Pulpwood Fiction

Still remembers fire, grass remembers rain, every scar tells the story, hard-dial the pain.

If you go digging, son, best mind what you find.

Welcome to the Wrecking Yard. I'm Jerry Wayne Longmire and y'all, presumably, still y'all.

All welcome here in the Church of Eternal Combustion. We just asked that you show up with an open heart.

Hope everybody is doing all right today. Let me get my timer set here. Alrighty.

Hope everybody is making it through like Teflon, baby. It's been a busy few days around here at the house.

I'm trying to decide some things and deal with some things left over from last year.

You know, that sort of thing. It's Saturday here. It's about five o'clock in the PM. I'm going to have myself a little cold beer because I'm in the mood for it.

Not a big beer drinker, but I do like to curse everyone on them. So cheers. Here's to you.

Like drinking a loaf of bread.

It is Saturday here at the Wrecking Yard.

Nice little breezy day. I don't know what that thermometer is. The thermometer is pretty accurate today. It's about 60 out there.

It's a little cold for my taste. I know you guys are like, oh, you're something. There's you can't go.

It's cold and wet here. I don't care for it. Don't care for it.

I'm doing some, I guess you couldn't call it spring cleaning, new year cleaning.

Going to do some things. We went through my office, redid my office, got rid of a bunch of stuff.

Then we organized a bunch of stuff we had in storage and also got rid of some things there.

Freed up some space in the house. Freed up some space in my mind.

Sometimes you gotta do. You gotta declutter a little. I'm no clean freak, you know. Some of you guys have super organized shops.

That's not me. My shit's always a mess.

But every once in a while it gets to be too much for even my brain and I have to do something before I snap.

And that's what happened in my office. I just had so much crap piled up in there.

Just a little bit of this. I'm working on here. A little bit of that. I'm working on here.

And it got to be where I would go sit down in my office and go to work on editing something

or putting something together for you guys to enjoy. And I would just be irritated just being in there.

And so I know I was like, okay, we're getting the point where you got to do something about this.

So I went through the office. Got to hang some of my pictures finally. My Tom Petty post artwork

and stuff like that. So it's kind of cool. And then as you can see there's crap strode out

here in the wreck yard. I don't know what I'm gonna do with that big giant

foam sign. But I kind of like it. It's the one I was doing meet and greets for the world outlaws.

And this is cool. So my good friend David, y'all know David, was at a hot rod swap meter or

something when he saw that. And he got that for me. Look at that. That's pretty cool. So I had to

figure out a way to hang it or put it. I thought it'd be real fun during a Diwali time, during

the story time in Diwali bottoms, you know, like old school radio show on air, baby, on air.

Yeah, a little chilly, not too bad. I'm starting moving some stuff around the shop,

clean some shop up and doing some work in the yard.

Just decluttering a little bit again. It's a good time to do that again in the year. Kind

of get that shit out of your system, you know. I used to be some old wives tell some shit like that

where you, you know, when you clean up it again in the year, you sweep all that dirt right out

the door on the ground and then it don't come back or sweeping out last year's bullshit, that kind

of thing. I've been trying to decide if I was going to, I need to let my good buddy, Bill,

know if I'm going to do the Christmas tour again this year. And I've sort of been wrestling with

that decision. He was wanting to know by the January 15th, so they can start booking dates.

But honestly, my year's getting pretty hectic on its own. I've got so much crap coming down the pipes.

You know, stuff I can't really articulate yet because it's not set in stone, but it's on the way.

Things I'll be excited to share with you guys as soon as they come to fruition. I'm one of those,

I like counting my eggs before they hatch, but by God these eggs are cracking. All right, they're

cracking and they're moving around. And I'm getting just about to the point where I can count these

some fifties, you know. And stuff, of course, I'll probably share here first because you guys are my

people. This is where I come for this sort of thing. We're going to talk some shit out today,

actually, some stuff I'm going through professionally. And hell, maybe some young throw me some good

advice back, you know. Because I mean, I'm okay where I'm at, but I'm just, we'll get into it.

I don't think I'm going to go back and do the Christmas tour this year. Just don't think it's

going to. The biggest thing is I don't want to miss out on anything with my kids. They're teenagers,

13 and 15. I figured the next two Christmases might be

some of the last Christmases full of wonder. You know what I mean? Like full of us all together.

You know, if there's more than that, great. But I know for sure that we're, you know,

we're running the clock out at this point. This is all there is to it. Running the clock out and

I don't want to waste next year being away from them.

Doing a show that I'm not 100% sure completely fits me anymore, either. And I don't mean that in a

bad way. I've enjoyed doing the show, enjoyed doing it, but it's,

I'm ready to spread my wings and do something more of my style for Christmas. And so I think what

I'm going to do is I really enjoyed doing the work with Poncho Claus over the Christmas season.

And he's invited me to be a bigger part of it next year. And I think I'm going to take him

up on that and spend a little more of my Christmas season next year doing for others.

And don't applaud me for that. I'm doing it for selfish reasons because it makes me feel good.

I'm not doing it out of some great concern for the community. I do have great concern for the

community. That's why I did it again with, but I gotta lie. It makes me feel good to do it.

Makes me feel good to be a part of it. So I can't say it's all,

you know, I have to admit that that's a selfish thing that I enjoyed that feeling.

And so I'm going to do more of that next year. And I think I'm going to book a Christmas show here

that I'm going to build and design. It's going to be my Christmas show,

a little more eclectic mix of music and performers and just something that feels a little more me.

I think, I don't know, I got called Bill and talked to him, but that's where my head is at

right now. It's one of those things, you know, it's not something you figure out overnight, but

when people are waiting on you for answers, I like to be early rather than at the last minute

because I don't want them taking the last minute one way or another and then me

blow the lid off thing or un blow the lid off thing. And that's not to say that I'm so

full of conceit that I believe it wouldn't go on without me. I personally think that's exactly,

if I don't do it, I think you should replace me and go on.

But he mentioned, yeah, anyways, we'll see. We're going to, we've planned on taking,

so they're reshowing the movie Labyrinth. I don't know if y'all remember that movie. It's

one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid. I wasn't a David Bowie nut yet,

but that movie probably solidified it. You know, probably pointed me in the direction.

I love the music in that movie. I'm a Jim Henson fan. I love, I think the creatures in that movie

are some of the most original I've ever seen. I'm not a, what was the other one that came out?

Never ending stories. I maybe seen that movie once or twice. And I think I was already a little

too old when I saw it that it didn't really get my attention. I didn't, I didn't cry when the horse

drowned. I didn't have big feelings about the, the bog of sadness or whatever it was, the swamp of

sadness, the bog of eternal stench. That one worried me. That one worried me. So we were going to,

we were going to take the kids go see it in the theater, but the kids don't really want to go.

My kids aren't movie theater kids. I don't believe I'm not a movie theater guy.

It kind of sounded like fun to me, but you know, it sounds like more fun is burning a J on the porch

and then going in and watching it on Netflix on my own couch with my own snacks and my own drinks

and my own people and not having to deal with other people. That sounds way, way cool to me.

Like a way cool way to watch a laugh. So we've decided to do that. Do a movie night at home

rather than fight the crowds. It was looking like they're, the, the shows are pretty sold,

pretty tight. So I was like, ah, I mean he's packed in with a bunch of people.

It's fine that it's just me and Rach, but my younger son is a, you know, it's a different

experience. It'd be an autistic. We have to, it's a trickier thing. That's why we do a lot of things

during the week when everybody else is working because it's a little less crowds, less people, that

kind of thing. I am over the moon about the Nackadocha show I got coming up and I urge you,

if you are a fan in East Texas and do like watching my stand up or are interested in

coming to one of my stand up shows, please get yourself tickets to this one. For one,

the theater that we're working with, we were able to make some really affordable tickets,

cheaper tickets than we normally do. Two, we've already, we dropped the tickets for sale two

day, no, a day ago. Well, by the time you all see this, it'd be two days ago, but there are

52 tickets sold this morning. The place only holds like 180 people. So I have a feeling we're going

to sell this show out, but we're putting the schedule together right now and we got a lot of

things happening, especially because of the book and travel because of the book and some other

things I've been invited to be a part of, some interviews and stuff like that. That might be

my only East Texas show in 2026 is the show in Nackadocha is coming in February. And I can't

remember what the date is in February, but I'll put it in the comments and pin a link to my link

tree. That's where you can get tickets and it's going to be a killer show. Only other two Texas

shows I'm even looking at right now is I'm probably going to do one in Walnut Springs with John Clay

Wolf and those guys again. We hadn't set a date for it yet, but we've been talking about it.

And I'm coming to Austin in March, March 6. I'm coming to Austin, Texas. I'm headlining the

Balkan Gas Company. So I'm pretty psyched about that. But I just cannot believe how many tickets

are sold for that Nackadocha show. That's what daddy needs us. I would like to sell out Nackadocha.

So that would be real nice. Also coming up towards the end of the episode,

we got Diwali Bottoms, Texas episode two.

I'm excited about that. We're going to talk a little bit about that. This little thing I'm doing.

You know, I came from the blue collar world. I was raised in the blue collar world. I spent

most of my life working in the blue collar world. And the thing, I guess the thing I'm used to

when it comes to feedback and results are what I would call auditable concepts.

But when you get feedback on a blue collar job site, it might be rough and harsh,

but they're usually telling you what you did wrong or how you need to fix it.

And we've had a number of people review the book, the wrecking yard that I've written,

and we've gotten some great feedback, some very specific feedback from a lot of these people.

But when you're working with a publisher and stuff, there's a lot of people that have to

give you feedback before everything gets done. And one of the people involved

did not give, I'm all for feedback, even if it's cut this, do this, do this. But they come back and

one of their first notes, their notes were just very big. I was reading the book and I

kept thinking, Papal was his dad. And that doesn't make sense to me because the very first chapter

is all about my father. And Papal is mentioned alongside that chapter. Now this person's not

from the South, they've never heard the term Papal before. And there's a lot of different

ways spelled. I spelled P-A-P-A-W. Some people spelled P-A-W-P-A-W. But they come from a place

where people are grandfather or grandpa or whatever the shit they say at other places.

And so I don't know, maybe I do need to put something in that first chapter and explain

what a Papal is. I don't know. It feels trite, but I mean, if it's going to

unconfuse people, I guess it's maybe necessary to do, but it does feel trite and kind of silly

to explain something like that.

And I don't do well with vague feedback. I don't do well with, I get off in my own head about it,

is the problem. I'm not mad at this guy. I don't have any personal feelings towards this guy

at all one way or another about this situation. I know. But I did find out that this person

isn't finished reading the book. And I really struggle with somebody offering feedback on

something they haven't finished yet or haven't done or completed themselves yet.

That's feedback from a place of ignorance, a little bit.

If you haven't read the whole project, you haven't gone through the whole project,

you hadn't understood the whole project. It's hard to give feedback on a project

if you don't know what's going on. That's a, that one's a little bit of a struggle for me.

I don't, I don't often myself offer feedback or advice to people on

things I'm ignorant about, things that I don't fully understand. You know, you see it all the

time on the internet. You got anybody post a video of them welding or something and then

there will be 200 comments, guys tell them everything they're doing wrong,

whatever they're doing, not knowing the context, what they're welding it for,

what they're trying to create, what they're trying to do. Granted, I know there's some

simple rules that should be followed and you can usually tell good welder from bad welder from

watching, but it's the same thing. Somebody will pour some concrete and there are the

600 experts will show up that have never done the job in their life.

Now you can tell when the people actually have some experience because they speak from a place of

experience, but generally they also offer the fact that they're ignorant to the context, the intelligent

people. But there's always those 100-something comments that people don't know what they're

talking about offering and that's a wild concept to me. Just coming from, I guess,

the upbringing and raising I was brought with. If you said something stupid on a job site that was

from a point of ignorance, everybody knew what they were talking about was going to turn around

and correct you real damn quick. But when people don't have anything to answer them back,

it's like they get more encouraged.

The literary world, the blue collar world, very, very different. Granted, I know I'm a newbie in

this world, whereas I come from this world with some knowledge, some experience, but

some it's a little baffling to me. What it's really shown me is that what I really noticed

lately is I grew up with physical bullies. I grew up with bullies who bullied by might,

who bullied by physical strength. But what it's opened my eyes to is how many people

are walking around trying to be intellectual bullies. You've seen them before. They're people

that are maybe a little more well-read than you. Maybe they went to college, they got a degree

backing up. What they deem as their intellectual superiority. They will try to bully people that

they know maybe not quite as educated, not quite as well-read as they are. It's just as gross when

they do it. It's just as gross either way. When you're trying to manipulate somebody by strength,

whether it's strength of intellect or strength of might, you're being a dickhead.

There's often times I'll get an argument with somebody that I realize is not

intellectually able to handle their side of the argument. I usually back off because I'm not,

I'm not in, I don't take any pleasure in that. I don't, I'm not interested in that.

You know, there's different, there's, ignorance is just not knowing.

But I sometimes think stupidity is knowing that you don't know and still

speaking as if you do anyways. You know, I know I am wholly ignorant to a whole lot of things in

this world, a whole lot of subjects, a whole lot of ideas, a whole lot of beliefs, a whole lot of

reading. I consider myself pretty well-read, but I do know there's a lot about this world I don't

know about. I try to speak on the things I do know about or I feel like I know about

uh, based on knowledge and I don't often offer a lot of stuff outside of my scope of knowledge.

You know, just like I came to you guys ask y'all what to do about my plant situation up in the

front and the trees and stuff. You know, that kind of stuff is outside of my world of knowledge,

not stuff I was heavily taught growing up, it's not stuff I was around anybody enough to pick up

a whole lot of, I know a little bit about trees from my father-in-law stuff he taught me, but

I would never dare to try to tell a tree man how to come in here and do his job or do what I thought

he should do. It's just not, it's not, I don't, I don't think it's a strong way to operate.

You see a lot of people that try to be intellectual bullies on the internet and a lot of it is just

based on maybe they have a degree or they've read certain things and they feel like their

understanding is the only understanding. I've seen preachers do it too. I've seen preachers do it

people because they know the word well enough that they know how to manipulate it and to say what

they need it to say and I've seen them bully people that way when people have honest open

questions about God. Somebody told me once they're like, you are a preacher man, you're a preacher,

like no, my, look,

I know the boundaries of my hypocrisy and I don't want to preach because I have too many questions,

I have too many questions about the word, I have too many questions about my belief,

I have too many questions about faith that I would never deem to put myself in a position

to guide others in their faith and guide others in their questions.

That's a, I think a lot of them do, I think a lot of them do. I think if you read about

Mother Teresa towards the end of her life, she didn't believe in God anymore. She wrote about it

extensively that her faith had diminished. If somebody is pious and so entrenched with good

will and doing good things and the mission can get that confused later in life, you can't convince

me that some of these guys out here are shucking and jiving on a stage in a church somewhere

aren't questioning their beliefs when they walk out the doors, aren't questioning their beliefs

when they're tempted to live outside of the code of that life. You just, you can't convince me of that.

I was thinking about, I was kind of thinking about different kind of teachers. You know,

I did my first story last week, my Diwali Bottoms episode, one story and I'm not crapping on the

person that gave me this comment. I promise you I'm not, but I had exactly two pieces of feedback

in the chat after I read the story. One person said, that was awesome man, which thank you, that's cool.

Not a lot to work with there though, as far as feedback, I appreciate the compliment.

But then another one said, I don't particularly care for stories like that.

And that one kept me up at night because I'm like, stories like what? Stories like about a dude getting

killed? Stories with heavy pros? Stories with a lot of scene? What, what, stories like what? What part?

Oh, I drove myself crazy into the wee hours of the evening trying to figure out what the hell that

meant. And I'm not crapping on the dude. I appreciate feedback and not every, not everything

I do is going to be for everybody. I'm cognizant. I'm aware of that. I'm in very much a phase

right now where I'm making the things I want to make. And I know not everybody's going to like

the lanes I'm choosing. These, these stories are allowing me the freedom to do something different

that I haven't been able to step out and do before. And I, and I recognize that some folks are not

going to be into it. It's not like, you know, when I was doing the weatherman character

Willard,

I didn't 100% believe in the character. And I didn't have an arc and I didn't know everything I wanted

to do with it. And

Wendell Williams, sorry, not Willard. It was an abstract thought that I pushed a little

bit and I pushed it a little bit too hard without having a clear direction for it. And,

and I got a lot of rough feedback on it and I got defensive about it and I'm aware I got defensive

about it. But this is not stuff that I feel defensive about. These are things that I'm just

making because I want to make them. I want to do some different things with this podcast. I can't,

I, I can possibly continue to do a story about a car every week because I'm going to run out of

cars. So I'm at a point where I need to pepper those in from time to time when I'm feeling,

when I feel it on my heart that one of them is touching me in some kind of way that I want to

talk about it. And I'm going to revisit some of the older cars, but that was the first part of

the experiment where we're at now is a different place where I try and come and speak to you guys

every week about things that actually affect me and things that maybe affect you too. And,

and just tell some of the lessons I've learned. But writing these stories gives me a place to

tell the stories I can't tell because I got a million stories I can't tell because it would

hurt somebody or it would do further damage to somebody who's already been damaged enough.

But there's stories that ought to be told some kind of way.

Stories that there's a reason they ought to be told.

And this gives me the freedom to do that in a different platform in a different way

to take those stories and make them not about whatever person they affected,

but about the sum total of what the story is.

I was thinking about different teachers I've had in my life. I've had a number of teachers

that affected me in no small way, you know, all the way back to high school, you know.

I mentioned a teacher in the intro to my book. I mentioned my fourth grade teacher

and speak a little bit about Miss Lewis, a teacher that affected me in some kind of way.

Not like, oh, this changed everything about my life kind of way, but like, oh,

you know, it's like I used to tell you guys all the time the words you say to people stick with them.

Well, it was some words she said to me that stuck with me as a young kid

and they kept bouncing around up here in the old snake nest until they took hold in some way that

made me think certain things. That's what I mean. The teachers like that, the teachers that

grab a hold of you show you different teaching methods.

I've talked to y'all a little bit about Mr. Bland in high school, how much his opinion weighed on my mind.

Mr. Dias, my theater teacher, somebody was a great teacher to me. And then the rest of my,

most of the rest of my teachers came from work, came from being a grown man out in the world

doing things, or at least somebody thought he was a grown man out in the world doing things.

And some of my harsh lessons, Charlie Luton whooped my ass outside a bar in Milwaukee,

taught me a lot that night. We remained friends up until his passing afterwards, but

learned a hard lesson in Milwaukee one night about friends that stick by and friends that don't

when it's okay to maybe walk away and not get yourself off in something stupid.

It took me a while to learn that lesson, but he taught me the first part that night.

Guys that taught me different skills, trades. I really want to do an episode about Big Mac

Vargas, my friend Steve's dad, who taught me a lot of what I know about construction.

That man really taught me. I was thinking in particular about being in the trades.

You know what I was having an argument with somebody about a college degree, and I'm not one

of those people that looks down on a college degree. I know a lot of blue collar guys tend to shun it,

you know, like, oh, you ain't learned nothing no college, you know, you're gonna learn books and

papers, you ain't gonna learn nothing about doing nothing, you know, and that was always the thing

when the engineer showed up and said, oh, engineers don't know nothing because they ain't out here

doing it. And I think that's harmful too to always look at. I think there's a need for both. There's

a need for schooling. There's a need for hands on education. Both of them I feel like have their

levels of importance. Now, I think you can get schooling in lots of different ways. I don't think

you necessarily have to go to university. I think with the things available to us nowadays,

men and women can teach themselves just about whatever they need to teach themselves.

And, granted, you're not going to go teach yourself how to be a surgeon without going

to medical school. But you might be able to teach yourself how to sew up a wound in case

you're in a shitty situation. I had two men teach me how to do concrete.

Two men tell you other men taught me stuff along the way. But me and this person was having an

argument about this. And they're like, well, I invested all this money in my education. I was

like, well, you seem to think I didn't invest anything in my education, which is not the

case. A blue collar education is an investment of time. It's an investment of flesh. It's an

investment of wear on your body. But not only that, like when I owned my little company,

I wanted to start learning how to do concrete and stuff. I went and hired a good concrete man

and I paid that man to teach me how to do concrete. He came to work for me. He'd done

jobs for me, but I was hands on right there with him paying him for an education,

paying him his value of what he had collected up here. I was paying for that. I don't know how

much money I put into that education, but I know it was considerable. I hired two different men,

both of them very skilled at their trade, both from different facets of concrete work.

One man, Dave, Dave had worked for Dart and Dallas

and the city and he had done major concrete projects all over the place.

Everything from pouring curbs to pouring sewers to pouring parking garages. The man

had done a lot of different things. He'd been a finisher, been a frame setter. He'd done a little

bit of all of it, from breakout to repo. The other man was my good friend, Hazus.

Now, Hazus come from South California. Hazus had been doing concrete since he was 12 years old.

He was in his 40s when I met him. Hazus grew up doing residential, small properties,

stuff like that, pouring pads, pouring curbs, parking blocks, pouring lanes.

Basketball goal, all the little stuff, tearouts.

But I wanted to know a little bit about all of it because I was in the middle of some growth for

my company and it looked like I was going to get offered the opportunity to do different things.

Now Dave, Dave was not my type of teacher.

I didn't agree with Dave on a lot of things but I didn't have the knowledge to argue with Dave

because I didn't know enough about what I was talking about. But Dave wanted to over pour

everything. Everything needed to be thicker and bigger. Dave wasn't a big fan of rebar and reinforcement

for whatever reason. But Dave wanted to pour everything bigger and thicker. But Dave also

wanted to talk about it all the time. Dave wanted to rattle in my ear about what I needed to do

and why I needed to do it. Dave wanted to tell me how to do things. But Dave didn't actually want

to teach me how to do things. When I would try to get involved in the project, Dave was like,

well now you're just going to slow me down. Just kind of watch from over there what I'm doing.

That's a hard way for me to learn. I learned better when I put my hands on something,

especially if it's a physical skill. I learned better from doing.

But I was still buying my education. Now Dave didn't end up working for me for a very long time,

maybe three or four months. Dave had a little bit of a drinking problem. And when I say a little

bit, I mean a lot bit. And he got to a point where Dave was drunk on my job sites and I had to

make a decision to cut Dave loose. But he was going through something. But he had just gotten a

point where I basically got a call from a customer one day that he had fallen off the ladder two or

three times and he was bleeding everywhere. And I got over there and lo and behold, I found a little

brown sack with a bottle of gin in it that was about half gone. And Dave was struggling. I had to

cut Dave loose, couldn't have somebody on the job site, caused me problems like that, you know.

Can't have any customers. I wonder why you guys drunk on the job site, he's bleeding all

the blood on that portrait. Like Dave got in a fight with a with the damn links from a Jerry

Clara store. There was some blood on that thing where he had cut himself a couple of times falling

down off his ladder. Jesus. Jesus was a better teacher for me. Jesus coming here. He taught me

about why rebar was necessary and where it was necessary. Taught me about different types of

reinforcement using mesh, using different things for different applications. Taught me the best

way to use a jackhammer. But not by telling me. Jesus will go out there. I said, we got to do this

bust out. We got to bust all this out. I rented a jackhammer. Here's jackhammer. And Jesus go,

okay, bring jackhammer over here. And Jesus was staying right there with me. And he's like, all

right, you want to you want to break it. And these four spots are right here. And you want to go back

and forth working these four spots until you get a fully formed crack across.

Why am I doing that, Jesus? He said, well, make it easier for us to pick up. We've got a bunch of

small pieces. We got to shovel it. But if we got decent sized pieces, we can pick them up and throw

them in the bin. It's just simple, simple stuff like that stuff that if you don't do it, you don't

know to think about that. Jesus kept grinder fresh. And when we got into reinforcement,

he'd ratch down off and there at grinder, cut that reinforcement, that rebar, and we'd get

this good old chunk of concrete out of our bust out. Jesus knew that we needed to keep

clean concrete free from reinforced concrete. Because that clean concrete, we'd take over the

crusher and they'll crush it down for driveways and stuff. And that's one way to get rid of it.

Hard to get away, get rid of concrete. It's got reinforcement in it. Nobody wants to screw with

it. So you got to find a dump and that's more money you got to spend towing that,

loading that and taking that somewhere to be disposed of.

Jesus taught me the practicalities of concrete, of how long finishing actually takes,

how it's a timing game, how he would teach me how to how to aerate the concrete, how to

pour retaining walls. But the way he taught me was by showing

his knowledge right there on the spot and walking me through it while I did it.

And I learned so much more from him in an even shorter period of time enough that

I was out doing successful concrete jobs and making pretty good money on

those because of Jesus' teaching. I paid for it, but it was money well spent. Some of the money I

spent on Dave was not money well spent. But regardless at the end of the day, I bought my

education. I paid for it with my blood, my sweat, my tears, my physical exertions.

I paid for it with money.

So I think there's a real disconnect from the blue collar world

and the academic world in that respect when there shouldn't be. We should both be able to look at

the situation and realize we're both paying for our education and we're both doing things the other

can't necessarily do. We need to work together.

There's a great James Lee Burke line. It's in a book called Into the Electric Mist.

And there's a guy that's not from the area of South Louisiana and he's there and these cops,

these local beat sheriff deputies are giving him the business.

All the mosquitoes out here are so big they'll haul you off, that kind of stuff.

Dave Robesho says they're trying to make fun of your lack of knowledge

about a place you've never been before because it makes them feel superior.

And in that short sentence, he explained how bullying works in every aspect.

And I always thought that was really brilliant.

But there's different ways. There's different ways to learn. There's different types of teachers

out there. You have to find the teachers that resound with you. Some people learn a lot from

being told how to do something. Some people learn better from reading a book about how to do something.

But I submit that until you've done something, you don't have a lot of knowledge about it.

I say every once in a while you hear somebody who's not a parent give parenting advice and that

one always tickles me. If you haven't been a parent, you probably should just back out of that

conversation. I hear people on the internet give advice about a great number of things.

I'm not 100% sure any of them really know what they're talking about.

I made a joke one time about a YJ having death wobble. And of course, all these guys who read

Jeep forums and have been coached by the Jeep Club showed up saying, oh, this is a strange

suspension. They don't get the death wobble. Let me tell you something, brother, you put 200,000

miles on anything, you can get some death wobble out of it. I don't care what kind of suspension

it's got. And if you worked on enough shit, you'd know that.

Anyways, let's wrap it up here. Let's do a little story time. Let's return

to the Wally Bottoms, Texas. And I'm going to turn my fancy little light. Look here.

Boom, on air. I hope you can see it behind my big head. Let's go back

to the Wally Bottoms, Texas.

The sun was just beginning to peek through the asymmetrical bowels of the loblolly pines on

the east bank of Caney Creek when the ragged Ford F-4 lurched to a stop.

It was a new cut site, but the accurate sour odor from the wet pulpwood cut the day before

blanketed the creek bank even in crisp February air. Danny was barking before he even shut the

engine off. Daylight's burning, boys. His voice full of gravel, half muffled from the walnut-sized

plug of chew he was shoving between his lip and yellowed teeth with the remaining three fingers

on his right hand. His pinky and ring finger had been sacrificed long ago in this very creek bottom

to the gods of commerce. None of the crew knew how long Danny had been cutting pulpwood, but he

had the trucks and equipment, worn in age, but still out of most of them's reach, and he paid

good money accord. His stringy gray hair was tied up with an ink-stained rubber band,

likely off the newspaper. Counterculture hadn't reached the Wally by 1966. His long hair was a

result of a fellow not bothering to cut it. He had plenty of money, but polite society wasn't

much interested in him. And truth be known, he appreciated the lack of interest. Preferred the

company of men with blistered hands and a tougher-than-barbed-wire, fire-headed old woman

that looked after the working ladies who plied their trade on the edge of town in a group of old

kudzu and shrine trailers behind the mill property. Carl Sr. must have been dozing on the way out to

the site. He woke to Danny, or Mr. Ware, as he called him, retching across the cab to pop him

on the shoulder. Carl, you gonna sleep all day or gonna make us some money? I told you not to marry

no pretty woman. She'd keep you up all night. Carl grinned at the lewd joke he had heard once a week

for the last eight years while he stepped out of the cab. Might be something to it though. Some

sleep had been sacrificed after Carl Jr. went to bed the night before. She had slid under the covers

with a wispy trail of jasmine following her. Her high dollar perfume she only used for special

occasions. He had bought her in Dallas on the only trip they had ever taken a few years back.

Afterwards, in the still, she had laid her head against his. Her breathing still finding it stride.

Her voice barely a whisper. I went to the doctor in Kilgore yesterday. You're gonna be a daddy again,

sugar. He had held her long after she succumbed to the figures of the day

and listened to a pump jack screech at song of greed and need.

The tank housing on his worn McCulloch 410 once white resembled nicotine stained ivory from years

of spilled fuel. Most of the red paint on the body chipped and faded from felling and bucking pine

from one end of East Texas to the other. Despite its appearance with just one pull it'd be

vibrating in his hand like a wasp in a coffee can. Carl stepped down to the cut he had worked

yesterday. The sharp two stroke exhaust cutting through the pine resin in the air. The first

tree notched before mistmen would have had their saw started. Carl's hands knew the work and could

perform without much input from him if needed. The back cut is just a steady pull. No bogging.

The chain just eaten through the soft pine until the kerf opens just enough for some daylight to

sneak through. He pulls the saw from the cut while the pine talks to him like an old friend

cracking and popping as he hollers. Tree! And steps back to listen to the upper bows tear through

the sun dappled canopy before slamming into the ground hard enough to ripple the creek water and

make his kneecaps itch. Seven hours of two stroke scream and 25 felled and bucked trees later Carl

pulled the choke until the McCulloch fell silent. The engine case and ticking as it cooled.

The loaders were cleaning Carl's cut. The flatbed forward tractor chuffing slowly under

load as they drug the logs down from the timber scarred skid trail. He sat for a minute on a stump

and pulled the lunch he had packed in the dark that morning from his work bag. The sharp mustard

on the baloney woke up as pine and vibration dulled senses. He was a cordy and with two on his

mind and didn't waste much time eating before propping the old saw on a short trunk and locking

it in place with his knee. He wretched in his bag for a round file with electric tape holding the

splintered wood handle together. Slowly he hits file every other tooth until the edges ran clean

before rolling the saw and tackling the others. A dull blade could make a man go hungry if you

spent the afternoon making powder instead of ripping big clean chips with every revolution

of the torquey two stroke. A dull blade could hurt you, leave you hungry a long time,

eating the putty out the windows while you healed. The loader's chains would ring a little as the

eight end tractor tightened them until the stubborn pine finally gave way to the direction they pulled

it. He heard something different as they fouled though. The tractor was lugging harder than normal.

The sounds from the tightened chain sounded higher.

He just had time to turn his head when the chain snapped with a ferocious pop.

The clevis hook bulleted past his face close enough to peel his cap from his head before

embedding itself into a trunk a few feet from where he sat.

He couldn't hear anything above his own blood pumping in his ears as the other men hollered

and ran towards him. He felt something cold on his cheek and rubbed his hand through a little

trickle of blood from his scalp. Danny was shaking him. Carl you okay? Damn it boy. You okay? Son of

a bitch before turning his fearful anger onto the loaders. Next son of a bitch that binds that

tractor like that again. I'll kill you myself. Carl stood on legs that threatened to betray him any

minute. I'm fine Mr. Ware. I'm fine. Just grazing. Danny looked at him blankly stared back at the

clevis lodged in the trunk. Yeah you're fine I guess. Danny was still staring at the broken chain

mindlessly rubbing the mangled part of his hand with the good left. He spat as Carl fired up the

saw. Burning daylight Mr. Ware I got to get back after Carl said hoarsely before stepping away

with his growling machine. Danny picked up Carl's cap and handed it to him before turning to walk

down in the hill to finish excoriating the loaders. Carl poured a little gasoline on his resin coated

hands and wiped the oily residue off before getting in the passenger side of the truck.

The 239 flathead was already idling when he stretched his long tired frame back into the seat.

The rest of the crew climbed into the bed with the tools before Danny let off the clutch and

pointed the weary Ford back towards town. Most of the crew lived in a ramshackle collection of

trailers and kithouses in an area north of the mill right outside of Diwali.

affectionately dubbed the cut. Carl didn't know who named it that probably neither did Danny but

the name had stuck. Danny stopped there and dropped the men off with their pay. There was

the normal back and forth light trash talk that was a daily routine but Carl couldn't hear none of it.

He had a tremor in his right hand that hadn't dissipated since that errant chain had almost

mauled him earlier. Images in his head of his wife Alana and son crying at what could have

become of his visage if he had even survived it. Danny was quiet while the truck squeaked and

huffed up the main road. He turned into the quiet neighborhood of shotgun houses that were so

neatly lined up you'd imagine they used a ruler to set them. Carl's mama had left him the home

when it became clear the strange illness that stole her breath was going to take her to be with her

lord. She had suffered long enough raised a good man mostly on her own after Carl's daddy died in

some faraway place called Saipan when he was just a toddler. Carl Jr. and Tony were playing in the

yard on their hands and knees when Danny pulled into the drive and cut the engine. Danny fished

some bills out of his pocket to hand to Carl. Throwed some extra on the day just in case you

need some aspirin for that headache. Carl grinned in spite of himself. I thought I heard an eagle

scream. Danny spit that's what I get for trying to be nice. I'm just giving you the business Mr.

Ware. Carl shot back as he stepped out the cab. I appreciate it. Nearly lost my best hand today.

Hard to make good money without a cutter like you. Danny was looking towards the boys playing when he

spoke. Hey baby boy. He hollered at him. Tony looked up grinning face beaming. Uncle Danny.

Boy why don't you run home and tell your mama to get a cup of coffee in there. I'll take you

out of the broochers and get some groceries. The backs of Tony's little bare feet was already

present as he shot off towards home. Tony's dad Danny's little brother was in Huntsville on an

extended vacation after killing a pawn shop owner down in Houston. Tony's mama was determined to

drink herself off the planet in protest. Danny tried his best to keep them housed and fed.

Carl turned towards his own progeny. Son go get washed up and we'll see what mama's got for dinner.

Carl Jr. chirped out a yes sir before he jumped up on the porch to open the door. The strong

breeze ruffling his coppery red hair. Danny fired up the pickup. See you in the morning bubba.

Carl stepped up onto the porch and retched for the door while looking back. See you in the morning.

Danny pulled back on the street with a heavy mind. Imagine having to be the one to tell

Alana that something had happened to Carl. Carl had been 17 when Danny hired him. Taught him how

to cut. Boy felt like his own sometimes. Carl knew something was wrong the minute he stepped in the

house. Alana sat at the table in the kitchen. Her flower adorned apron crumpled in front of her.

Her beautiful face creased in tear streaked. Her green eyes dull hollered by some fear that

hadn't been named yet. The radio on top of the fridge droned lightly with news of heavy losses

in the Bendin province. Carl started to speak but caught in his throat when Alana pulled the

crumpled damp letter from her apron and smoothed it out on the table. His eyes immediately recognized

the typeface and big bold letters ordered to report for induction. When their eyes met,

he felt like he was trying to swallow wet concrete. By then they didn't care if he was a family man

and deferment wasn't a word that existed to poor east Texas pulpwood cutters.

Tune in next week for more from the Wally Bottoms. Episode two in the books.

Let's do some testimonials before I get too much further worked up about Mr. Carl.

Let's see. These are comments from last week's episode at MTI HIV 90210.

What's the name of the James Lee Burt novel that is hard to find?

I finally figured it out. The novel is called Lay Down My Sword and Shield.

Lay Down My Sword and Shield. That's it. It introduced the character Hackberry Holland

which is a he's like a Texas lawyer and a Korean war veteran and he's a really intense character

and he comes into play later on in some other novels. But I've never got to read Lay Down My

Sword and My Shield. That's one I'd like to one of these days and get me a copy of. I'm going to

sit down and read it. This is a long one. Let's go. At Hillbilly Hygiene's J.W. I thought long

and hard about what you said on the rotten fruit and damn if it didn't prove true just two days

later. I had a former friend I had to run off some years ago because of his hard drug problems.

We had become incompatible people. I was always kind of worried about him showing back up one day

with larceny or spikiness heart.

Sorry. I had to break this up. I was prepped for it out of worry.

I found out today he got out of prison recently a broken man. He had a stroke inside and his

wheelchair bound now living in a halfway house in rural Arkansas. 30 years of hard drugs finally

caught up to him. It's a sad story. Built one bad decision at a time. Turns out I had no reason

to worry about having to shoot him one day. He shot himself with drugs way too many times.

Now he probably wishes he was dead stuck in that chair doing the post-prison Facebook apology tour.

I don't expect he'll ever live independently again much less come stalking around my place.

Same old story I guess at any rate he shook himself right out of my tree of worry. All I ever had to

do and did was mind my own business. I always hoped he'd do better but he cast his own mold.

Wasn't for lack of trying on my part. Rest in peace, John. J.W., thank you for your sermons

if we if we want to call him that.

You always make me think and laugh and even shed a manly tear now and again. I and the silent

many others out there appreciate your efforts weekend and week out. Hey uh thank you for that.

Sorry to hear your your ex-friend's story never they don't all they don't all turn out good.

And one of the things I really liked about your comment was acknowledging that you took no pleasure

in that because I told you all about the things that happened to the man that caused me so much

heartache but I took no pleasure in those things when they happened to him. His grandsons died in

terrible ways and I took no pleasure in that. It just made me sadder about the dude.

I hate hearing what happened to your friend but some people just they can't break free

but I'm glad you didn't end up having to sully your soul

feeling like you need to do something about him yourself.

I wish I had learned that lesson a little younger and a little earlier myself.

At uh Farvonugan, Farvonugan. I'm super excited for the weekly story time. You have a real poetic

way with the language and I love both Lake Wobegon and Yakhna Patafa County. I always struggle

saying that. I thank you're on to a winner. Well time will tell my friend. Time will tell

but I can tell you uh getting the ability to write without any print just do what I want to do

is very freeing and I'm enjoying it. And uh I told you I got off in that Rick Rubens

ship where he's like you know you got you got to make stuff that you like first and then

you know the audience comes second. You got to write the stuff that you like first.

You got to create the things that you want to create and and I had gotten in a bad habit

a few years there of making things that I was worried about what other people thought about

them and making things you know almost you know people would give me suggestions I think well

maybe I should do that or maybe I should do that and people gave me suggestions for the podcast.

Well maybe I should do this or do that and it's not that feedback's bad it's just

you got to make something you like first before you can expect anybody else to like

and and I'm approaching this project very much from that way. Thank you. I'm glad uh glad you

enjoyed the first one. Hope you enjoyed the second one. All these stories are going to do work to

get us to a place. I'm not 100% sure where that place is yet. Somebody last week said

are we going to find out next week who killed Tony and I

hell I don't know if I know who killed Tony yet.

Seems like there's a lot of people I wanted to though.

Alrighty. I love you guys. This is just my favorite part of the week.

I was you know when I was thinking about the concrete and I was thinking about some

different stuff. I kept thinking about the strength of flexibility. So

I learned concrete from a couple different teachers. One of them believed in bulk,

port thick, port heavy. Let the might of sheer strength and weight do the work.

And the other one taught me about the what you don't see rebar wire the the preparatory work

before the poor that lets it move just enough so it don't come apart when the ground shifts.

Both of them are right. Just just not for the same reasons. You can see the same thing with

bullies. There's the loud ones, the physical ones. Easy to spot. You know when to come.

But the ones that did a little more damage were the intellectual bullies. The ones that didn't

hit you but tried to convince you you were small. Try to make you stiffen up, dig in,

defend every inch of who you are. Both of these aggressors come from a place of inflexibility.

One from the belief that might makes right. The other from the belief that what they were

taught is right and no one else has a right to think differently. That's where the that's where

the flaw gets exposed. Take a take a tree. A oak is strong, dense, rigid. Makes a hell of a piece

of furniture. Something that a whole wait for generations. But you put that oak out in a hard

wind and it can't move. If it won't give it snaps. Loud, clean, done. Pine ain't as impressive in the

shot. It dents easier, feels softer in the hand. But it grew up learning how to bend.

It sways, it leans. It gives just enough to survive the storm and still be standing there

afterward looking like it never fought at all. Concrete is awful similar. On its own it's strong

but it's brittle. One good shift and the whole damn thing fractures. But you reinforce it,

let it flex a little and now you got something to take a beating and do keep doing this job.

That's the lesson I keep relearning. That strength alone ain't enough. Not in life,

not in relationships, not when the wind starts pushing from directions you can't control.

There's a kind of pride you know that says I won't change, I won't bend, I won't move no damn more.

And that feels brave but standing stiff in the street flipping your finger at the storm

don't make the wind stop. It just gives it something clean to break off.

Quite strength looks different. It listens and adjusts. It bends without surrendering.

It knows what matters and what ain't worth breaking over.

You don't have to give up who you are. You just don't have to be rigid about it.

That's part of the journey you know. You've got to learn to be oak where it counts and be pine

when the wind comes. Put some rebar underneath those convictions. Let yourself flex enough to

stay whole. Surviving the storm of life is not about proving how strong you are.

Regardless of how many Facebook memes you read about it, it's about still being here when the

storm is gone. Every week I'm rooting for every one of you to make it through every storm that

comes your way. I ain't saying you ain't going to be a little dented and scarred when it's over

but I just want to see you still standing. I'm JW. I love you.

On there, off there.

Here's a banquet. Boy, that'll get you out.

Want to be high up in the clouds? Rain on my mind, rain on my mind.

Oh, I gotta figure out what we're gonna do next week.

What the hell's going to be happening in the Wally Bottoms? Probably I'll start working on that right

now. I love you guys. Thank you for sharing your Sunday with me or whenever you listen to this.

I hope some of you get to make it out in the Acadotes show. It's always my favorite to meet

people. If you're around Austin area, I'm gonna be in Austin, March 6th. Those tickets ain't on

sell yet but I'll let y'all know when they are. But the Acadotas tickets are on sale and they're

moving quick and I couldn't be more over the world about that. Y'all be safety. I'll see you next week.

Pulpwood Fiction

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