennis Quaid is he played an absolutely riveting Doc Holiday.
And nobody gives a shit because Val Kilmer's the best Doc Holiday it's ever been.
Val Kilmer's Doc Holiday came.
You can't make a movie about Doc Holiday now.
You realize that?
Like nobody can ever make a movie about Doc Holiday now.
Because nobody can ever recapture what the hell Val did.
That can never be done again.
It's done.
I say that.
I thought nobody could ever play the Joker again after Heath Ledger.
And then I'm a Jack Nicholson fan.
You know, I love Jack Nicholson's Joker.
But that Joker mover with the guy with the lip.
I can't remember his name.
Joaquin Phoenix.
That movie with him.
Fantastic.
It's a great interpretation.
But boy, you would have to really go outside the box to find a Doc Holiday that I vibed with ever again.
That movie held up.
I was glad.
Let's get to why Friday was so good.
I can't go in a lot of detail because I've got an NDA signed about this project.
But I hate auditions.
I've never left an audition feeling good in my life.
There's something about that pressure point of being there and exposed and not in your own element.
Even Zoom audits, they're worse because they're somehow less personable.
I've said many times I don't like talking on the phone because there's a disconnect there.
Because I like to read a band.
I like not just a man and a woman.
Here I'm talking to you.
I like to read the face.
I like to read the body.
I like to read folks.
That's how I learn to talk to people.
Zoom makes it a little better but there's a delay.
It feels very robotic and discommunicated.
Long story short, I got asked to read for a role.
What will likely be a pretty decent sized movie.
There's a bunch of somebodies involved with it.
They asked a nobody to read for a role.
I didn't feel good about that audition when I was done.
I didn't feel good about it.
I watered myself to death all night about that audition.
How I blew my chance and yada yada yada yada.
It was going to film beginning of this year.
When Christmas rolled around I just assumed I didn't get it.
It was fast forwarded about a week ago.
Manager Rachel gets e-mail from that same casting director.
We'd love to have Jerry read for this other role.
It's not the first role I read for.
It's a different role.
I remember last week I manifested this shit last week when I was talking about Hoyd Axton.
I said I just want to be a great character actor.
I just want to play some dads.
I want to play this role when they come back and read.
It's this kind of role.
I felt good about it but there wasn't very many lines.
There was like three lines.
That's all they sent me in the sides.
It was just these three lines and the reply line from the other character in the scene.
I couldn't figure out anything about this dude from these three lines.
There was no information on the paper.
Anything I could have assumed about him would have just been a wild, weird assumption.
I could make up a story about anybody.
Give me five minutes.
I'll make you a story.
The casting director got on there.
I was very wooden.
I was sitting right here.
We read through the scene.
Then she had the kindness to tell me who the character was and what the situation was and what's going on in the scene.
Then she said this time let's go through it.
I don't want you to read.
I don't want you to worry about the script.
We'll look for the rhythm points but I just want you to add Lib and go crazy.
I decided in that moment that I'm like, you know what?
If they call me back after a month then I must have made an impression enough that I'm on their mind for at least something.
They're looking to put me somewhere.
I just leaned in and I started adding Lib and just went crazy with this character.
It was funny.
The lady's screen froze during the audition.
They were up in the east coast somewhere having bad weather and their electricity went out their screen froze.
I just leaned into it harder.
I just kept adding Lib.
You don't talk to me anymore.
That's why I just went into it.
Anyways, when it got cleared up there was a couple of other people on the call and they jumped in to say that her screen froze.
She was going to have to come back.
They were all crying laughing.
She was laughing when the screen froze.
She was like doubled over laughing when the screen froze.
The lady was like, we record that but oh my god you had us cracking up so bad.
Can we go through it again?
I read through it again with this different lady and I had her breaking character laughing.
By the end of it, she was face down on the desk cracking up.
I was like, well, I hope we got a little closer.
They were like, that's what we were looking for.
We wanted somebody to do that.
I was like, all right, well, I've done it.
Please call me again if you got anything else I can read for.
I'm very interested in doing something along these lines.
You know, this first audition I ever walked away from my life that I didn't feel like I didn't put it all out there.
I felt so good Friday afternoon.
I left that audition and went to do some writing and stuff on the back porch.
Ray said she could just hear me.
I was in mode.
Because when I got done with that audition, I just felt like if it ain't me, then it ain't me y'all was looking for.
Because I gave you what I had right there.
I felt good.
It's the best audition I ever felt about my life.
So it's one of those things where it's like, it doesn't matter if I get anything out of it.
I know I'll get something.
I know for a casting director to be that interested in you and then come back to you a month later
in a business where they literally see hundreds and hundreds of people every day.
That's a good sign.
That means they're interested in putting me somewhere.
It may not be this project, maybe another project down the road, but they're not going to forget me.
And you can't ask for more than that in this business, honestly.
So I was feeling good about that, but I've also been feeling good about the writing thing.
That's a new lane for me as far as publicly, and I've been holding my own in it.
I've been doing some interviews and dealing with some literary people and kind of holding my own and feel pretty good about it.
But you know, my main drive, my big passion is stand-up.
I love performing.
I love being on stage.
I love making people laugh.
I love bringing joy.
And I got asked to do this show in Houston.
It was this somebody else's show.
This guy, Dan Green, he's Australian comic and LA, and he comes back to Houston, does a show.
And he had a dude from Ohio, and I'm not going to say his name.
And local guy that I started comedy with, Ryan Thalburn, was hosting the thing.
And then they had a guest spot.
I just got asked to do it for X amount of dollars.
I said, yeah, I'll do it.
It's not too far from the house.
It's a good place for me to go work out, get there, the room's packed.
It's a nice little distillery.
They make a good eight-year ride that I'm already, they put one in my hand right.
I get there.
I'm enjoying that.
My buddy David's and my friends come out.
People hadn't seen in a minute.
But the room's packed.
Ryan goes up there, takes the bullet, cold open in a warehouse setting.
Does a fine job.
Good host.
Brings the guest spot up.
The guest spot's pretty funny.
He's from A-Leaf.
And he gave me something to work with because a little bit of A-Leaf bored myself.
And so I come in behind him.
And when I tell you I cooked, I cooked.
I come in there and gave him 25 minutes of fire.
And I made the joke before I left the house when I found out I wasn't closing the show.
When I found out I was just in the middle of the show.
I go, well, I hope the mother too brought a shovel because I'm going to bury them hoes.
Right?
Like that's just my mentality.
I'm competitive when it comes to that.
And I've been in every position, right?
So I've been the emcee that opened the show so strong that people were coming up after the show going,
you're my favorite comic.
It's that taste, that subjective taste thing.
You're my favorite comic.
You're my favorite comic.
A lot of that's just subjective.
I was what those people liked.
I've been the middle act.
People go, oh, I thought you were so much funnier than the headliner.
You know, sometimes in front of the headliner.
It's awkward.
But that's a lot of that's taste.
It's subjective.
I was just what they liked.
And I've been the headliner had a feature act cook in front of me that I just had to acknowledge.
And I've heard people go, oh, I thought you were the best comic on the show.
And I'm like, I kind of was not, you know, so I've been in all those positions.
But, um, and I had a reputation and I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody that came up through the scene would be or any of my peers.
That was not acknowledged that I made a lot of headliners work pretty hard for the month.
I put it on and Friday night, not only did I put it on the guy after me, I made him work.
But I even messed up the guy after hitting the guy.
The guy closing the show had to work to get a hold of the show.
And I felt literally like I was walking to the bathroom and people were hollering out in the background.
You're the best man.
Other people on stage like, Hey, bro, come down, you know.
So it's just one of the Friday was just a plus day.
If I could have done a interview because I always get anxious about interviews.
If I could have done an interview and nailed it Friday would have been the trifecta, right?
It would have been that perfect game that you can't undo.
And then I got to sit in that Saturday and just enjoy that feeling while I wrote and worked on some projects.
I've been, I've been on kind of a mute.
I get bored with my music every once in a while and I start looking for other things and stuff like that.
A lot of that stuff I find going, I like to get on TikTok and look at the old music clips, old singers and kind of like I've stumbled across that Hoyd Axton thing.
Saturday morning, I was flipping through some music and I heard the beginnings of a song.
That I knew I recognized the song.
I heard the song a hundred times in my life.
Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard both recorded this song.
It's called, If I Could Only Fly.
But that song never touched me the way it was touching me at this moment.
Saturday when I sat down on the porch listening to it and it, it, it took me into something.
I've heard that song at least a dozen times in my life, honestly.
I didn't know who Blaise Foley was.
I honestly, and I grew up in Texas.
I had never heard of Blaise Foley.
I mean, I've heard the name, but it didn't ring any bells for me.
I didn't know who Blaise Foley was, but by the end of him singing, If I Could Only Fly, I knew who that man was when I found out he wrote it.
And then I went on a deep dive about old Blaise Foley.
Man, you know, I just love finding somebody interesting.
That's it.
It's just every once while you, you find another folk hero who's an interesting kind of cat.
But I felt like I knew this dude by the time I heard the end of that song.
I know what it's like to keep searching for a way to a home that don't exist no more.
That's, by and large, that's all this podcast is at the heart of the matter.
Hearing him perform that song took me on a trip.
By the second verse, I was, I was again a scared 11 year old kid hiding in a Volkswagen bus with some funny bucks and a little Debbie Brownie trying to understand why the adults kept messing everything up.
I had to, I had to do a deep dive on a man that grabbed my soul and rung it out like that.
Sadly, because of his very short life, there's mostly just firsthand accounts of the moon.
Like a lot of great entertainers, his beginnings were humble in rural Arkansas.
He's a son of a preacher man, come of age playing in family music group.
And I think probably going to get this wrong, but I think their name was Mitchell and I think it was the Mitchell's was the name of the group.
But he learned how to play and perform.
By the time he got to Texas, he already knew how to stand in front of a crowd of people and make them feel what he felt.
He already knew how to do that.
The real beginning of Blaise Foley, the songwriter happened when he drifted into the Texas folk and outlaw country scene in the mid 70s.
Austin in those days was a strange and beautiful place.
He had hippies, oil-filled hands, songwriters, bikers, college kids, all drinking in the same bars, all listening in the same music.
And Blaise fit right into that and not at all at the same time.
He started out, of course, like all of us playing small venue, coffee house, bars, anywhere they'd let him sing.
And he's one of those that the musicians took note of him.
You know what I mean?
Word spread quietly.
Musicians begin to notice him way before the public ever did.
He had a reputation as a hard drinker, not often accompanies creative types, especially those in pain.
But even by the 70s, by the late 70s, by the early 80s, people were driving to Austin just to see this dude.
He hung out with Tanz Van Zandt and Guy Clark.
That gives you anything about his pedigree, right?
These are two of the greatest songwriters ever come out of the Texas scene.
He hung out with these dudes.
He wrote with them.
They wrote with him.
They helped perpetuate his legend.
Steve Earl said that Blaise Foley was one of the best songwriters he ever heard.
Steve Earl.
And this is that time.
This is like when he's peeking, man.
This is the saddest shit because this dude peeked and didn't realize he was peeking.
But he wrote another song called Clay Pigeons at this time.
It's amazing.
And he wrote, if I could learn to fly.
And it's a lot of time.
So you'll see an artist.
Oh, sorry.
I'll encourage it.
You'll see artists come out and they're unstable and they're going through a bunch of, you know, that shit we all go through relationships and maybe excess substance abuse and stuff like that.
And then they'll stable out and then their career peak.
Bam.
Then they'll put out their best work after they kind of got themselves figured out.
But then sometimes you have somebody come out and in the midst of their instability and their life being a tornado is when they put out their best work.
And if we're lucky, a lot of times those artists get to survive that and enjoy what they've created.
His trajectory is that his career was peaking and he was as most folks in Austin.
They, they called him the duct tape Messiah.
That was his nickname duct tape Messiah because he had these old beat the shit cowboy boots that he would patch up with duct tape.
He didn't have a lot of money.
He didn't have a lot going for him, you know, he wouldn't change himself enough to get commercial success.
And also by this point, his drinking is getting bad enough.
It's costing him gigs.
People don't want to work with him.
Venues don't want to rely on him.
He live in a tree house and not like, like, not like a fancy tree house.
He does like, so back in those days, you know, there was a lot of people around Austin had land and stuff.
And they didn't care about people living and staying on the land too much because they were kind of, they were supportive of Austin's weird sort of dynamic.
And so sure enough, somebody had this piece of land there in Austin, a big old tree on it.
And O'Blaze goes, he gets this rough lumber and he climbs up in this tree and he builds in my tree house.
And it's basically just a platform with tarps and pieces of sheet metal.
He's strapped and clamped together.
He lived in it.
He wasn't ashamed of it.
You know, a granddad didn't have a little money, but he wasn't, he wasn't ashamed of his circumstances.
He just wanted to be free.
He just, this was his, this was his, what he was searching for.
But this man would go play in the bars and then come back, walk back to this little piece of land with his duct tape boots and climb ladder and sit there in that tree house and write songs.
He wanted freedom, but he didn't want to belong to nobody or no thing.
And that's okay.
We don't all have the same wants, but I found just countless stories, first hand accounts about him helping people.
He was always trying to help people.
He, he, uh, he, you know, when town's van Zant was too drunk to remember his lyrics, Blaze Foley would get on stage and sing with him.
Most of the stories involved that you hear about Blaze Foley aren't about wild drunken exploits or just about him trying to help people.
Just this crazy nomad and duct tape boots that knew how to write the truth.
I think sometimes a lot of people write the truth or down, you know, it takes damage to get to the truth.
But I just love that this dude was helping.
That's what took him from us, right?
Is he's helping people.
He befriended this old man in Austin named Contro January.
I don't know if that's his given name.
I suspect maybe it's not Contro January is this little man.
He's not a musician.
He's not anybody famous or anything like that.
People in Austin know him, but he's just this little old dude.
He's living on a pension and Blaze enjoyed spending time with him.
We just go and hang out with him and try to kind of look after the old man.
The old man had a son.
I think his name was Caleb, something like that.
And Blaze started to suspect the cable was taking the old man's pension checks and cash them and kind of taking advantage of the old man.
And he's not the type of dude to just sit with that and be okay with it.
So they'd all been sitting around drinking cheap wine one morning at the old man's house.
And Blaze decided to confront the son.
And things got heated and the son went for a 22 rifle as it's reported.
And Blaze jumped in front of the sun and the rifle and the son shot Blaze in the chest.
He stumbled outside.
They gave him a hospital.
He died from his injuries.
He died trying to help somebody at 39 years old.
He's trying to, you know, the kid got acquitted on self-defense somehow.
I've read the story.
I don't know how they cooked up self-defense for this kid.
I don't know how they cooked it up, but kid must have had a good lawyer from somewhere.
Blaze dies.
The kid gets freed from him in Contro January.
The kid, they just, they disappear into the ether.
Nobody knows what happened to him or at least nothing that I could find in research.
And then Blaze's music peaks after he's gone, which is the cruelest of any of those situations.
Because then all of a sudden folks start recording it.
Towns Van Zant writes a song called Blaze's Blues and he would perform it on stage and cry and tell stories about the man live.
Lyle Lovett would tell stories about him and cover his music.
Willie Nelson was covering his music.
Merle Haggard was covering his music.
John Prine, James McMurtry.
I recorded and covered his music to keep him alive.
He didn't go to Austin to try to get famous.
He just went there to write music and sing songs.
He was just trying to survive and write songs.
And that sounds romantic as hell until you realize just how damned hard that is.
He had a reputation for sticking up for people who had less than he did.
When he didn't have much and nothing but a guitar and some duct tape boots.
He died.
He dies in the hospital after an argument in someone's living room at five in the morning trying to help an old man get his pension check.
So broke that his friends had raised money to bury him.
That's remarkable.
Anyways, this is a little bit about Blaze Foley.
If you get a chance to do a little deep dive on him, man, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Clay Pidgeons is a hell of a good song too.
But that if you could only fly that caught me this week.
When I was reading about Blaze, it kind of reminded me of Uncle Bobby's story.
Uncle Bobby wasn't, you know, this savior going around trying to help people in a bullshit like that.
Don't get that in your head.
But I've told y'all he was a hell of a musician.
He'd play a guitar, he'd get right.
There was a period of time when I was young, somewhere around 14, 15 years old, that Uncle Bobby was dating this gal named Shannon.
And Shannon's dad was a music producer in Nashville.
And basically Uncle Bobby and Shannon decided to go to Nashville.
Uncle Bobby's going to record this music producer. They're going to make an album.
And they did, but something happened.
I don't know the whole story about what happened to album.
I do know that Bobby got in the smoking crack when he was in Nashville.
He got into that rock and him and Shannon got all jacked up on that shit.
At some point, things weren't going well for him in Nashville anymore. He decided to go back home to East Texas.
Well, he's in East Texas and not too long, you know, if you want any kind of drug in the world, you can get it long to you, Texas.
You can get it in Tyler, Texas. You know, that's all there is to do in East Texas.
Half time to do drugs. You can get them all there.
And he keeps messing around. He's DJing at night and working at the hot tub place during the day.
But he's messing with that rock, right? He's smoking around and doing his thing.
He gets cross ways with his dope dealer from Dangerfield, Texas. I don't remember the dude's name.
They corner him in the parking lot one night, leaving the Rio and Longview to shoot his truck up, trying to shoot him.
That's a little Toyota I told you about with the bullet holes.
And mom gets scared.
He's promised her he's done with the drugs and stuff like that. He's just trying to get away from it.
Mom lets him come and live with us for a little while in Houston. So when we lived over off Tammany Lane and Forest View out there, Haley.
And he gets a job at another hot tub place here in Houston. It's cool having him around. He's like a big brother to me.
I'm trying to say this without being a dick or making you think he's a terrible person or something.
But like a lot of people in securities, he had plenty of his own. He had a little bit of a mean streak when it comes to making fun of people.
I got it in me. I have to watch it.
But he would take it too far sometimes. I'd be out there with my friends playing basketball and he would start picking at me and he would embarrass me in front of my friends and she would just get to be a little too much.
I was already struggling making friends.
Right. And there's one little period of time I was kind of the cool guy. Not because I did anything that was cool but right across the street lived this brother and sister Raymond and Crystal Rebecca.
Raymond was tall man. He was in middle school. He was like six foot tall. Girls all loved him. His sister was tall. She was beautiful. She was a little younger than me, like a year younger than me.
Just beautiful girl.
Me and Raymond were friends. We got along and so Raymond hung out at my house a lot and Crystal come and hung out at my house a lot and of course she was going to be this tall, leggy, pretty girl, you know.
I had to think, you know what I mean? Like who wouldn't? She was adorable.
Me and Raymond were just actually friends but all the girls wanted to come hang out with so they would come to my, they would come out there while we played basketball and stuff.
And I was a terrible basketball player and I told you, oh Bobby's very good. He played basketball in high school and he came out there and played basketball and his cowboy boots and beat everybody.
Like, I mean, the day was just good. He knew how to, knew how to drop them, right?
But it was one day, I don't remember the whole story. Their father had passed away under some extreme circumstances. He was a police officer and I don't remember what the deal was but it was really sad and I think maybe he took his own life but I'm not sure.
And their mom dated this dude that was a contractor named David Waddle. This guy had an old Ram Charger and had his name, it's one of the reasons I remember his name because he had his name all over that Ram Charger.
But he was kind of in and out and their mom was an attractive lady. One day Uncle Bobby gets home from work and the mom's out there and he starts showing out, right? And I can tell he's showing out for mom.
But he's picking at me and kind of making fun of how bad a basketball I am and it's just getting worse for it. To the point he's embarrassing me really bad.
Like, embarrasses me to tears from my friend and his sister who I got this little kind of thing crushed about, you know? Or at least I think she's cute and I don't want to look like a dummy in front of her.
He embarrasses me to the point that it gets out of hand. I get mad at him and I tried to grab him and he just kind of, he was bigger than me and stronger than me at the time. He just pushed me back and he's laughing about it.
And the more he laughs the matter I get.
And at the time I had a couple guns. I had a BB pellet gun combo with 750 cross master that I would take down the bayou with my friends and stuff and I had a .22 rifle my dad had given me that he taught me how to shoot.
Now this .22 rifle is special. It's a .22 Remington rifle. My uncle Stanley, y'all heard me talk about him. James. My dad's older brother. He was autistic.
And my dad's dad was really cruel to him. And Papaloma was a cruel, cruel man. They didn't have a lot of money and so there wasn't a lot of stuff at birthdays.
And on my dad's 16th birthday Stanley who was working at a machine shop or a meat cutter went and bought my dad this .22 Remington rifle for his birthday.
And my dad taught me to shoot with that rifle. He also taught Uncle Bobby how to shoot with that rifle.
My dad learned, you know, that rifle is a big part of his experience and my dad had given me that rifle.
And I knew better than grab that rifle. I was mad. Boy I was mad at Uncle Bobby. I just wanted to make him look stupid in front of everybody.
And I knew those drug dealers had shot at him. I knew that story and I went in my room in my closet and I grabbed that BB and that pellet gun.
And I come out there in the garage and Uncle Bobby was walking in the garage and I pointed that gun at his face and told him I was going to shoot him.
And it took all the cool out of me, even though it was a BB gun, because nobody wants to get shot in the face with a BB gun.
And he kind of talked me down and then I put the gun down and I went back to my room and cried and was embarrassed.
And my mom got home. She was livid about what had happened. You don't ever point a gun at somebody. You don't ever point a gun at somebody. You know that kind of shit.
And now she says that's my brother and I know he's a lot and if he didn't be in here, it's too much. I'll make him leave. This is that kind of thing.
But I can't believe you pointed a gun at him. My dad got home. He took all my guns away. He took that .22 away from me.
He took that pellet gun away from me, which is what a dad should do in that situation. I was grounded. I got in all kind of trouble about it.
A few nights later, there was a big ruckus in the garage and what I later found out was my dad and Uncle Bobby got in a fist fight out in the garage.
Over something else. Uncle Bobby said something shitty to my mom and my dad had had enough of him being in the house because I'd whoop his ass.
I don't know who won, but I know Uncle Bobby moved back home along with you after that.
I don't know why I told you all that story. I don't guess it matters.
Years later, as an adult, my dad gave me that .22 back after I already had bomb guns and everything else.
My dad gave me that .22 back and he said, you know, he said,
He said, to be honest, he said, I think I was mostly just surprised that my son had been driven to feeling that way because I shouldn't have been surprised that one more person wanted to shoot Bobby Clark.
Lots of people tried over the years and plenty of them had good reasons, you know.
But he was kind of like Blaze and that the music thing never, he put out, people loved him, people loved his music, not to the level of Blaze Foley, but then, you know, he just never got back to it.
And then his life petered out on him before he ever got back to it.
It makes me happy that I made a decision to come back to time.
It's one of those things where I'm like, well, you know, there was a fork in the road where I almost didn't come back.
Where I just, you know, I'm just going to be a foundation repair man.
That's what I'm going to do and take care of my family and just try to live a good life.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
There's a lot of, it's very honorable to want to take care of your family and come back to me.
I didn't want to just meant I was going to be able to do it this way.
Thankfully, so far I have at a very base level.
But check out Blaze Foley man.
Check out Blaze Foley.
You will not be disappointed.
In fact, I think what I want to do, and this is kind of hokey and corny, but after we do close the sermon day, I'm going to read the lines of that song.
I wish I could play out music, but I don't know how to get licensing and stuff without that screwing up everything I'm doing.
Every time I've tried to buy music, licensing and use music and I just don't know what I'm doing with it.
Every time I try to do it, I've tried to like buy music and license it to use it with a podcast and stuff like that.
And every time I get screwed, YouTube cuts my monetization and I'm sorry, I just can't afford that.
That's a big chunk of my income.
But I'm just going to read you all the lines of that song.
And maybe it'll touch you in the same way it did me.
Maybe it won't.
But for now, let's go back to the Wally Bottoms Texas about that.
The Faded Dealers, let's go back to the Wally Bottoms Texas.
The Faded Dealership sticker on the back fender read Holmes Honda, Bozier City.
The dark metallic green paint on the tank had withered in places from the unforgiving raisin in East Texas Sun.
Some other person had enjoyed the newness of the bike before Carl Sr. and his son seen it in a driveway on the way back from a parts run to Longview.
The for sale sign beckoning the young man so deeply that he pleaded with his father to pull over so he could make a desperate inquiry into the price.
It was a nice home and the fellow selling it didn't seem interested in haggling about the price.
Much to the chagrin of Sr. who enjoyed a good negotiation after a lifetime of friendship with Danny Worth.
It wouldn't start, but the air-cooled engine turned over fine with no binding.
The side cover was cracked right through the emblem reading 554.
But none of that was what Carl Jr. saw.
He saw nights with Tiffany away from everyone else.
He heard the engine that wouldn't start rattling in his eardrums as he twisted the throttle and left his dad's constant chiding about responsibility, a faint echo in the wake of exhaust and vibration behind it.
He'd been working part-time in his dad's shop since he was 14, had enough cash saved up in an old gym sock to pay the fellow the 500 he was asking for it.
But his dad, being the shrewd old haggler he was, had him and hauled the price down to 425.
They loaded it in the back of Sr.'s old dodge and brung it back to his shop just a month before Carl Jr.'s senior year.
With a little guidance from the old man in the second-hand climber manual from the Murphy's parts house in Kilgore,
the boy on the edge of his impending manhood pulled the tank and cleaned it, tore the carbs down, went through them before changing the oil and the plugs.
His dad helped him with the fine-tuning.
The skill which in itself only is earned from countless hours of listening to internal combustion engine stumble and cough before the air-fuel ratio is made correct.
It had a little stumble and idle, but once she feathered the choke just a hair, it'd clear its throat and hum like a senior.
At the moment, the bike sat as the June sun made its presence known to any who dared step out from the comfort of shade.
Though only 10 a.m., the yellow western auto thermometer between the bay doors of the shop hovered at 89, threatening to cross the threshold at 90 without anyone.
The town, much like the rest of small town America, was prepping for the bicentennial celebration and had brung Carl Sr. red, white and blue button to adorn the front of his business with.
He had hung it up but complained about it the whole time to Danny and his wife and just about anybody else had listened.
Boy, it's been a miracle town got money to buy streamers and flags but can't get the mill road graded.
They act like America's just invented last Tuesday.
Elena had asked him to go easy on the boy.
His little girlfriend had broke up with him right after graduation, but he'd be damned if two weeks of moping around wasn't enough.
If you ask Carl Sr., it's the best thing what could have happened to the boy.
He didn't need to be distracted every time she'd come calling, needed to have his mind on school and work.
There's plenty of time for the other once he got himself established.
Sr. had made the mistake of voicing all this to Elena, which earned himself the loss of a peaceful breakfast and the better part of an hour while the sharp tongue mother of his children had taken him to task.
She'd convinced him that everybody would be happier, especially him, if he run junior off for the day, cut him loose, go hang with his friends at the creek bottoms.
Carl Sr. sighed as he stepped off in the shop for hollering for his son to back.
Boy, come up here.
The tall red-headed boy lumbered into the small office where his dad kept all the customer info in the books.
His expression dour the normal brightness of his mother's eyes dull and uninterested.
Son, I'm pretty well caught up for the day once you get yourself washed and cut out.
Dad, I'm fine.
The hell you are.
Now get out of this shop and go get that damn mopey look off your face some damn way.
Go down to the creek.
Or better yet, go help Tony work on that piece of shit for his uncle drug up.
Go do something.
I don't need you walk around here like somebody kicked your puppy.
The last sentence coming out of the heated father's mouth a little sharper than he intended, but it done the trick.
Fine.
Junior hung this denim shop apron on the wooden hook by the door before heading to the washroom.
Just a few minutes ticked by on the clock before he heard the horn to turn over and fire.
The engine revving quickly away in the direction of the creek bottoms.
Carl Sr. Grand was just a little too much self-satisfaction.
He may not have had a peaceful breakfast, but he figured he had earned himself a peaceful dinner that evening.
Hell, maybe he'd grab a handful of them Tyler Roses they sold at the grocery store on the way home to seal the deal.
Carl Jr.
Gunned the engine as he downshifted to turn down Tony Street.
They hadn't hung out much since losing the district game against Liberty's Chapel.
The wild fantasy of playoffs blasted into smithereens by a three touchdown lead in the third quarter.
Tony had been running with a rougher bunch of guys from Henderson since then, keeping his distance from Carl and Tiffany for reasons only known to himself.
They hadn't spoken weeks after spending most of their life joined at the hip.
It seemed the impending changes being done with school and football was driving a wedge between the once inseparable boys.
The grass around the side of the house was matted and laid flat where the raggedy Torino usually sit.
Its absence is a surprise to Carl.
He couldn't believe Tony had gotten it running.
He wasn't gifted mechanically but had refused Carl's offer to help a month or so back.
The boy gunned the Honda and made a sharp U-turn in the street before twisting the throttle and pointing the growling machine towards the Creek Road.
Hopeful some of his friends, maybe even Tony, were escaping the sun in the cool water of the Tawicha.
Seven miles of curvy oil road gave Carl Jr. a little time to lean into the nature of the well-balanced bike and work some things out at least best he could.
He hadn't been out here since Tiffany and him rode out to the bottoms the morning after the graduation party her parents had thrown.
She had been quiet and withdrawn for a few days.
Carl figured it was her dad again but hoped to ride and the little swimming might get her to talk to him.
Boy she had done plenty of talking.
Made it worse that she was wearing a yellow bikini top.
What always made his head swim a bit when he'd get lost in her tan skin.
Kissing the light dusting the freckles on her shoulders and trying like hell to convince her to lose it for a moment.
They swam for just a bit in the chilly water before she hoisted herself up on the dock to dry out in the hot wind moving down the creek.
Carl looked at her.
You've been real quiet the last few days.
I've been thinking.
Well that's usually when I get nervous.
Tiffany was sharp.
Don't do that.
Do what?
Don't make it easier for me to say this.
Say what?
Carl I'm going to say I'm Houston in the fall you know that.
And I don't want to spend the whole summer tied down like we're already married or something.
Tied down.
That ain't what I mean.
It kind of sounds like what you meant.
Red I ain't leaving mad.
I ain't leaving because you did anything wrong.
Well thank God for that.
That makes everything better Tiff.
I just I want to know who I am before I start being somebody's wife.
Before I start living the same life everybody around here lives.
Carl Jr. looked out towards a crane poking in the mud on the bank.
And I guess I'm part of that life.
You're part of this place and I got to find out if I am or not.
Well I bet your dad is happy.
My daddy don't decide what I feel but he don't like me much either.
He don't like any boy that smells like gasoline and sweat.
Carl's side.
Yeah that's most everybody here.
I know.
So what?
That's it we just we just stop.
Tiffany looked down at her feet.
I guess for now.
For now's what people say when they mean forever.
Red no it's alright I get it you're leaving and I ain't.
I didn't say that.
You didn't have to.
Carl Jr. ex-held and looked out towards the bend in the river.
You were always faster than me.
What's that supposed to mean Carl?
I mean all of it I reckon track life.
Red I never wanted to outrun you.
I know.
He could still feel the way her arms felt around him as they rode back to her house.
Her shaking against him lightly.
The way she had avoided looking him in the eyes when he pulled up to her porch to let her off.
She had run up the stairs and into the house quickly.
Her dad Tom sitting on the porch swing with a cigar and a drink and a bit of a bemused look on his face.
To your daddy I said hi boy.
Felt like a slap in the face from the man who no doubt had been one of the architects behind the failed morning.
He called the house the next day and her dad had answered son this is pretty hard on her.
Why don't you just leave her be for a bit before hanging up.
If it was so damn hard on her why the hell was she doing?
He thought as he slowed down for the turn into the bottoms.
An assortment of pickups and cars already backed up to the water's edge.
A few hollers of hey Red as he cruised along the hard packed clay.
He had trouble believing his own eyes but there was Tony's Torino.
As he turned his head towards the dock he saw Tony.
Cigarette in hand, leaned against one of the old creosote posts talking to Tiffany.
She was in her bikini top, beer in hand, leaning into whatever it was that Tony was saying.
He pulled the clutch in and rolled to a stop staring at him.
He heard her laugh out loud and nothing about that sounded like a hard time to him.
His mouth ran dry, his heart beating in his ears as he gripped the handlebars tightly.
Someone in the water belted out grab a beer Red.
Tiffany jerked her head towards him. Tony turned to look as Tiffany took off towards Carl Jr.
Her face a mask of concern suddenly.
She was saying something but he couldn't hear anything anymore.
He twisted the throttle and with a little wail from the air-cooled engine and a small cloud of dust and wet clay droplets
showering up behind him as he roared back up to the main road.
His fury leaked out as he accelerated through the gears.
She's having a hard time. Bullshit didn't look hard to me.
And Tony, Tony, he's got some fold up sunglasses and that piece of shit running and now he thinks he's Frank Bullet,
the 550 howled as he raged down the soft tar surface.
Tiffany turned to Tony. He was already headed for the driver's side of his car.
We got to go talk to him. I don't want him getting the wrong idea about what he saw as she climbed into the passenger side.
The word stung. Tony knew the truth already but hearing it out loud was somehow worse.
The Torino coughed itself to life as he turned the key before staring at her.
What's the wrong idea?
Her eyes answered before she said it.
You know what I mean? I don't want him to think something's happened in with us.
And definitely nothing has happened in with us.
He shot back at her with a little more shake in his voice than he wanted her to hear.
He swung the big heavy car on the main road.
You know what I mean, Tony?
Oh, I know exactly what you mean, Tiff, as he stared down the road.
I know exactly what you mean.
The V-8 rumble echoed off the pines as they both fell silent.
His silence came from pain.
Hers came from worry for Carl Jr. and for the mess she knew she had made of everything.
Tune in next week for more from Diwali Bottoms, Texas.
There we go.
Bam, that was a little thicker.
All right.
Woo, let's do some testimonials.
Nope, I got to pull those up.
But I got them right here. Here we go.
That her old buddy, Jake of All Trades Master Fund, Mr. Jake.
These are comments from last week's show.
Was I talking about Buick's?
I must have been talking about Buick's.
A guy I work with has three Buick G's.
One is an all original type S. One was his brothers.
And the third is a full blown race car.
I'm always after him to sell me one.
I think I was talking, I love to talk Buick.
It's one of my favorite.
I talk about it all the time.
Buick gets slept on when it comes to the hot rod scene.
My favorite Buick is not the traditional Buick hot rods, though.
I like it.
I like the 1960, that year of 1960, Buick Electra 225.
I just think that's one of them.
There's something about that crazy ass windshield.
It's just a cool car and it had that 401 nail head in it, you know,
which is just a beast when it came to low torque power, right?
Something about the tiny upright valves.
You can always tell that old Buick nail head
because it's got the weird ass about the valve covers look weird as shit.
You know, I always thought it'd be cool.
That'd be a cool, like just a cruising car.
Like not necessarily you want it, you want it hot, right?
But just your cruising run around town car.
That Buick Electra 225.
God, I'd be afraid driving Houston.
Somebody cracked that windshield.
I'd lose my shit.
How about that windshield cost you $6,000?
If you don't know what I'm talking about, go look up.
It has very, the windshield is like kind of flat and then curves around
where the vent windows would be and it's all one piece.
It's pretty, it's just kind of unique looking.
At Joe1940, excuse me.
At Joe1940, I'd put Towns Van Zant in the same category
of unsung, underrated musicians as Hoyt.
I'm in my early fifties.
Remember hearing his music back in the day,
but was young at the time and didn't appreciate Towns until recently,
whether it was rock or country.
The best, most unique artists inspired the big stars,
but never get the acknowledgement they deserve.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And I will tell you, I'm from Texas.
Towns Van Zant is like, I just grew up knowing about Towns Van Zant
because he's legendary.
He's like Guy Clark here, everybody loves Towns Van Zant.
But I bet it's different in another place.
I don't know where you live, Joe, or where you're from,
but in maybe different parts of Texas, different.
I grew up around Uncle Bobby, so I heard about a lot of these dudes.
But Towns Van Zant was, you know, he's another guy that never got his due
that was gone off the planet before he ever got his due.
Another guy drank, drug himself into our early grave.
But I keep looking for those guys.
That's how I was, Blaise Foley was what, you know,
we were talking about Towns Van Zant and he wrote Blaise's Blues.
We got an actual piece of hand mail all the way from Y. Ohman.
Dude, is this guy got a typewriter?
That's kind of awesome.
Look at that.
It's like a typewriter letter.
January 20, 2026.
Dear Mr. Longmar, I just want to take a moment to write you
and thank you for all the videos you make.
You're doing a lot of good for this world and I appreciate all that you do.
It was a little over two years ago that I happened to stumble over
what I think was one of your Truck Astrology videos.
At the time, my wife and I had just suffered our third miscarriage
and honestly, there wasn't much laughter in the house.
Late night scrolling landed me on your content
and was the first I'd laughed in weeks.
Thank you.
I was hoping to make your Fort Collins show this year,
but as our baby is due to be born that week,
my wife may get mad if I'm at a show and not there.
Keep up the good work and I pray God blesses you greatly.
Sincerely, Cody.
Man, thank you, Cody.
Those are the things that give me life
and by all means, do not skip a baby being born to see my silly ass.
It won't be my last time in Fort Collins.
I'm sure I'll be back.
I do love that club.
Thank you for that.
I appreciate it, Cody.
Thank you for being part of the Wrecking Crew here.
I appreciate that and I love when I can make people laugh
and give, spread a little joy.
That's all I'm looking for.
I'm looking for.
I just want to be the blaze foley of laughter, right?
I don't want to get shot trying to help old man.
I'm done trying to help old man.
I almost have been shot trying to help old man, but...
Now, that always makes me feel good.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I've gotten a lot of communication from people
that told me they were watching my videos while they were in the hospital
waiting to hear news about somebody else
while they were going through something
and that always tickles me because...
We all know what that's like.
We all been there.
Y'all been in the hospital or been there with somebody you love
or somebody you're hoping they're going to be okay
and need something to pass the time
and waiting on a baby to come
or a baby that's not...
Whatever it is, you know?
And I'm glad that I can ever be that for somebody
to provide some comfort in a trying scary time.
Yeah.
Thank you for that, Cody.
And...
I'm excited to hear about this new baby come.
Alrighty, let's wrap this thing up.
As always, love you guys.
Thank you so much for spending your Sunday with me.
Oh, shit.
I got two closing stages.
I rewrote it.
I wrote one and I didn't like it.
I wrestled with it and I rewrote it right before I come out here to record it.
It's because of that song.
I've been...
To me, that song is about trying to get back home.
That song if I could only fly.
I've been thinking about the word home since I heard it.
Not a house.
Not a place you can point to on a map.
The kind of home that lives in your senses.
The smell of rust and sun in the air.
The sound of somebody's voice in another room.
The way a certain song can take you backwards so fast,
it almost steals the breath from you.
I expect more of us are searching for that than we realize.
We chase it in music in the taste of something that reminds us of a kitchen long gone
and the people we love.
In the things we build with our hands and the things we try to say out loud
before the feeling slips away again.
For a long time, I didn't understand.
I thought it was cruel that that ache never quite left.
Why, even like a good day, sometimes carries a stark loneliness inside it.
Like a wind moving through an empty field where a house used to stay.
There are days my gaze turns inward,
no matter the sheer amount of love that holds me in place and surrounds me.
And it finally occurred to me slowly, you know, the way truths usually do,
that what I'm looking for ain't ahead of me, but it ain't behind me either.
It's inside, it's inside all of us.
That place, that place we remember that time we keep reaching for isn't part of the world anymore.
Time saw to that. Life saw to that.
The long, steady turning of the earth carried away whether we was ready or not.
But some piece of it stayed.
There's a kingdom in every person, quiet and inward,
where the past settles like dust and sunbeams
and the people we've loved still move through the rooms of memory as real as they ever were.
Peace, I think, comes the day you stop trying to walk back through doors that no longer stand
and instead learn to sit silently in that inner country and let it be enough.
The truth is, and people have said it in song and writing,
home was never a place you could return to. It was a moment.
And moments don't come back. They take root.
If you find yourself tonight with that strange homesick feeling, that longing you can't quite explain,
don't be too quick to run from it. Sit with it a while.
Try to listen to what it's trying to tell you.
There's a kindness to yourself in remembering if you just let it happen gently.
Sometimes the wind keeps blowing and all you can do is stand it in a while.
But it's okay. You're gonna be all right.
I'm sure of that. No matter what's coming, you're gonna be all right.
I'm J.W. and I love you.
And I'm gonna do this. I was thinking about this.
I said, I'm gonna do this as much for myself as much for y'all.
But I wanna, this song touched me so deeply, I wanted to read y'all the words to it.
This is if I could only fly a blaze phone.
Almost felt you touching me just now.
Wish I knew which way to turn and go, feel so good and then I feel so bad.
I wonder what I ought to do.
If I could only fly, if I could only fly, I'd bid this place goodbye to come and be with you.
But I can hardly stand.
I got nowhere to run.
Another sinking sun, another lonely night.
The wind keeps blowing somewhere every day.
Tell me things get better somewhere up the way.
Just dismal thinking on a dismal day, sad songs for us to bear.
You know, sometimes I write happy songs, but then sometimes little things are wrong.
You know, I wish they all could make you smile.
Tomorrow, maybe we can get away, coming home soon and I wanna stay.
Wish you could come with me when I go again.
But if I could only fly, if I could only fly, I'd bid this place goodbye to come and be with you.
But I can hardly stand.
I got nowhere to run.
Another sinking night, sun, one more lonely night.
If I could only fly, if you could only fly, if we could only fly, there'd be no more lonely nights.
Anyways, check it out for your chance to go.
Alright guys, y'all, enjoy your Sunday night.
Be safe, have some next week.
If I could only fly, if I could only fly, I'd bid this place goodbye to come and be with you.
About this episode
Jerry Wayne Longmire shares personal reflections on life, creativity, and nostalgia in this episode. He discusses the emotional impact of classic films like 'Tombstone' and the significance of music in his life, particularly the Scarecrow song from 'The Wizard of Oz.' Longmire also opens up about his recent audition experiences, the pressures of performing, and the joy of connecting with others through humor. His storytelling is infused with humor and honesty, making for an engaging listen.
Original notes
There’s a beauty in knowing we’re all mostly trying to get home.
Blaze Foley helped me stumble across a truth so deep it could only have been hiding in plain sight the whole time.
Episode Six of Duwali Bottoms, Texas finds Carl Jr. trying to outrun a summer that’s already slipping away. Sometimes the people you thought you understood best are the ones you don’t recognize anymore.
The Reckon Yard Podcast
Jerry Wayne Longmire
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76:00