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Imaginary lines
About this episode
The Reckon Yard Podcast blends dirt-track racing talk with travel, family life, and a deeper theme about “imaginary lines.” Hosts describe sprint cars and late models—methanol engines, winged vs non-winged behavior, and why late models are “about momentum.” Between race details, they share cold-weather track weekend stories, hiking with timber rattlesnakes, and a cat’s CT scan and surgery planning. The episode’s centerpiece reflects on borders and how crossing them can flip legality, freedom, and even life-or-death outcomes.
Topics:
body acts as a wing
downforce
late model racing
methanol engines
momentum
NASCAR
Open Wheel cars
purse
slow is smooth and smooth is fast
sprint car racing
Cars:
Renault Wind
Some lines get people killed. Some just keep us small. From the Driftless region of Minnesota to a joint that’s legal on one bank of the Mississippi and a criminal act on the other, JW walks through the imaginary lines men drew with rulers, and the smaller ones we draw inside ourselves.
Plus a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas. Sixteen hours out of a flooded Houston, Tony and Dusty roll up on Duwali Bottoms in the dark, and the homecoming Tony spent a decade trying to aviod is waiting for him on a farm road.
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Concept
purse
"Saturday night, the big finale was $40,000 purse, which pretty fat purse."
A purse is the total prize money for the race. The better you finish, the more of that money you typically take home.
A purse is the total prize money distributed to drivers based on finishing positions in a race. In the segment, the hosts compare purse sizes across different nights of the event, emphasizing how much money is at stake.
Concept
late model racing
"This is late model racing. So late model, when I talk about sprint cars, those young sprint cars are open wheel cars."
Late model racing is a kind of race series for modified stock cars. It’s still a big deal and expensive to run, even if it’s not as famous as some other types of racing.
Late model racing is a form of stock-car style racing where cars are built to compete in a specific “late model” class rather than purpose-built open-wheel categories. In this segment, it’s positioned as a step below sprint cars in prestige, but still with very large purses and operating costs.
Concept
sprint cars
"So late model, when I talk about sprint cars, those young sprint cars are open wheel cars."
Sprint cars are race cars with open wheels that are built for short-track racing. They’re known for being very powerful and for using aerodynamic parts to help them grip the track.
Sprint cars are high-power open-wheel race cars, typically raced on short tracks. In the segment, the hosts describe them as “open wheel cars” and discuss the power levels and how wings (or the lack of them) affect how the cars stay planted.
Concept
open wheel cars
"those young sprint cars are open wheel cars."
Open-wheel cars have wheels that are exposed rather than covered by body panels. This layout is common in sprint cars and other forms of racing and affects aerodynamics and how the car is built and driven.
Term
winged or non-winged
"Methanol engines and they can be winged or non-winged. The non-winged ones are just insane because they got nothing holding them on the track."
In sprint-car racing, “winged” refers to having a rear wing that generates downforce, pressing the car harder onto the track for better traction. “Non-winged” cars rely less on that aerodynamic grip, so they can be more unstable and may “cartwheel” or spin more easily.
Term
methanol engines
"Methanol engines and they can be winged or non-winged."
Methanol engines run on methanol fuel instead of gasoline. Methanol is commonly used in certain forms of racing because it can support high power outputs and has different combustion characteristics that teams tune for.
Concept
body acts as a wing
"And they have like a full sheet metal body on them. And the body kind of acts as a wing in the way that it holds the car to the track."
A wing helps the car stick to the road. Here, they’re saying the car’s shape makes downforce, so the tires grip the track better.
In racing, a “wing” creates downforce—an aerodynamic force that pushes the car harder onto the track. When the speaker says the sheet-metal body acts like a wing, they mean the body shape generates downforce to improve grip and stability at speed.
Concept
downforce
"And the body kind of acts as a wing in the way that it holds the car to the track."
Downforce is the “pushing down” effect that makes the car feel more planted. It helps the tires keep traction, especially when turning.
Downforce is the aerodynamic force that presses the car toward the track. More downforce generally means better tire grip and less sliding, especially in corners and at higher speeds.
Term
torquey
"Whereas sprint cars are like real torquey sort of position grabbers."
“Torquey” means the engine has strong pulling power. It helps the car accelerate quickly when you get back on the gas.
“Torquey” describes an engine that produces strong torque, especially at lower RPMs, making it easier to accelerate out of corners. In racing talk, it often implies quicker response when you apply throttle to gain or defend position.
Concept
momentum
"And late model racing is more, it's about momentum. It's more, it's like a dance."
Momentum just means keeping your speed going. In racing terms, it’s about not slowing down unnecessarily so you can stay fast through turns.
In racing, “momentum” refers to preserving speed and rotational stability so the car can carry pace through corners and over changing track conditions. It’s a driving approach: avoid scrubbing speed, keep traction, and transition smoothly so you don’t fall behind.
Concept
slow is smooth and smooth is fast
"They'll say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Well, smooth is fast with the late models."
It’s a common racing saying: if you drive smoothly and avoid sudden moves, you’ll usually go faster overall. The idea is that smooth control helps you keep traction and stay consistent.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast” is a driving mantra meaning that smooth inputs (steering, throttle, braking) reduce mistakes and keep the tires in their best grip range. In racing, that often translates to more consistent cornering and better lap times than aggressive, jerky inputs.
Topic
Turn 2 camera footage
"I've got some footage of Turn 2 where I had the camera set up just right. And it almost looks like a ballet."
They’re talking about a specific corner on the track—Turn 2—and how the video angle makes the driving look. It’s more about what they saw than a technical car explanation.
The host discusses watching cars through “Turn 2” using camera footage set up for the shot. This is a specific segment about how the track corner looks from that camera angle.
Term
cock sideways
"Those cars coming around their cock sideways using that body to push them down the track."
The phrase means the car is turned sideways while still moving forward through the corner. Drivers do this to help the car rotate and carry speed around the turn.
“Cock sideways” is describing a car that’s rotated relative to its direction of travel—essentially a drift-like attitude through a corner. In racing terms, that usually means the driver is using tire grip and vehicle balance to rotate the car while maintaining speed.
Concept
sprint car racing
"Getting into sprint car racing is difficult. You got to have a lot of money backing you."
Sprint car racing is a type of oval track racing with lightweight, high-powered cars. The host is saying it can be hard to get into because it takes a lot of funding or recognition.
Sprint car racing is a high-intensity form of open-wheel oval racing, usually run on short tracks. It’s often expensive to compete in, which is why the host frames it as difficult to break into without money, connections, or strong results.
Concept
NASCAR
"It's almost like NASCAR. But late models..."
NASCAR is a well-known American stock-car racing series. The host is comparing late model racing to NASCAR in terms of how the racing world works.
NASCAR is a major American stock-car racing organization and series known for oval-track racing and a culture built around driver development and team funding. The host uses it as a comparison point for how late models can feel like a similar ecosystem.
Car
Renault Wind
"...of the road. Dusty thumped the spent stub out the window with a shower of embers as the wind caught it. ..."
The Renault Wind is a small car with a roof that can open up, so you can drive with the top down. It’s meant for everyday driving, but with the added fun of open-air motoring. People may mention it because it’s a compact alternative to bigger convertibles.
The Renault Wind is a small, compact convertible made by Renault, designed for open-top driving without the size and complexity of larger convertibles. It’s often discussed because it blends everyday practicality with a “top-down” experience, making it a niche choice in the used market. In a podcast, it may come up as an example of a quirky, character-focused car rather than a mainstream family vehicle.
Select text to request an explanation
Are you really digging for peace?
Or is that just a light tail to help us sleep?
Sure that you really want real behind all the stories that go.
Still remembers fire, grass remembers rain.
Every scar tells a story carved out of rain.
If you go digging some, best man that you find.
Welcome to the Reckon Yard.
I'm Jerry Wayne Longmire, and y'all are presumably still y'all.
All are welcome here in the Church of Internal Combustion.
We just ask that you show up with an open heart.
This is a good place to be if you have dirty hands and a complicated heart.
Before we get kicked off too hard, let's talk about our sponsors.
Of course, Reckon Yard is being brought to you this week by outlaws and gents.
Men's grooming products.
You see how beautiful I look. It's on account of them.
I've been using their products for 89 months now.
I think it's longer than that.
My beard looks better than it has in a couple years, honestly.
I couldn't be happier with using the products on my hair as well.
Because I still got a full head of hair and it makes it look nice.
So definitely check those guys out.
Like I said, I've told you guys I met the owner. We're pretty good buds now.
So if you go to outlawsandgents.com,
and you want to get you some beard products, you enter the discount code,
JWbeard at checkout, and it's going to get you a discount.
Put a little money back in your pocket.
Oh my goodness.
You know what I always say.
Most men I know busy taking care of everything for everybody.
Why take less care of yourself than you do everything else.
Self-care is important.
And taking care of yourself and feeling attractive and feeling good about yourself every day
is a pretty positive thing.
It can go a long way.
I know the days I don't take care of myself, I don't feel as good.
I'm not as productive. I don't get as much done.
My attitude is not as good.
I'm a nicer person when I feel pretty.
I'm about you.
Also, World of Outlaws racing series, sprint cars, and the late models.
One of our sponsors this year for the remainder of the year.
And you know, you guys know I have a deep affinity for dirt.
I love all kind of motor sports.
There's not too many motor sports you're going to find me uninterested in.
I just watched the F1 movie and I found myself, I'm not a F1 guy,
but I found myself enjoying the F1 movie more than I thought I would.
But my true love, what I grew up with is dirt track racing.
And I can't say enough wonderful things about it.
If you got a local track in your area, man, just go it Friday or Saturday night
when you ain't got nothing going on, man.
Just go buy your ticket in the cheap seats and just sit down and watch these guys battle.
It's some of the most exciting racing going on.
Make sure you check out World of Outlaws.
Any of their merch that you like or any of the hats you see that you like that I wear
and that kind of stuff, if you go to worldofoutlaws.com,
they have a merch site right there and they have all kind of goodies in there.
All right, let's kick it off.
Like to start this episode, I'm saying happy Mother's Day to any mothers listening.
I don't have a huge mother demographic, but there's any moms out there.
Happy Mother's Day.
If you still are fortunate enough to have your mother in your life,
you know, happy Mother's Day to your mother as well.
Everybody here had a mother at one point.
I mean, that's the only way to get here.
So, we all got a mama.
Some people don't get them for very long.
Some people don't get to know them at all, but took one to get us here.
So, cheers, toast with my water.
I'm going to try to take, I went and got my darling Rachel some real pretty yellow roses
because we're Texans and sometimes yellow is just prettier in red.
Everybody does red.
It's kind of basic.
And we've had a crazy busy week.
I've only been back, I got back from Minnesota last Sunday night and had some of those trips.
So, the difference in doing the racing events and doing like stand-up traveling,
is when I do stand-up, I only have to be on maybe two or three hours.
You know what I mean?
I only have to, you know, be this guy two or three hours.
And then I can spend the rest of the time sort of preparing for what I'm going to do and off of my own head.
And, you know, I haven't talked to people that much.
I have a, my social battery drains quick.
It drains quick.
Though I may seem extroverted from the outside looking in, it's not my normal state.
I'm a pretty boring guy.
I like to sit and write stupid stories on my phone.
That's my favorite thing to do is to just sit and write phone notepad,
maybe enjoy some nice coffee or weed.
It's a perfect day for me.
Some kind of a boring guy.
When I go do the races, though, it's a different situation in that I have to be,
I'm out at the racetrack, you know, anywhere between six and eight hours.
And I got to be on the whole time I'm there.
Sometimes I can slip away, find a tent.
Sometimes I have a tent or something where they're doing like food and stuff like that.
And I can go kind of hide out in the tent for a little while and defrag my brain.
But most time just on the whole time I'm there.
And then you get an event like the one I just went to and found in the city of Wisconsin.
And holy crap, that's three days.
Three days of eight to nine hours being on.
And I came back a little drained from that trip.
It's a great trip.
We're going to talk a little bit about it.
I've never been to that part of Minnesota, Wisconsin.
So I lived in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
Y'all know when I was younger for a period of time, damn, I need a back scratcher right here.
I guess there's a carpenter's back scratcher.
I got something itching me right between my daggum shoulder blades.
Oh, that's the stuff.
All right.
Much better.
Sorry, I had to, I was cutting some plexiglass.
I had to fix Ophelia's condo where she shredded one of the plastic panels.
So I had to cut a piece of plexiglass and put it in there.
And she shreds the plexiglass and she's going to give up.
Not that we actually put her in it early often.
Most of the time we leave, we just let her run around the house because she's never had a problem
not going to the bathroom where she's supposed to.
She doesn't really tear a lot of stuff up.
She's got plenty of scratcher things.
All right, stuff.
I still call her a herd just out of habit because up until just a little bit ago,
we thought she was a girl and we took her over to,
we took her over to the surgeon this week to get her,
he was going to check out her broke arm and check out her, what you call it, her thing.
Some of you know that it follows the story of Ophelia.
Her neck's always messy.
Well, it's not, it's not anything bad.
It's brown.
It's gross looking, but what cat saliva has a lot of iron in it and everything
because of the cleaning duties it does and it causes that brown color,
but it never stinks or smells bad or looks bad.
I mean, it just looks bad.
What happened was in that accident where a throat got all tore open when it healed
one of her saliva glands is in the wrong place now and it's leaking out her neck.
And oh my God, they sent us, we got to get a CT scan and then they're going to try to do a surgery
to either remove that saliva gland or put it back in the right place.
Cats have a shit ton of saliva glands according to the doc and I don't even have a clue
how expensive that's going to be because so far the CT scans are going to be $2,500.
And this is the most expensive animal I've ever owned and people help me out,
you know, with the initial expenses that we got through it, but by God, this is the most expensive.
This cat's more expensive than my kids.
And then her elbow and this leg is just jacked.
It's fused and it's jacked up and they got to decide whether to break it or it's fused
or immobilize the elbow because she's starting to have some pain.
She's limping and we were just kind of waiting for her to heal up enough for surgery
and she's healthy.
She's eight pounds now.
Anyways, so we're also going to get her fixed.
I lost shoes at the surgeon and the surgeon is kind of a hoot.
He's a riot.
I need to get him on the podcast so you guys can meet Dr. H is a frickin' riot.
He's funny, but he pretends like he doesn't know he is.
So Rachel's over there with the cat and goes pick a cat up from surgery and Dr. H says,
hey, it turns out Ophelia is a he.
Ophelia really is a house cat.
He removed a big old set of testicles from Ophelia and then told Rachel, y'all seem
like cool people so y'all can keep these and gives her a jar with Ophelia's testicles.
And then since her picks of the procedure just proved her that it's real, he's not
screwed with.
Rachel's like, oh, this is the first dick pic I ever got of a cat.
We're not changing the name.
Everybody's like, oh, call it Opie and I name that cat Opie.
Opie's a stupid name.
That cat's Ophelia.
I don't give a shit.
I ain't got no balls now, might as well be.
She's post-op Ophelia.
Anyways, so that's what we've had a lot of shit going on this day.
This whole week's been crazy as hell.
We went and saw yesterday I had to go, my brother's little girl who I just adore,
my little sweet pea Vivian.
I had a dance recital yesterday and we all piled in the car, go down that dance recital
and these indulgent teachers running these dance schools need to put a trigger warning
about how long these things are because that's something 50 went on for three hours, right?
And like, I don't need to see all the 17, 18 year old girls dance eight times in the
course of the day.
Like, shouldn't they be doing high school stuff or, you know, they should be doing their
own thing.
You just want to see the little kids dance, right?
It's hilarious.
The little ones were, I had some PTSD because the little ones come out and dance to 76 trombones
and my very short-lived trombone career in middle school, that was one of the songs we
had to learn with 76 trombones.
And I was last chair in the, as my band teacher put it, the absolute least of a musician he
had ever met in his life.
And I was last chair and trying to play trombone because I thought that's what my dad wanted
me to do was play trombone and I got yelled at so much about 76 trombones that when those
little girls start dancing 76 trombones, my whole body cringed.
I was like, ah.
Yeah, I am a terrible musician.
I'm not a musician.
That is the key.
I'm not a musician.
I am especially not a trombone player.
I know how it works.
I don't know how to make it make good sound.
So yeah.
And you really want to single yourself out as a dork, like around six or seventh grade,
just make sure everybody knows that you're a dork so nobody accidentally thinks you're
cool.
I can tell you carrying a trombone case on and off the school bus will just drive that
point home right there.
Yeah, so when I watched kids dance, which was awesome.
Also, my brother had to dance with his daughter for a daddy daughter dance and it was all
choreographed.
So I also got to go to my 49 year old brother's first dance recital, which was just delightful
too.
And Joey has some moves.
I give him that.
Joey had some moves.
Joey surprised the shit out of me.
I thought he was going to phone it.
He's not a Joey.
Definitely not extrovert.
Does not like to be on stage.
Not like to be in front of people.
And Joey busted out some moves.
I think he was the best dancing dad on the stage.
I was probably like, damn son, we'll take you on the road.
Have you open for me?
And he goes, you'll be disappointed every night.
Yeah, I got to pull these shorts up.
Losing weight.
Oh no, my shorts fit no more.
They're all falling off my ace.
I didn't have one to begin with.
I've been doing tons of squats at the gym.
It's not working.
Oh, I did a bunch of squats this week.
That's where I screwed up.
Anyway, so we go to the recital.
It's been a busy week.
It's all I'm trying to get to.
A little scattered this morning.
I just wrote this episode yesterday because all week I was looking for,
I was going to call this episode decompression and talk a little bit about
what it's like to come off the road and try to get back into your natural order
of things.
But then I was thinking about my experiences in Minnesota.
And I really wanted to talk about all that because I do.
There are aspects of the traveling that I like.
I like going places.
I think maybe most people do.
But that that racetrack was in Fountain City, Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin,
Wisconsin.
The racetrack was in Fountain City, Wisconsin, which is a man.
It's about 12 miles south from Winona, Winona, Minnesota.
So our hotel, there's no place to stay down there in Fountain City.
So we stayed in a hotel in Winona, Minnesota.
So I flew to O'Hara, which if you've flown into O'Hara in Chicago, it's always a rough landing.
I don't like flying.
I get up tight anyways.
It's always a rough landing.
And we're getting O'Hara.
Of course, I got to jog 12 terminals to go find my next flight.
And I got like a 40-minute layer, 30-40-minute layer to get on this tiny little tube with
people and flying to Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
And I don't like them little planes.
Them little planes do this and they're all over the place.
I don't like it yet.
Okay.
It's not for me.
It's not my type of thing.
And it's always a miserable experience for me.
So I turn my screen over here so I can track my time.
I don't like them.
Got into Eau Claire.
I was a little shaken, a little roughed up.
And I told Rage, my manager, I was like, man, next time we got to go to Fountain City,
we're going to fly me into Chicago.
I'm going to rent a car in Chicago and I'm going to drive to Fountain City because it's
only about four and a half hours.
Well, to fly there is like an hour and 30 minutes, but that doesn't include, you know,
the hour and a half in the airport, you got to wait to get on the flight over there.
And then, you know, the 30 or 40 minutes taxing around the runway, waiting to get off the plane.
I can't tell you I was on that tiny plane at least three hours.
When I could have just been in a rental car, listening to my music, seeing some sights,
enjoying the open wind of the highway as I made my way from Illinois to Wisconsin.
So that's how I'm going to do that next time, if I get to go back to that racetrack.
But I didn't stick around to Eau Claire very long, picked up a rental car and headed to
why I'd known in Minnesota where my hotel room was so I could check in on this Thursday.
I found out when I pulled into Minnesota that Minnesota is a legal state where cannabis is legal.
And I was pretty happy that my hotel was in Winona, to be honest with you.
Because right across the river in Wisconsin is very illegal to have cannabis and enjoy cannabis.
Enjoy the flowers, the marijuana plant.
Like I always say, I don't consider myself a stoner.
But I do like to use the flowers of the cannabis plant in my daily pursuit and pilgrimage for truth and understanding.
I was like, Winona is a little bit old town, you know, not a lot to it.
And I got checked in to a hotel that I think was built in the 60s.
It had some pretty scary switches in the bathroom, I was afraid to touch on fear of being electrocuted.
I could not figure out, first of all, when I left Houston, it was 88 degrees and 80% humidity.
When I got off the plane in Eau Claire, it was 40 degrees and the temperature was dropping.
And luckily I had prepped and taken me some warm clothes, what I thought was warm clothes.
And so it wasn't too bad getting to Winona.
But when I had to go to the racetrack that night, I froze my ass off at that racetrack.
I was out there for the Dairyland showdown.
So like all these races, I know some of you know about races, but some of you don't.
So with dirt track racing, it's always kind of been a tradition and a lot of racing does it.
But very specifically with dirt track racing, everything's got a name.
You know, there's all these racetracks around the country.
Like when we went to the I-55 racetrack in Peebley, that was for the Spring Classic.
Well, we're going to the racetrack in Wisconsin, it's the Dairyland Classic.
I don't know if you know this, Wisconsin has a lot of dairy farmers.
They're real big on cheese and dairy products.
It's a whole thing.
They call their football fans cheeseheads, right?
And they wear giant blocks of cheese on their head.
They're fake, but it's weird.
I was going out there for the Dairyland showdown and that was three nights.
So yet Thursday night was $10,000 race.
Friday night was $10,000 race.
And then Saturday night, the big finale was $40,000 purse, which pretty fat purse.
It's been bigger in past years.
I'm not sure why it was where it was this year.
This is late model racing.
So late model, when I talk about sprint cars, those young sprint cars are open wheel cars.
900 horsepower usually.
Oh, I mean, they get smaller series, but when you get in the 410s, we're talking about 900 horsepower.
Methanol engines and they can be winged or non-winged.
The non-winged ones are just insane because they got nothing holding them on the track.
They like to cartwheel and do all kinds of tricks.
Late model racing is like the next tier down from sprint car as far as prestige and purse size and stuff like that.
But just about as expensive to run.
A good late model engines, $85,000, $90,000.
The late model cars are a little different.
They're about 1,000, close to 1,000 pounds heavier.
So they're like 2,400 pounds with the driver.
And they have like a full sheet metal body on them.
And the body kind of acts as a wing in the way that it holds the car to the track.
But whereas, excuse me, something down the wrong hole.
Whereas sprint cars are like real torquey sort of position grabbers.
They're fighting for position and jerking.
And late model racing is more, it's about momentum.
It's more, it's like a dance.
Good late model drivers.
That's what I grew up with in East Texas.
East Texas late model was the pinnacle of racing.
We saw sprint cars every once in a while.
But usually if you want to see sprint cars in East Texas, you had to drive some urgency.
It was a big deal.
The outlaws were coming to some town or something like that.
First sprint car race I ever saw was the outlaws race.
I saw Donny Schott's race, who's still racing.
I saw this guy racing in the 90s.
Back when some of the kings of sprint car were still driving.
I saw Kenzer and Swindell all that same night.
I was about 16 years old.
I think 95, something like that.
But late model racing is what we had every Saturday night.
Kilville, Texas late model was Saturday night heroes.
Cars were fast.
Like I said, it's smooth.
There's an old saying that goes around, people talk about building stuff and racing and all kinds of things.
They'll say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Well, smooth is fast with the late models.
Smooth is real fast with the late models.
When you get to watch late model drivers at the top of their game, it's almost...
I've got some footage of Turn 2 where I had the camera set up just right.
And it almost looks like a ballet.
Those cars coming around their cock sideways using that body to push them down the track.
It's glorious.
Late model racing is probably my favorite.
I'm excited.
The other thing that's cool about late model racing is...
A lot of these guys have been professional race car drivers for a period of time.
But there's also a lot of new guys.
There's guys that were welders and contractors last year for a living.
There's guys still doing side jobs to make money and keep the race car going.
So late model racing to me was always more accessible.
It's like something you could actually dream about.
Getting into sprint car racing is difficult.
You got to have a lot of money backing you.
Or you got to really make a name for yourself or be born into it.
It's almost like NASCAR.
But late models...
Late models is where everyday Joe comes to drive.
That first night out of the track, I froze my ass off down there in that infield.
Woo, that was cool. I was not ready for that.
When that sun went down behind them hardwoods...
Woo sun, let me tell you, I'm just not built for that.
I'm not built for what Minnesota and Wisconsin are about.
I am not built for that.
Oh my God, I was so cold.
I was driving back to the hotel.
My feet were just frozen, bro.
I felt like blocks of ice on the way back to the hotel.
My hands, everything. I didn't have gloves.
I had screwed up. I was so freaking cold.
So I get in the hotel and I went to the dispensary.
Got me a little Jay and went out there in the parking lot.
Smoked me a Jay and stayed cold just a little longer.
I had already eaten at the tracks.
I was just going to go upstairs and call Rachel and tell her goodnight and that kind of thing.
Get myself to do a little writing, get my butt in bed.
Travel days wiped me out.
I got away from races. It was like 10 o'clock.
So get back to the hotel and I cannot figure out how to turn the heater on in the hotel.
I cannot figure out how to get this heater to come on.
It's like old analog things stuck to the balcony and I cannot figure out how to get this sun 50 to work.
So some point I decided, I tell Rachel, I was like, oh, I'm going to take a hot shower and wash up.
Because when I go to the dirt track races, bro,
I can tell you the soil composition of the track by what's left in the bathtub that comes out of my beard.
I wash enough dirt track out of my beard to file a land claim in most places.
So I told her, I talked to her, I was like, hey, I'm going to take a hot shower.
Try to warm myself up. I can't get this heater to work. I'm freezing death.
And I don't know why I thought getting wet was going to fix that.
And then I'll call you back.
She was like, cool, cool. She's going to do something. She's watching movie with the kids, that kind of thing.
So go in there, take a nice hot, get that water just, just about scald and take myself a nice hot shower.
Wash off, but you know, wash half an island out of my beard.
Get out of the shower and of course I'm freezing now.
So get a couple of towels to dry myself off and I started blow-drying my hair and my beard to dry it out.
So I wasn't getting in bed with wet hair, you know, and I was blow-drying that hot.
That little hair dryer was putting off some good hot air.
It was getting good to me. It was making me feel better.
You know, I tell you what, boy, I just, I blow, I start blow-drying my, I got a little chest hair.
You know, I start blow-drying my chest hair, blow-drying every other hair.
So I'm trying to get myself dry, right?
And that warm air feels nice because big boy ain't built for the cold. He's freezing.
I know I look like I'm built for the cold, but that's like supposed to be the only benefit being fat and I didn't get it.
And I'm just blow-drying myself while I wear this big old metal necklace everywhere.
I never take it. I don't take it off in the shower. I don't take this off.
My wife bought this for me when my first kid was born.
It's a Celtic axe and it's got some knot work on it and it's kind of funny.
She bought it for me when we thought I was Irish and then we found out that all my ancestry is Scottish, but that's another story.
But I've had this since my youngest was born and I wear it all the time and it's heavy and, you know, metal.
I always wear it when I'm doing the podcast because it rubs on the mic and makes racket.
I had that necklace on and I was just blow-drying it silver. Silver conducts heat very quickly.
I've just blow-dried myself with that hair dryer on high heat and everything.
And I didn't, that necklace heated up before I realized what was happening.
And I was like, ooh, because I was blow-drying myself.
I was feeling nice and hot and fighting the cold and all of a sudden this thing turned into fire and it was like branding me.
And if y'all had seen the dance I'd done in that bathroom with just a towel on me and tangled up in hair dryer cord sticking out of the wall,
that looked like it was going to electrocute me and trying to get that hot necklace off my chest to keep it from branding me.
It's a good first night in Minnesota.
Years pass when I travel, I found myself drinking heavy. I miss my wife and my kids when I'm not around them.
I'm fortunate to get to spend a lot of my time here, especially since COVID.
We've spent a lot of time together and I'm one of those people that's real happy about my choices and I like spending time around my family.
So I get anxiety and when I'm away from Rachel, I just, I get a lot of anxiety and she makes me a better person than I am.
And years pass I find that what that culminates in is I spend a lot of, I'd go get me a bottle of Evelyn Williams.
And I spend a lot of time hoveled up in the hotel room drinking and it's not really good for you.
And I've got this crazy tour coming up. We're hitting 57 cities before the end of 2026 and I can be straight with you guys because y'all are my people.
I'm kind of terrified about it all. It's overwhelming. I got 11,000 something tickets I got to sell before the end of the year and it's fucking scary.
Be careful what you wish for. It's not that I don't own it, it's just, but it's scary.
I can want something and be scared of it at the same time. You're allowed to do that.
And I can be honest about it, especially with y'all. I can be straight with you guys about this kind of stuff.
So I decided a few weeks back that I was going to cut the drinking out during the week, cut the drinking out when I travel.
But I decided to have a couple of drinks with my mom on Friday or Saturday.
Our weekend is Monday night because of the way our schedule works.
So Monday nights she usually gets some steelhead trout and we cook fish and we like to have a few drinks and that kind of stuff.
And I was like, I'm just going to restrict it.
It was becoming a thing I was just doing all the time.
And then on the road it was becoming a thing I was using as a bandaid and I don't want it to be like that, you know,
because I think that's where you get in trouble with it.
And I don't think I can do 57 cities that way without causing myself some problems, you know, drinking that heavy.
I don't want to. I want to be present in the moment.
And it's not good. It left most of my impressions of most towns was based on some dismal hotel room I trapped myself in and left to my own devices.
I'll be a hotel room in my underwear writing drinking whiskey, you know, like I know I fall off into that darkness, that dark place.
So this man will cut that out.
So this was my first long trip with that.
I had people every night like baby.
And I was like, no, I'm just gonna not doing the sauce right now.
But I got a little weed and smoked that help me sleep.
And I just like we got up next morning.
I didn't know anything about that area.
And it's a senior signs and it calls it the driftless area.
But all around the hotel, I could see these rocky outcroppings that later found out were called bluffs.
We ain't got many bluffs in my part of Texas.
Everything's pretty flat.
And I was like, so one of the things I'm doing now when I travel is I'm trying to go out and do things either something nature or a car museum or a museum.
Something old. That's what I'm into.
I'm born. I told you, I'm very boring.
I'm very boring.
If I find a car or a toy museum and I missed out, there's a really cool one in Fountain City, Wisconsin.
I found out about it after the fact and didn't get to go see it.
But if I can go find some nature someplace where I can just go get a little exercise, get out of my head, maybe do some writing, take some cool.
I'm getting a little better at taking photos and trying to teach myself some tricks about capturing better photos and stuff just for fun on the road.
And I thought, boy, if I got up there on one of them bluffs, I'd get pretty cool photos of the Mississippi, the Mississippi River.
I've never seen that part of it. It's beautiful.
It's like blue water and it's just gorgeous.
It's absolutely astounding, you know.
And I've read Huck Finn.
I've read stuff where Mark Twain talked about riding the riverboat down Mississippi and how you'd get off and go up the Indian trails and all that kind of stuff, the native trails.
I was like, man, this has got to be a place he stopped, right?
Like this area is the most beautiful.
I wasn't prepared for the beauty of this place.
When I was driving in from Eau Claire, it's a lot of farms and then you start getting up in some hills.
And once you come out of those hills, all of a sudden it's like some of the most beautiful scenery you've ever seen in your life.
Just big old hickory, shag-bark hickory trees and oaks and a lot of pines.
But like these red and white pines, like I thought I grew up behind the pine curtain.
Holy shit.
These pine trees, what they got in Wisconsin, bro, these red and white pines, they get taller than libelollies.
I thought libelollies about the tallest tree I'd ever seen.
These white red pines in that area of Minnesota, Wisconsin are impressive.
So I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll go find me something.
There wasn't a planet fitness within 20 miles and it was a workout day for me.
And I knew I needed to do something because the day before I traveled, I did a bunch of squats and leg day and I was dying.
My legs were so stiff and I was like, I gotta work this stiffness out of them.
I'll go hiking to walk around.
So I just started driving north up 61 out of Winona.
And I saw on my map there was a state park and finally found the little road that took me to the state park.
So I wandered up that little road and drove and didn't realize how high up I drove until I was leaving later that afternoon and drove down and my ears popped coming down that road from the state park.
But I drove up the state park, paid my little entry fee and saw that they had a hiking trail out there.
There was two bluffs beside each other.
One was a little taller and it's Kings Bluff and Queens Bluff.
And I said, man, I'll go find a little something out about the area.
So I drove over to where one of the hiking trails was where you could hike up to Kings Bluff.
I said, it's about an hour round trip hike.
I don't know who did that.
An hour, it was not me.
And I pulled up my phone.
I didn't know what kind of reception I was going to get out there.
So I pulled up my picture saved a little map of where I was going and I had some water and make sure I was going to be okay on the trail.
Then I looked up and read about the area and it was like, well, it's kind of a prairie type area environment until you get to the very top of the bluff.
But you need to watch out for timber rattlesnakes, which surprised me because I've never heard of them outside of Texas.
I mean, I know they exist in other places, but it seems like that place would be too cold for them, you know, and there are a lot of snakes in cold weather.
And I said, these timber rattlesnakes are everywhere and I look for them.
I've never seen any of them and that doesn't mean they weren't there.
See, timber rattlesnakes, I know a lot about them because we have a lot of them here and they're pretty shy.
As far as venomous snakes go, they're not aggressive at all.
They're real damn shy.
They try to get away from humans.
I've run across them, you know, digging under houses and stuff like that in Montgomery County.
Found them underneath houses.
That's a fun time.
So I was looking for them, but I know they were probably everywhere all around me because apparently they find their dens.
They like all those limestone bluffs and they find their dens, those limestone bluffs because that limestone carries the heat of the day and they get off in the cracks of that limestone and then up there.
So I know they were probably all around me, but it was a good brisk, cold day.
It's a cool man.
I know I'd deal with timber rattlesnakes.
Probably won't see one.
If I do, they're probably trying to get away from my big, heavy, loud ass.
And I started marching up to that bluff and it was a little bit of a hike.
And I got where I thought was almost the end of it and wanted to quit, but then I couldn't quit without going all the way up to the bluff to see it.
And when I got back, my fitness watch said, I thought it was like two miles, but I didn't have my readers on.
I couldn't see it very good.
But my fitness watch said that I did a total of 4.7 miles and six flights of stairs.
So I don't know how much elevation that is.
It feels like most of it.
But when I walked, when I climbed up to the top of that bluff and looked out across, you just look out into like.
I wrote a poem about it called Big God that's going in my poetry book.
Because it like when I got to the top and looked out there, I just started laughing like uncontrollably just big like it was fixing something in me.
And there's some other stuff going on that I'll tell you guys about a little bit at the end of the episode.
Some stuff my dad going on that I'm struggling with.
But I it's like it broke something open.
It laid my defenses flat, you know, when I got up top there and I just laughed and you can hear just big laughter.
Like, you know, it's in a place where I didn't have to make myself small.
I could just laugh.
I was already small compared to that place.
And I can hear my laughter rolling down through that valley.
And you look out across there and you saw the whole Mississippi River off into Wisconsin and the hills and the bluffs over there.
It's astounding.
I learned when I was up on top of that bluff.
About the only animals that live at the top of that bluff are big predatory birds and those frickin rattlesnakes and these things are called ground sparrows.
And I was seeing them everywhere.
They were like little brown golf balls just running this way and that.
Man, when I was walking through the woods, I heard this sound like, right?
It sounded like somebody hammering on some wood.
I don't know if you're watching bigfoot documentaries.
That's the thing the bigfoot people always say is that the bigfoot or the Sasquatches, whatever you call them, the Yeti's, they go out there in the woods and they pick up logs and they beat on trees to communicate.
This sound like it could be some bigfoot trying to have a phone call.
It was really loud.
I never heard, it sounded like somebody hitting a piece of wood with a big hammer.
Not your claw hammer, but like a, well, this is a soft mallet furniture, but a big mallet.
You know what I mean?
Like just whopping the fire out of this thing.
And I said, man, I gotta know what the hell that is.
It's like, it was almost the cadence of a woodpecker, but slower.
Right.
And we got woodpeckers in our backyard on our pecan trees, but a little redheaded woodpeckers we got down here.
It's like, it's like a higher pitch, sharper little needle beak hitting that pecan, which really hard wood.
This thing, man, I gotta, I gotta get a look, see what the hell this is.
And I got off the trail a little bit and wondered through the woods and trying to be careful.
I was all closed up my clothes because they got ticks out there.
I didn't know they had ticks until I got out there.
That was the only thing I wasn't prepared for.
And I didn't know they had a bunch of tick problems there.
That's everybody's getting the limousines in Minnesota.
So I wanted to do the woods a little bit.
I couldn't get a picture of it, but what I saw up on one of them shag bark Hickory's is the biggest frickin
woodpecker I ever seen.
This is like a dinosaur woodpecker, right?
This big ass woodpecker is what I would have called it if I had been naming shit.
I'm like, oh, that's Latin as big ass woodpecker right there.
The thing hammering this Hickory tree.
I got watched it for a little bit, but I won't get too close and scared off.
So I went back to trail when I got up top of the bluff, I got phone surf skin looked up.
Sure enough, it's not called big ass woodpecker.
It's called giant woodpecker and a real common that area.
But also like, I know bald eagles supposed to be going extinct, but not Minnesota.
They're everywhere on top of that bluff flying around and bigger bald eagles than we got here in Texas.
Right.
I don't know if they get bigger because the cold or more food or left alone, but big old bald eagles just swirling in the air.
And they're close enough.
You can see them just swirling above this bluff and the little thermal updrafts and such.
And some big, there was some kind of big hawk.
I didn't know what it was.
And of course you see some turkey vultures and stuff.
Once again, bigger turkey vultures and what we got here.
Everything's bigger in Texas.
Except the birds, except the birds.
Minnesota, Wisconsin got the birds.
So it's big ass birds.
It was outstanding.
Some of the cool stuff.
I took some cool photos.
You should follow me on Facebook.
Probably saw some of the photos.
Had a great time with that bluff.
Wrote some good poetry.
Learnwise up there, I met this other dude whose brother is an archeologist for the Ohio Board Department of Transportation.
So basically they go out to dig up a respite or whatever.
They got dig around and find out there's a bunch of Native American stuff in Ohio.
Dig down, make sure they don't find no bones or something.
Find out it's Native American.
Something important that needs to be preserved.
This archeologist dude's telling us, he said the top of this bluff was once the sea floor.
And they found fossils on the top of that bluff that come from the bottom of the ocean.
And that floored me.
Like I hadn't drove so high to get down and my ears popped.
And it just really shook me to like think like this ain't even God's first design, right?
Like first design, this was ocean.
They decided to change something.
Whatever you believe.
What maker or whatever.
But this ain't even the creator's first design.
This is the world like revision seven at this point.
I didn't know about how the Midwest was formed.
So when I came down and got back to my car, I spent a bunch of time researching that afternoon because I wanted to write about it because I'm making a long form video about this track too.
And the reason they call it the driftless area is because the rest of the Midwest, the reason it's so flat and the soil is so rich is there was a period of time where it was covered in ice up to a mile thick.
And it was this huge sheet of ice that would basically stretch out and then recede and stretch out and then recede and stretch out and recede until finding some glaciers melted and all melted.
And this is, you know, I got some notes on this we can get into, but this is all the short form stuff.
But 2424,000 square miles where Southwest Wisconsin, Southeast Minnesota, Northeast Iowa, and a sliver of Northwest Illinois all meet over the last 2.5 million years.
Glacier steamrolled the rest of the upper Midwest about 17 times.
But every single time they went around this one chunk of country, that's why the Midwest is mostly flat.
It got bulldozed.
The driftless area kept its old face, steep bluffs, narrow valleys, deep rivers.
The name drift is like the old world, the old word for all the junk.
A glacier picks up drag on silt, sand, gravel, boulders.
So when the glacier melts, it just dumps all that behind, which why you have all that rich, amazing soil through the Midwest.
It's great farming land.
A driftless place with no drift, no glacial junk.
The glaciers never showed up to leaving.
So the reason the glaciers went around it though, there's like two reasons.
So it's hard old bedrock.
The ground underneath it is like ancient paleozoic limestone and sandstone.
It's uplifted into kind of a dome shape, and it sits higher and harder than the land around it.
Well, on either side, the land dips down, right?
On the east, the land dips down into what is now the Lake Michigan Basin.
And on the west, the troughs that become Lake Superior and the Des Moines River Valley.
So the ice took the easy paths.
That thing's called the Laurentide Ice Sheet.
It was a mile thick in place.
You imagine an ice of mile thick, and it came south and split into two lobes around that high ground.
So all that beautiful scenery still left there, but at one time that was all underwater.
So that's why you have those sharp bluffs and stuff.
So it's just millions of years of regular old rain and rivers cut down through the soft sedimentary rock
and leaving those bluffs and those kind of little...
I was kind of like when you're hiking up the trail to the bluff, the limestone is poking through the ground.
It just looks like these little monoliths and they would catch the sun.
And you got to be careful walking on.
You can eat some mud real quick walking on.
So like everywhere else, glaciers kind of reset the clock every hundred years,
but in this particular place, erosion just keeps going.
So like 13,000 years ago when the last glaciers melted along the edges,
biblical amounts of water came roaring down the Mississippi from the headwaters.
And the floodwaters carved the valleys deeper and steeper.
So the bluffs above the river are basically just what's left.
If you're a traveling sort, you have to be in that part of the country.
Spend some time on Highway 61 driving up and down there because you will see some beautiful land.
Anyways, it was pretty cool, man.
I was glad I went up and did that and it was great exercise and I was feeling good about doing it.
Then I had another good...
That night the races, Friday night, Nick Hoffman won the Friday night part of the Dairyland Showdown.
Nick Hoffman is an excellent race car driver, right?
He's usually number one or number two in points in the late model series.
Him and the dude named Bobby Pierce.
Both incredible drivers.
People love to hate them because they're good.
It really is one of those things.
You never see that more in race cars.
If there's a guy that's winning all the time, there's a whole bunch of people hate him and they're not 100% sure why.
Here's the part about Nick that sucks.
Nick is the guy you want to hate, right?
Nick's a good-looking kid, right?
He's a handsome dude.
He's a hell of a damn race car driver.
He's great on camera.
And what sucks about him is he is just one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life.
Away from the cameras, just got to chit chat with the dude and talked to him.
Found out it was his birthday that day.
But just a kind, nice guy who's willing to take 15, 20 minutes of his time sitting chit chat with me about racing.
And thought, well, didn't know if I knew about racing at first, was ready to explain it all to me.
Just the nicest guy in the world.
You can't be good-looking and a badass race car driver and be a nice guy, dude.
I need to find out you kick puppies or something, so if I need to hate you later, I can, you know.
But this guy's just a nice dude all over.
In fact, most of the drivers I spent time around, nice guys.
Even they might get a little prickly on camera.
I got to hang out with Tyler Herb, who's from right here in New Waverly, Texas.
And he's kind of got a salty reputation.
But man, he was just the nicest kid to sit there and talk to.
I really enjoyed talking to him, too.
Love watching that dude drive.
Nick Hoffman wins that thing Friday night.
So there's all these traditions, I tell you, at these races and stuff.
So at the Dairyland Showdown, one of their traditions is because it's Wisconsin milk country, dairy farm country.
If you win that race, you got chug, climb up on your car while the confetti's going off, and chug, milk.
I have a glass Wisconsin milk jar.
It's just one of their things.
And the last night on Saturday night, for the finale, they had a cow there.
We're going to get into that.
But yet chug for this milk jar.
Well, by God, Nick Hoffman wins the thing.
Nick Hoffman's also sponsored by Noss Energy Drink.
And as part, I believe, of his contractual agreement, when he wins the race,
he has to get up on top of his car and chug him a Noss Energy Drink and show off the brand.
So he wins, and he climbs up on his car.
This poor bastard just ran 30 laps of intense racing.
30 laps of intense racing on a really cool, intense track.
To win it all, get his ass out of the car from sweating and heat to 38 degrees.
And Friday night, it was really cold, 38, 39 degrees.
And climb on top of his car while everybody and cameras are on him, and confetti's shooting up,
and swig this Noss Energy Drink, and then swig from this milk.
And I can't even imagine what the hell that tasted like.
But you can see, if you go look at the video, if you watch the video,
you can see his face when the milk goes in his mouth.
It immediately spits back out, and it's all over.
And then he's shaking them out.
Like, we were laughing like, somebody's got to clean that poor car tomorrow,
and it's going to have sport, milk, and Noss Energy Drink all over it.
That's got to be a flavor. That's got to be some kind of smell.
And I've watched this poor dude, like, oh my God, and it's his birthday.
Bro, your birthday, happy birthday, you got diarrhea.
Right? It's like something's about to happen to your stomach in the next 20 to 35 minutes
that is going to be, it's going to change who you are as a person.
Happy birthday, you're about to, because he's a young guy,
like happy birthday, you're about to understand your dad better.
Happy birthday, you're about to stand in Walgreens
and buy a product you've never bought before with your ass on fire.
Right? You're about to have your first preparation H experience.
Happy birthday.
I never felt so bad for a winter in my life.
He's a good sport about it. He's actually a really great guy,
which champions don't always have to be, but it's always nice to meet one who is.
And I really enjoyed getting to meet him, Tyler.
All the guys, Ryan Goosten, Saturday, so I wasn't going to do no hiking.
So I went and I still had, I had bought myself a couple of jays from that dispensary.
And they have a nice little area right there on the river where you can just sit there
and it's got little benches and stuff right there at the levee.
And I just went sat at that river and went to a little local bookshop in town
that this dude, this writer, he was pretty cool.
I'll save that story for another time. It's pretty funny.
But I decided I was going to go sit out there at the river and call my baby.
Have a little chit chat with her.
Got me a good cup of coffee from this place called Blue Heron and it was damn good coffee.
And I had my little joint and I sit at the bench and just watch the Mississippi River go by.
Enjoy myself in it.
It got, it started screwing with me.
Because at some point I realized, and I've never really had to think about this before,
but I was looking across the river and realized that because of this imaginary line that runs through this river,
which here's the kicker, nobody knows where it is.
They just used the river as a border.
Well, rivers reshape and change over time.
But there's no, nobody knows where the line is, but once you go over that river, you're in Wisconsin.
And it dawned on me that I could sit on this side of the river and smoke my joint that I bought legally
and enjoy my morning with my coffee and do some writing.
But if I went and did that on the other side of the river, I'd be a criminal.
I'd be a bad person.
But because it was on this side of the river, it was okay.
And it was, I would, I've never had to think about those things before.
You know, I've never had to worry.
I've never had to worry about boundaries, right?
Like, I grew up a, you know, I grew up in rural East Texas, but I was born an American.
So I was born, you know, free, Caucasian, male.
There weren't a lot of lines, you know, I mean, there were, but not.
Like, as far as like human history and human beings, I hit the lottery being born in a free country,
in a place where I have people and community, you know, even if there were lines there keeping me from doing certain things,
you know, don't get me wrong, East Texas is the most progressive place in the world.
East Texas isn't, they're not real, real fond of academia, that kind of thing where I was growing up.
Like, you know, when you kid, they're like, oh, you can be president, but at the same time,
like, just make sure you get a good job in a machine shop.
You know, our parents still told us we could be anything, but they didn't necessarily believe it.
But it just dawned on me that I've never had to worry like that, like that close.
I've never had to worry about that.
And still, still better than a lot of people, right?
But because of these imaginary lines that men drew, and men, right?
Men drew these lines hundreds, thousands of years ago, some places.
But I've never had to live on the wrong side of the line before.
Each one is a line drawn by men that decide who lives, dies, is free, is owned, is welcome, or is the enemy.
You know, that's what Hook Finn's all about, is going up down that river and how his friend is free,
give or take where they are on that river.
If you lived on the Ohio River in 1850, depending on what side of the river,
if you had the wrong skin tone, you were going to be slave or free, because of a river.
If you lived on the Ohio side, you were free.
If you lived on Kentucky, you could be property.
It's, it's fascinating, right?
It's terrifying, right?
Like, I've never had to deal with that situation.
I'm aware of my fortune in that situation.
I've never, I've had my own lines and stuff I had to cross,
but none of them were about whether I lived or died.
None of them about whether I was free or property.
There's a hospital in Juarez.
There's a hospital in El Paso.
Two cities, one metro area separated by the Rio Grande and the Texas-Mexico border.
A baby born on the El Paso side gets a U.S. passport.
Public schools shot at any college in the country can vote when they turn 18.
A baby born in the Juarez hospital.
You can see the lights of the El Paso hospital from the Juarez delivery room.
That baby grows up in one of the most dangerous cities on Earth,
separated by an imaginary line and a river,
because somebody decided that was a boundary.
Same air, same families on both sides, cousins.
And, you know, up until not even that long ago,
it was all Mexico, you know?
We won more and moved the line.
But the people didn't move, the line did.
Grandkids became foreigners in the towns that their families helped found.
I've ever had to live on that kind of a line and look across that kind of a line before.
1945, Korea, it's the 38th parallel.
Two American colonels, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesdale,
get pulled in Pentagon, back room late at night,
their job, figure out where to split Korea between American and Soviet occupation.
They had about 30 minutes.
They didn't know anything about Korea.
They used a national geographic map.
They picked the 38th parallel because it roughly cut the country in half
and kept Seoul on the American side.
What I'm later admitted, it made no sense economically or geographically.
Korea had been one country for over a thousand years.
The Soviets accepted the line within hours.
80 years later, it's the most militarized border on earth.
And depending on which side of that border you were born on,
by chance, your life's going to be very, very different.
And in one case, you're not going to be able to get free of it.
You're not going to be free.
Berlin, early 60s.
Actually, it's an overnight deal.
This is one really good.
Folks went to bed on Saturday night, August 12, 1961 in one city.
Woke up Sunday morning to barb wire and soldiers running down the middle of the street.
You know, your kids visiting grandma on the east side that weekend couldn't go home.
Wouldn't see their parents again for years and some of them never did.
There's a famous photograph of West Berlin parents lifting their babies up over the wall.
So grandparents on the east side could wave at a grandchild they'd never hold.
It's the same kind of shit we saw during COVID.
That wall stood 28 years.
At least 140 people got shot trying to cross it.
All over a line that didn't exist August 12, 1961.
Israel and Palestine, lines on top of lines.
It's the densest example of imaginary lines doing the work of life and death.
1948 line, the 1967 line, the green line, the wall, the settlement lines that move every year.
Children born in the same village as their grandfather get different colored ID cards
spent on which line their house ended up by.
I'm not taking a side.
I'm just saying what's true about lines drawn by men in 1947, 1949, 1967 are still deciding
which kid gets bombed and which kid gets a bomb shelter.
The land's just land. The land don't know shit.
I was sitting across the line where my activities which were legal in that place would have been a federal felony 50 feet west.
Come back home to Texas, big criminal fence.
Same plant, same person, same sky, same land.
It's wild to think about that stuff.
It really got in my head.
All these big lines were drawn by men, not gods, not nature.
Men with rulers and meetings and politics and everyone of them decides right now today who eats and who doesn't.
Who gets bombed and who doesn't?
Who can boat and who can't?
Who's a citizen?
Who's a problem?
Who's a criminal?
Who's not?
I think about all the lines we draw for ourselves, the small lines, the ones we will sit with when we break bread.
Who counts as our people?
Who we let into our shops?
Who we believe when they tell us what they need?
Those lines we draw with our own stick.
It's something to marinate on, man.
We'll come back to it in closing sermon.
But for now, let's go back to Diwali Bottoms, Texas.
I might put my darky readers on.
I'm getting bifocals this week because I'm done with these readers.
I've broken three pairs now.
My eye doctor says she can get me bifocal contacts, so I'm going to give them a shot.
I wear contacts because I don't want to wear glasses.
I hate wearing glasses.
All right.
Let's return to Diwali Bottoms, Texas.
Getting out of Houston was slow.
They had opted to take Tony's pickup as it was the more reliable of the two.
Dusty Z71 had a front U-joint that had been singing its swan song of pain for months
and a set of breaks that were more or less advice as opposed to the command they're supposed to be.
Dusty sometimes worked as a mechanic when he wasn't stacking parts
and had access to his buddy David's transmission shop if he needed a place to wrench
and tools to wrench with.
Tony had pressed him once.
Why don't you ever fix that truck?
He asked when it left them stranded at a gig in Rayford, Texas in a trailer house bar
that was once a church but now populated by the types of bikers
that don't have web pages and charity drive photos.
Dusty in true Dusty fashion remained lived.
Cordell, my man.
If I start giving her new parts, she'll just want them all the time.
Damn, son, don't you know anything about chicks?
Before he walked back off into the smoky mobile home bar, fresh sig dangling from his lips to ask for a jump.
Tony watched him in wonder, chalking it up to another oddity about his friend's way that he'd never understand.
If you've known many mechanics in your life, though, Dusty's behavior ain't near as odd as Tony believed.
Tony's mechanical training had come from his father, grandfather.
And ultimately, a crusty old pulpwood cutter named Danny that had liked his things mechanically sound
because broke chainsaws and broke trucks didn't make money.
Danny had liked to make money.
59 North had been stop and go all the way to Lufkin with the massive folks trying to escape the ruined infrastructure of H-Town
to Arkansas and parts beyond where the remnants of Ike continued to wage war as it meandered northeast looking for a place to fall apart.
The southbound side of the freeway was mostly a parking lot populated by giant utility service trucks from all over the country.
Linemen by the thousands had responded to the call for help.
And the biggest thing impeding their work was the traffic of opportunists of every type trying to get in the devastated area to make a buck.
Sharp penciled insurance adjusters, contractors were chainsaws and dump trailers from every county within a six hour drive.
Not all were looking for money though.
And they had passed at least a dozen good old boys with their hotshot doolies and flatbed trailers loaded to the gills with ice and water
because they heard their neighbors to the south took a beating and they'd been raised to help their neighbors if they could.
Quite Cordell was eating you.
Dusty was leaned against his half rolled up window the cherry from the cigarette glowing in the dark.
Tony pressed himself back into the seat and flexed his knee gingerly.
They've been in the truck for five or six hours at this point on what was normally a three hour drive.
He lightly slapped the side of his face and exhaled before answering.
It's just a lot.
It's easier to not think about my mom when I don't come back.
My dad and I get along better when we don't see each other.
I did everything I could to get out of this place.
I just wanted to stay gone.
Dusty took a long drag from the smoke.
That tracks me.
I think about my mother more now than I did when she was still around.
Yeah, I don't know how much of it is her or him.
I love my grandparents.
I miss them like crazy.
That's the only silver lining in this situation.
You're going to love my papal and everyone loves me.
My papal says she's always been the most popular girl in the county.
I just I had a real hard time in high school.
I was weak and small when they sent me to Kilgore Heights.
It was hell for me.
A lot of bullying at the hands of troglodytes raised on steroid chicken.
Tony stared straight ahead as they slowly pulled through Henderson.
Dusty tossed his cigarette laughing.
I hope there's a dictionary at your house.
I'm dying to know what the fuck a troglodyte is, Cordell.
It don't sound good like half fossil and maybe half asshole.
Tony laughed in the dark.
Y'all call me country.
You know, your definition ain't half bad, but they're 100% asshole.
The radio was low, but Dusty got excited.
That's my jam, Cordell, before twisting the knob up till the cab was filled with the Georgia satellites
and their rowdy ranting about the landscape of premarital sex.
They both joined in at the top of their lungs for the chorus while Dusty did his best tinker impression on the dashboard.
It was after 2 a.m. when Tony pulled off 259 on the farm market that went to the wallet bottoms.
The lob lollies curtain the small oil road on both sides and the darkness felt like a blanket.
Dusty lit a joint and he had stashed in a cigarette pack before offering it to Tony.
He took a long drag before passing it back to Dusty.
We're only about 20 minutes from the house.
Dusty didn't speak.
He just nodded as he pulled on the spliff as the warm, fecking marijuana smoke eased through the cab
and out into the damp pine scented air flowing along the sides of the dodge
as it bumped along the rough oil tar surface in the night.
They took turns puffing as Dusty fiddled with the radio.
When it was down to nothing more than a roach, Tony handed it back to Dusty just as he saw a familiar silhouette on the other side of the road.
Dusty thumped the spent stub out the window with a shower of embers as the wind caught it.
Tony had just enough time to look at the speedometer and mutter shit before the road behind him lit up with red and blue lights.
They both started rolling the windows down with some urgency as the Rust County squad car spun around in a cloud of red silt to pursue the pickup.
Dusty laughed, said, let me do the talking.
Tony gave him a hard stare.
Pleased he not.
This ain't Houston, man.
Dusty laughed anyways as Tony rolled the pickup to a stop in the grass off the road.
The squad car stopped before a spotlight shown through the back windshield and a monster of a man stepped out of the driver's seat,
tugged on his britches and pulled his straw Western hat onto his head.
He ambled up to the driver's side of the pickup with a four cell mag light perched on his shoulder touching the bed of the truck before shining the light on the side of Tony's face, blinding him.
Lawson's an insurance.
Tony had already pulled it from his wallet and handed it to the officer he couldn't see while looking straight ahead to minimize the effects of the flashlights being.
The officer grabbed the documents.
It's a clean old pickup.
What's hurry tonight?
Then immediately started laughing.
Tony recognized the cruel laughter immediately even though he hadn't heard it in a decade and thought to himself, of course you're a damn cop.
The officer hollered back to the squad car.
Derek, get up here.
You ain't gonna believe this shit.
It's tiny hangs.
Tony audibly groaned at the nickname he'd hated as the passenger door opened with another recognizable peel of laughter from a fellow torturer of his.
You might ask yourself how to sadistic dickheads from the same high school football team ended up sheriff's deputies and if and you did I would immediately know you're not from a small town where cops don't need to be intelligent and so much as they're required to be goons with a cruel streak.
But I digress.
The former Bulldogs offensive lineman was Matt Swindon and his best friend and clearly partner deputy now Derek McAfee.
Not enough brains to outsmart a etch-a-sketch between them but they made up for it with strength and meniness.
Derek had made his way to Dusty's window and was shining his light into Dusty's face.
Oh, Tony, how you been?
You a big rock star yet?
You still drawing fruit and shit.
Both he and officer Swindon laughed at the stupid remark.
Dusty looked up at the tall deputy squinting.
Hey, my man, can you cut that light out of my eyes?
Derek laughed his cruel laugh again.
Is it too bright for you?
Tony's whole truck smells like weed to me.
Is it because you stoned, boy?
Dusty bristled immediately.
No need to be a dick, my man, even if you look like one.
Tony's hoped for things going well evaporated as Derek grabbed the door handle and said,
Oh, tiny boy friends, a yappy little thing ain't he?
He yanked open the door as he said over the cab to Matt.
Pretty sure I saw this clown throw a joint out the window.
Dusty stepped out of the truck and took a step towards the back before grinning and popping off.
Really?
Well, let me go find it for you.
Officer McAfee Lunge grabbed the back of his arms and slammed him into the bed of the truck, face forward while cuffing him.
Tony barely had time to say what the fuck before Officer Swindon had yanked his door open and was dragging him out of the truck while he did his best to get the seat belt unfastened and off him.
His former bully barked out a quick stop resisting before twisting Tony out of the loose seat belt and shoving him against the bed of the truck hard enough to knock the wind from him.
Dusty Hollard tried to turn around. That just earned him a flashlight to the solar plexus, crumpling him like a snap twig before he was on his knees in the ditch, warm red mud soaking through the knees of his jeans.
Tony hollered out as his friend went down before catching Officer Swindon's maglite to the cheek, instantly sagging him against the cool steel of his pickup.
The two officers yanked him up by their cuffs at ease and walked them to the hood of the cruiser like unruly mayors before slamming them to the hood face down and rifling through the pockets.
They threw their pocket knives and belongings on the hood carelessly.
A yellow case knife from Tony's pocket slid off the hood in the grass. Tony tried to raise up but Matt's strength hadn't lessened with time and his hand kept Tony's face against the hood.
That's my knife, man. My dad gave it to me. Pick it up, man. Pick it up.
Derek laughed as idiots laugh again while picking Dusty's limp swing form up off the hood.
You hear that, Matt? Tiny thinks we lose evidence.
Matt replied while swinging Tony up and towards the back door.
Old Tiny's always thought he's better than us, brother.
We'll have to drag him one of them paintin' triangles into his cell so he can draw about it.
He opened the back door and shoved Tony in on his side.
At the same time, Dusty was careening in from the other side at Derek's hands.
Derek straightened up and looked over the cruiser and said, that's an easel.
Matt was slamming the back door. What?
Derek laughed. That painter triangle thing, he slammed Dusty's door.
It's called a painter's easel. My mama had one.
Matt walked to the front of the cruiser and adjusted his hat that could have easily fit less snugly on a county fair pumpkin as it did on his melon.
He looked back at Derek and hocked a wad of tobacco spit over the car towards him before quietly saying,
Don't you fucking correct me?
Derek, to his credit, is the smarter of the two so far, clammed up.
For all his size and strength, he was no match for the behemoth walking towards Tony's truck, and he knew it.
Within minutes, the boy's instruments and the belongings in the pickup were scattered in the grass as the officers ransacked the cab.
Dusty straightened himself up and took a deep breath while flexing the muscles in his face before exhaling.
He weakly turned and looked at Tony, who was slouched against the window with his cheek and eye beginning to stiffen and puff just a little.
Dusty spit blood in the floor between them and mustered up a half hearted.
Troglodots?
With his eyebrows raised in question.
Tony closed his eyes and tried to rotate his shoulder son.
Fucking a Troglodots, he muttered before slipping into something almost like sleep.
He was carrying a Easter basket and his mom was running towards him, mouth open.
A warning on her lips he couldn't hear while he stumbled towards the pecan tree in Papaw's backyard in search of another hard-boiled died prize.
Tune in next week for more from Diwali Bottoms Texts.
Ooh, another one in the bucks.
We're in the funny papers.
I hope you guys are enjoying where that story is going. I'm sure enjoying right now. Let's do some testimonials and I got those pulled up on my phone right here.
Let's see. Got it together today.
Take these off. Nope, need these still. Damn.
Damn.
I had our buddy Chris Troxler. I really enjoyed this series. I was fascinated on your takes and how it worked in your life. That being said, I was hoping you would cover forgiveness.
I was and still am interested in learning what you've learned about. Personally, I think it's one of the most important, powerful weapons we have.
I would definitely be interested in hearing your take on it. Excellent as always though. I find forgiveness is just another side of mercy.
Chris, it's one of those things where...
You can display mercy and you can have mercy without having forgiveness, but you can't have forgiveness without having mercy.
So I find that forgiveness seems to fall on that category of mercy and I'm struggling with forgiveness right now.
My father sent a message in a group text to me and two random people I don't know and my sister and my cousin.
Let me know he's going to have to have a heart valve replacement.
They ordered heart valve replacement and kind of put this pithy little happy birthday to me at the end of it and fathered me because I know he's gained a bunch of weight and his health is not good.
I don't know this, but after my mother died, my father said this many times and anybody had listened was that Sherry Kay ate herself to death.
That stuck in my craw for a long time and now we're... Here we are 14 years later, you've done the same thing, but you want sympathy for it.
But you couldn't wait to tell everybody else she ate herself to death.
And I'm struggling with forgiveness. I'm trying to work it out my own way to get to some place about it.
But I'm struggling with it. I've been struggling with it for it's going on a couple of weeks now.
I wretched out to him individually away from... I don't want to talk to you in a group text about shit we need to talk about.
I'm your son. I'm your firstborn.
And I wretched out to him and asked him how he felt about it and he gave me a bunch of bullshit about that and I don't believe none of it.
But I knew something was wrong. I knew when his truck was broke down and my sister's truck was broke down and he wasn't getting stuff done.
That's just not my father. So I knew something was wrong. Anyway, I'm struggling with all that.
So I'm looking for forgiveness. I don't even know if it's forgiveness I'm looking for. I'm trying to find mercy to figure out.
You know, on one side my wife's like you need to have these conversations with and say these things in your heart too.
Because you might not get the chance to but on the other side of that coin I don't know that it's all that important.
I think it's just going to cause me more pain and cause him unnecessary pain.
I don't know if there's any value. I don't think there's any value in it for me.
I think I'll just continue to write my way around it and figure it out in my head.
And just life is going to be what life's going to be.
Anyway, it's not to get too far off into that.
I am Captain Lisa. Love that you keep it real. Hope you have so much success on your poem book.
I think you hit home for men and that's awesome. Your vulnerability. Thank you for sharing a piece of yourself.
I appreciate that, Captain Lisa.
Here's a little short poem I just wrote. Well, I didn't just write. I wrote it a week or two ago but it's going in the book too. It's very short.
It's called An Old Problem.
I've been scrubbing the stain tonight. Things ain't improving.
But I'd hate to look for a new problem.
I'll try scrubbing a different direction.
That'll probably get it.
At Hot Wheeliac, I spent the last four years really studying myself, trying to find more inner peace and understanding.
Just last December, I took a solo trip to Big Bend and while hiking around, wound up mentally stripping the last 21 years of my life back to what my wife.
And I had when we met. I came to the realization that we've all, that all we've built together, rest on a fount of love and a toolbox.
As long as I have her and I can build, we can live anywhere doing anything.
Love and a toolbox has become a fun thing to say to each other.
To hear you speak of the emotional toolbox in this episode gave me a new way to look at my catchphrase.
Thanks always, JW. You help us all to grow and be better with these podcasts.
Well, thank you for the comment. I'm a Hot Wheels friend.
It's just because I'm trying to grow and be better.
So I'm glad it's helping other people that always makes me happy because it's just me trying to grow and be better.
I'm telling you these, I needed decompression after five leaders of growth because all that stripped away my defenses in such a way that I really had to rethink some things.
Things my father.
Relationships I have.
There's also a big thing going on with my book publisher and it's very stressful.
Love you guys.
I love you guys.
We have got, please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
If you listen to it, please share it.
Please make sure you go like it.
Maybe leave me a little comment every now and then that helps the engagement that gets it from more people.
And I really appreciate it.
If you enjoy what we're doing here, I'd appreciate it if you did that for me.
And thank you in advance.
I've got a bunch of shows coming up.
Another May, I got one show at the end of May in Conroe, but that kicks off the Diamond Gym Tour and it's a real thing.
It's 57 cities till the end of the year.
And when I say we're going all over the place, we're going all over the place.
We're going to Vegas, we're going to the South, we're going to Phoenix and I think Chandler in Arizona, Los Angeles, Bray, San Francisco, San Diego.
Arcada, Arcada, California, Arcada, I don't know how you say it, Sacramento, California, the Dolls, the Dolls.
I don't know how the shit y'all say that in Oregon.
Portland, Oregon, Richland or Richmond, Richland, Washington, Tacoma, Washington, Spokane, Washington.
We got a Midwest run that's going Chicago, Milwaukee, Jamesville, Wisconsin.
We don't have a lot in Iowa or Idaho yet, but they are working at it.
I do got some races coming up in Iowa.
And a place that I thought was called Mako Keta, but turns out it's pronounced Makoka.
Looks like an indigenous word.
We got shows in June.
I got a show at the Denver Improv in June and then four shows in Fort Collins at Comedy Fort.
We got, we're going to Alabama, right?
We're going to Huntsville and Mobile.
We're going to Atlanta, Georgia.
We're going Winterhaven, Florida, St. Augustine, Florida.
Some other Gainesville, Florida.
We got shows all over North Carolina, Raleigh, Greenville, South Carolina, Raleigh, Charlotte.
There's a couple more places in North Carolina, I'm forgetting.
Nothing in Tennessee yet, but we got Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Ohio.
We got some East Coast stuff coming up.
I'm going up to Connecticut, to Uncleville, Connecticut.
I'm going to Baltimore, Magoobies in Baltimore.
I got some shows in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh.
We're trying to work on some shows in NYC and New York, right?
We got an offer from Rochester right now.
So some stuff going towards the end of the year.
We'll be moving up into the East Coast.
They've put me doing some shows like right up to December.
Right in the very first week in December, up close to New York City.
Maybe in New York City.
It's going to be brutal.
It's terrifying.
I tell you, I got 11,400 tickets to sell right now.
And that's a scary prospect for a guy that was selling about 150, 200 tickets a month.
So it's, we got some work ahead of us marketing and everything else.
We're spending some money on advertising.
I hope I'll see some of you guys at some of these shows,
especially if you're in Colorado area in Conroe, Texas.
Love to see you at a show.
What we do are closing sermon and shouldn't call it that.
It's where it feels to me to get out of here.
Let's talk about imaginary lines.
I've lived a life of geographical luck.
I didn't always feel that way.
There were academic deterrents and other obstacles to a life fully realized in the
small East Texas town I grew up.
There aren't a lot of astronauts and presidents from behind the pine curtain.
We're told we could be anything as kids, but in the same breath,
they were telling us go get us a good job and machine job.
But I wasn't born in Gaza.
I wasn't born on the wrong side of the Ohio river in 1850.
I wasn't born the wrong skin tone to be free.
I was born on the water side of the river by the math of human history.
I won the lottery before I drew breath regardless of how it felt to me.
These lines ain't real, but they're as real as the tribes that believe in.
I sat on the Minnesota side of the river and legally smoked a weed that would
have cuffed me and caged me on the other side of the same river.
Same plant, same lungs, different dirt, some silly ass imaginary line that a group
of hairless upright animals decided mattered.
Some of those lines get people killed.
There were still lines where I came from.
Poetry and art weren't considered sacred where I grew up unless the art was on
an automobile and the poetry had a banjo behind it.
That line was as real to me growing up as the Mississippians.
But it wasn't the same line.
I want to be honest about that.
My line wasn't whether I lived or died.
My line was whether I lived a life that felt like mine.
That man in the river in 1850 needed the other side, needed to get to the other
side of the river to keep breathing.
I needed it to keep being myself.
Both are real, but they are not equal.
And the people whose math was easier don't get to tell the people whose math is
harder that the line was never there.
It's there.
It just cost different to cross.
Nobody pointed at my line.
I crossed it because I had to.
Something inside me got too big for the side I was standing on.
And once you cross one of these lines and you find out it was imaginary the whole
time you start seeing them everywhere.
The line between blue collar and artist, between stand up, literature, between
East Texas and a writing life.
Each one drawn by somebody a long time ago.
Each one held up by everybody agreeing.
It's there.
Those lines didn't stop at the Sabine.
They followed me to Alief in Houston.
Different dirt, same lines just drawn by different hands.
The beauty of where we are now, especially with social media, one good thing
in a sea of bad things is we can finally see across them lines.
I get letters from people in every rural corner of the world.
Australia, Saskatchewan, Appalachia, Yorkshire.
Thank you me for my words.
Show me their words.
Turns out we were always the same time.
The line was the imaginary part.
We just couldn't see each other until somebody handed us all cameras in the internet.
Lines were drawn by men in rooms a long time ago.
Some of them lines get people killed.
Some of them just keep people small and we ought to know the difference.
But every single one is held up by the agreement by everybody that is there.
And agreements break.
I'm rooting for you.
I tell you that every week.
I'm rooting for you to see the lines keeping you small and all of their ridiculousness.
You can't cross what you can't see.
You can't even understand what you're looking for across that line
until you know it's not as important as it pretends to be.
I'm JW.
I love you.
Where am I putting those back on?
Oh my goodness.
Happy Sunday.
Happy Mother's Day.
Thank you for sharing your Sunday with me.
I really do love you guys.
And for any of you that hear some of my words
and everyone's all wanting y'all to reach out to me.
Are you okay?
I'm fine.
I'm dealing with stuff from my dad.
I'm dealing with stuff from my publisher that's turned into a big mess.
But I'm fine.
Books still coming out.
I'm fine.
It's like I'm trying to vent.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
I'm fine.
But I really am okay.
I'm working through shit in a healthy way.
But I'm really glad I just did that five layers of growth because I needed a primer.
I had to handle some big shit right before some big shit got dropped in my lap.
And I'm thankful to have you guys talk to about it.
I love you.
Go enjoy the remainder of your Sunday evening.
If your momma's within reach, just give her a hug for me.
Ain't nothing better than a momma hug.
I ain't had one so very long.
Love y'all.
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