"The Phoenix" |S:03E.66

Presteel, Crack, Iron, and Buy You Acres. Suns and a Greek style, this feeling fast. Are you really digging for peace? Or is that just a lie? Tell me, help me sleep. Sure, that's a good way to go. I'm Gary Wayne Longmer, y'all. Zimbleble is still y'all.

All right, welcome here in the Church of Internal Combustion. We just asked that you show up with an open heart. Okay, it is, uh, whoo.

It is but whole o'clock Sunday morning, because I filmed this Saturday, and forgot to turn my audio on.

And I was a little emotionally spent after filming it, once I got into the house and realized I had no audio, and it was just an hour and 20 minutes of a camera screen with me going on.

And, uh, it was just a little too much take last night, so I said, you know, I might have myself cupped glasses of whiskey, and, uh,

dodging a little cannabis on the porch, turn in, get myself a good night's sleep, and try again tomorrow.

But sometimes the, uh, the, the gods that be over at YouTube, sometimes they slow down the upload speeds.

Usually when you need them not to. So we'll see if I get this up in time and say it's kind of a crapshoot at this point, but I did jump up early to re-film it and try to, uh, try to get this thing all edited and put together and uploaded for you guys to enjoy today.

Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, uh, um, um, um, uh, um, um, uh, um, uh, we did my greens. I did a drink in the morning.

Uh, uh, and a little bit of juice and some greens powder in it, because I don't eat enough vegetables and leafy vegetables are kind of one of the things that, uh, really give me a lot of problems with the Crohn's disease, leafy vegetables will cause me a great deal of intestinal, uh, chaos.

And, uh, making kind of sick. So I do this little greens powder, but, uh, in a hurry to get out here and get set up and, uh, such.

Got a whole bunch of greens juice in my mustache and, uh, I don't know if you've ever possessed a fine, a fine sweeper of a mustache like this, but, uh,

they're quite surprising in how much volume of moisture and liquid of mustache like this can, can hold.

Uh, I've made a mistake of drinking my whiskey the wrong way on the stage and getting a little too deep of a drink and getting whiskey up in the mustache.

And then when I go to do my next line on stage, it looks like a sprinkler.

The sprinkler, the spray and whiskey out of my mustache.

So with great mustache comes great responsibility.

And, uh, I got a great one.

I mean, there's no doubt about that. I'm a humble guy, except when it comes to that stash, that's a bad stash.

Anyway, whoo, moving alone.

Well, I'm on one this morning.

I watch that. I'm a wife or watching a Charlie, Charlie Sheen documentary.

Holy cow, I feel so much better about my life and the mistakes I've made.

Like, yeah, and I own mine. This dude's over here just like, well, you know, if Nick Cage could have said, let's not go to the Hawaiian tropics, uh, Bikini contest.

And then I wouldn't have had to break out a rehab, but I don't blame it.

You shouldn't, you shouldn't blame Nick. You shouldn't blame Nick.

Nick didn't break out a rehab. Nick wasn't in rehab.

You shouldn't blame Nick. Like, shut up dude.

I don't know. 45 minutes into him blaming it on NBC, a girl at nine.

I mean, just every little bit on his dad just, just it was everybody felt except Charlie's and then, uh, Sean pins junkie rhetoric and wild metaphors.

Uh, just like was like the icing on the cake. I was like, oh my goodness.

I am a better person than I realized I was.

So there's that.

Of course, there is all the other allegations about him and Corey Hayne, but you know, the only person making that allegation is one dude.

And then there, there's quite a lot of seems like there's quite a lot of people saying that didn't happen.

So I wish Corey Hayne was around to tell us the truth.

But I suspect none of us will ever know the truth about that.

All right. So I'll cover this Sunday. I spent, uh, and I'm sorry. How are y'all?

Is everybody doing well today? I hope you're doing well today.

And if you're not, I hope maybe you're doing a little better by the end of this.

This is a, uh, this is an episode of joy today.

Actually, sort of like the juxtaposition of this, the sun stream through the window over here.

And lighting up the wrecking yard podcast canvas from behind.

And it's giving me kind of a peaceful feeling. I, um, this is joyful.

This is joyful. Got my little red Volkswagen mouse. I got a smile on my face.

This is a joyful occasion. This is joyful service on Sunday morning.

Uh, and it'll be hopefully a joyful service for you guys Sunday evening.

So we have people, uh, you know, we make jokes and illusions to sermons and church.

But I write like a preacher. That's, I mean, these, these are the men that I watched growing up that captivated audiences.

And told great stories from good books and.

I do find a lot of similarities with what we do here with Sunday service.

I'll tell you, tell you that right now.

So I was planning when I was in Kilgore, I was going to go over Sunday morning.

And I was going to go sit in the back view of the first United Pentecostal church there in Kilgore, Texas.

And I was going to, um, just going to sit through a service.

Just smell the smells again.

Be in that place again.

And I, and I opted not to do that. And, uh,

I opted not to do it not out of, uh, it was not anything like, oh, I don't want to do that or eat or I was feeling emotional about or eat like that.

Uh, it was just merely at that point kind of a time thing.

I, I hurt my hip.

Uh, whenever I made my trip to Colorado, I come back or something wrong with my right hip.

I imagine whatever's wrong with my right hip is sitting in a book board Mazda 3 for 16 hours at 48 years old.

That's just my guess.

I have a feeling I have something to do with that.

Uh,

anyway, so my hips just really been aggravating me.

Every time I go to getting that little Mazda aggravates me worse.

And even getting in and out of Rachel's Cadillac, it just aggravates this out of me.

And so I'm going to break down this week and I'm going to, uh,

run over chiropractor with chiropractor.

Take a swing at it.

I am, I am one of those people.

I've used chiropractic chiropractors in the past.

I don't know how you say it.

Chiropractic work.

Chiropractic.

Is that a word?

Probably not.

I've used chiropractors in the past, uh, with some success.

I don't think everything they do is, uh, is, is for me.

But I, I've had, uh, I had a little chiropractor over in Montgomery County.

And she was an ex-soccer player from Texas Tech.

And she was about a big round.

There's this little, uh, wire brush right here.

I'm holding my, this little tiny wire brush in my hand.

And that little gal had a fire and a determination in her.

She used to pop my leg out.

And, uh, I'm telling you, my leg weighs more than her.

And she grabbed it and she could, I thought I had a hernia for a long time.

But it was a hip flexor that was like aggravating me.

And she wretched into my skin.

Like it was, it like grabbed that, that hip flexor, like it was a muscle band.

And when it popped off my hip, the sound it made.

And I can work all of a sudden I can walk good again.

So, so I've had some success chiropractors.

I used some of them after I fell off the roof and did some damage myself.

Uh, alongside yoga and stuff to help me get the muscle pack.

And my, my, my, my most of them go see my general doctor.

I got, I got a colon, I could, colon, I could be coming up this week

and a visit with my cardio, with a, uh, my new cardiologist.

And I don't have anything wrong.

I'm just, I'm checking myself all out this year.

I'm making sure I've lost a bunch of weight.

There's, my body's changing and I'm exercising more.

And I just want to know if I'm one of those people that might have one of those

with a maker heart attacks.

There's not a lot of heart disease runs in my family.

My papa Lomar had, uh, a number, a couple heart attacks.

But he also smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day.

And the doctors squarely placed the blame on that at the time.

Now, nobody else in my family's had heart issues.

That's just not something that runs.

And any of my genetic lineage that I know of, you know,

doesn't seem like the Harris to have a lot of heart attacks.

But I just want to know if my buddy had one of those with a maker heart attacks.

My buddy Tim Schultz had one of those.

And he said he was laying on the couch and it felt like his chest was on fire like burning.

And so he, he sat up and he lived, uh, like a couple blocks away from UTMB in Galveston.

Uh, big, uh, UT hospital.

And so he just walked down in the emergency room and they caught this damn

with a maker heart attack and time and saved his life.

But they're like, you have no idea how lucky you are because most people

do not get a warning anyways.

So they, so I'm, I'm just getting things checked out this year.

But so I am going to make a visit.

My regular doctor get my hip looked at.

But in the meantime, I'm going to run over chiropractor because I can get in there quick

and let them pop me around and see if that doesn't help.

Maybe I've just got some kind of strain muscle.

I've looked up everything about the type of pain I'm having and doesn't seem like it's a bone thing.

It seems like it's probably a muscle thing or a nerve thing in my back.

And it could be from that damage I have fallen off the roof.

It could be from drive around a tiny asshole card just through if I can.

So.

Saying that was kind of get back to point why I didn't go to church last Sunday.

And it was really because after I was driving back for from blade water and all that stuff

we had done in Saturday, trumpet around out in the woods at the wrecking yard.

I just wasn't feeling it.

I woke up.

My hip was in a lot of pain and that hotel bed was like sleeping on this table.

It was so hard.

And I was just kind of miserable by the end of that trip physically pain wise.

And I was ready to get back home in Houston.

And so we did do that.

Four to six.

I was going to go have lunch with my cousin, her husband, who I enjoyed both of them.

My cousin Amy.

I've talked about her very close to her.

I was going to go have lunch with them and I ended up having a chance that I just wasn't feeling it.

I spent the better part of this week wrestling, not just with this episode, not wrestling.

I'll just say processing.

Last week was very emotional.

It was a lot that happened.

But I was also wrestling with how to do this episode.

I have some footage to show y'all.

I'm not going to bombard you with too much of it, but I'm going to drop some in as I'm talking for you to watch.

And I'm not going to describe.

I have a lot of audio listeners that will miss out on the videos.

I'm about to share with y'all.

So I had to figure out how to take them on this trip with us.

And I do hope some of you audio listeners pop over here on YouTube and watch some of the footage when you have a chance.

So I'm going to try to describe to you what I was experiencing.

So that you.

Does he list and maybe get a better, a better feel for what's happening here.

It's I'm going to cover this right up front because I'm kind of.

It's a whole thing if you're if you're friends with me on Facebook or you follow me on Facebook.

You probably already know about this or you may have seen me post about it.

But we went to the post office to pick up boxes packages.

And we had a letter from the post office.

And I got it here somewhere.

I don't know what I've done with it because I actually owe it right here.

But it's very official letter from the postmaster general and the United States Postal Inspection Service telling us that our entire post office was robbed.

Now, there were no PO boxes available at post offices in my in my area of Houston where I live.

So we got one over in River Oaks, which is kind of like the Richie Rich part of Houston.

And it's a huge post office but they had plenty of post PO boxes available.

And we got one with them.

So what happened is that whole post office got robbed.

Somebody came there they've got it all on camera.

Somebody come multiple people came into the post office one evening broke in.

And they just started ripping open packages.

And if they found something look like maybe they could sell it on marketplace or or the Craigslist if people still do that.

They snatched out of the packages.

So we have a box here that looks like it's from Amazon fulfillment service.

And it looks like one of y'all sent some hot wheels for the driven dreams dot org.

I can't be sure that's what it was.

But if any of y'all sent something sent a box of hot, well, please reach out to me.

I want to I don't have your name or anything or any way to track this.

And I would like to be able to put your name.

I know you tried to donate and I'd like to put your name with my registry registry.

That I'm feeling out when I do the donations for all these.

Because I think that's important.

And.

And what kind of low life steals hot wheels.

You know.

I don't know.

People go into desperate times and.

I know I've done desperate stuff when I was broken didn't have money.

But God of money.

I don't think I ever stole from a kid.

That's.

That's diabolical.

Anyway, so somebody broken post office that package is the only one they got compromised.

I didn't get any other hot wheels packages this week.

But.

Some people in my good buddy Barry Laminak.

Y'all know Barry.

Y'all love Barry.

I hope as much as I do.

Barry heard about it neatly says, hey man.

I'm about $100 worth of hot wheels to replace those.

And.

Man, I just shows you that's why I love Barry.

That's why I work with Barry.

That's why I spent time with Barry.

Barry's good people.

That's just a just another testament to the character of that man.

And I thought that was really cool.

But please, if those are the hot wheels you sent, please reach out to me.

Last week.

I loaded my family up and I traveled back behind the pine curtain to perform a couple nights.

In Gladewater, Texas.

Gladewater is about 19 miles north of the unincorporated community of leverage chapel.

Leverage Chapel.

It's where the wrecking yard is.

It's a very small.

Leverage Chapel was originally a farming community.

And there was also a Cherokee village about a mile southwest of it.

And then December, I believe, of 1932.

Some black stuff started spewing forth from the ground.

And East Texas, in itself, there was a revoke will be altered forever.

I thought it was funny that I was looking to up some stuff about Leverage Chapel

and the population count for the census said in 1987, there was 450 people in Leverage Chapel.

And then the last time they did the census there in the year 2000, there was also 450 people in Leverage Chapel.

I suspect they're not doing a very good count.

But I don't know, 87 is about time we moved.

So I can't help but wonder if it was like 454 before 1987.

And then they did the count after my family moved away from the wrecking yard.

I don't know, that's stupid.

But it did kind of tickle 450 people.

Because generally when I describe Leverage Chapel to people, I always say probably about a thousand people, which shows

I was heavily overestimated.

I actually don't think I was.

I think if you take the number of people in Leverage Chapel who would fill out a census form versus the number of people there,

I'm probably closer.

I bet I'm closer.

A lot of criminals.

Leverage Chapel.

I don't spend much time in East Texas these days.

A long time watchers of this podcast know the last time I went up there to perform was in an effort to see my father and try to do some restorative work to our relationship.

Not long after I started this podcast.

I started this podcast on Father's Day of 2024 a little over a year ago.

And with the first episode being about a car from my father owned, and it was mostly about him is about his Dodge Charger.

It's crazy and more than a little overwhelming that I'm finishing up a book based off everything I wrote last year when I started this project.

The idea that me sitting in my garage and telling stories about my life and the lives of my loved ones would draw the audience that it has is the idea that speaking these things would change the trajectory of my career in life, even some of my relationships, it seems silly, but that's what we manifested here.

Y'all in the past year have not only shared my wins and losses, but you rode with me through my current life.

My struggles as a father and as a son.

You've shown up for me at the least expected moments and every time you have you've given me the fuel I needed to get to the next chapter.

Making the book has been hard on me.

It's taken pieces of me a little at a time and helped me see the record yard from a variety of perspectives I couldn't have understood before.

When I was making the podcast and recounting the story of my grief for my mother and that got to be too difficult, I could back out of that timeline and just spend the next week telling stories about her when I was young and her little red BW.

When you're working on the book, there's no backing out for a minute and it's all in order.

My life in order is not necessarily a happy tale.

My redemption arc resembles a camshaft profile more than it does any conventional storytelling arcs.

I suspect that's because life doesn't work like a storytelling arc for most people.

There's no hero's journey. There's just a journey.

Look at my life in order. It's quite clear to me that it took me a lot longer to become a decent human being than it should have.

And obviously I still got miles to travel to get where I want to be.

I still, you know, I'm still afflicted with the pettiness and stuff that we all carry.

I'm no better than anybody else. I'm just, I'm actively trying to be better about it.

That's it. That's the only difference.

I still experience feelings of rage and anger and sadness and pettiness and jealousy.

I still experience every bit of that, but I try to keep a level head about how to respond to those feelings these days.

I worried after watching the footage through my own cynical eyes that you would feel let down.

You've heard me talk about it in this place with all the gusto of Yacht Napaltova County.

I worried I'd built it up too much that you would feel the way I did the first time I stole the grounds of Graceland.

And I was completely underwhelmed at the palace of the king.

The way I felt when I went overseas to do shows for the military and they took me to Saddam's castles

and they were built with knock off Home Depot supplies and fake marble.

It was, I'm worried I've built this place up too much in my mind in here.

So I'm going to do my best to explain what I'm seeing in juxtaposition to the footage to help you see it not only with your own eyes, but through mine.

And as important as the shows in Gladewater were, and they were, these were good shows.

Gladewater is a hard place to market for.

Let me tell you something, Jackson's theater in Gladewater.

What this guy, what Jackson's doing first of all, he is a delightful cook and I love him.

He's an Elvis impersonator and an actor and he's been a dance teacher for years.

He's just an interesting guy.

He's a guy who's spent his life in the entertainment industry.

And he knows the things that make us tick as far as performers.

And what he's doing this theater is nothing short of remarkable.

He's trying to make a real cultural,

a place to witness great art and great beauty.

And he's including stand-up comedy and that for that I'm grateful.

He's just a fantastic dude.

I enjoyed working with him.

Those shows were important.

I went the Friday night show.

It's a hard place to market.

There's not a lot going on in Gladewater.

It's a very, very small town.

I'm not sure there's anything else going on in Gladewater to be honest with you.

There's a difficult place to market.

I knew going in that the Friday night shows were low attendance.

I knew they don't usually do shows on Friday night there.

There was a lot of factors in that.

We just didn't sell enough tickets.

That's really obvious.

I'll just take that on the nose.

But I knew that on the drive up there.

I knew that on the trip up.

We went up Thursday night and we got checked in to our hotel.

And then took the kids swimming in the hotel pool.

Had a good time.

Friday we got up.

I went up.

I worked out and we went and had lunch with my father and his wife and my sister.

And that went okay as far as those things go.

My father and his wife were supposed to come to the show Friday night.

And I predicted it.

I told my wife that they wouldn't be coming and sure enough about 45 minutes for showtime.

We get a text from my father saying that they're not going to be able to make it.

He was having a migraine or something.

But it's just kind of become a pattern with him.

And that's all right.

It is what it is.

Dispointed for sure.

And on the way to the show,

Judy, my oldest wanted to come to the show and my sister wanted to come to the show.

So they rode with me Friday night and we went over there and there was 12 people at that show.

Two of them being my sister, my oldest child.

And I think one of them may have also been an employee of the theater.

But I have a thing about that.

I've talked to you all about that before when I go to do a show.

I don't care if it's three people or 300.

I really try to give those folks the monies were.

And then folks paid the money and they wanted to see a show.

And so we had us a show.

And I think Friday night show was fantastic.

It was an intimate setting, intimate crowd.

And we had us a good time.

Truth be known, I enjoyed Friday show more than I enjoyed Saturday show.

Which was packed Saturday show.

We had a gangbusters of the crowd.

And a lot of my family came and it was a lot of fun.

But sometimes those little intimate shows can be a better experience when you're writing and working on stuff.

It was important as those shows were.

This past week was a result of months of organizing and accommodated effort to recover what is left of my mother's Volkswagen.

The shows were a vehicle to make my visit financially possible and put me up there for a few days to do what I needed to do.

So without further ado,

buckle up and let's go visit my own personal Narnia for what most likely was my last visit.

When I was a kid, I saw my mother's car all the time in the wrecking yard.

But you have to remember, it's probably been 30 to 35 years since I actually laid my own eyes on it.

I knew the drive train was going.

I knew the pan would have been sacrificed to the high acidity soil beneath the pines.

But I mostly marveled up front about how much of the wiring harness was still there.

It surprised me. My father loved to peel for a wiring harness. That's what the man did.

My dad, if we went to a Volkswagen junkyard, he would walk out and pay for another $20 worth of wiring harness.

He stripped out of these Volkswagen and then he would take these wiring harnesses and tape them up in his garage and label them and keep them separate.

I have no idea what he did with them all. But I hope they got in the hands of somebody that needed them.

Because somewhere out there is a beautifully organized set of wiring harnesses from a variety of Volkswagen.

But he liked having those harnesses to work with when he was rewiring stuff and doing stuff.

So I was so surprised that this car still had most of the wiring harnesses still in this car.

I mean, that's about it. That's about it. The shifter. The shifter is in there. That tickled me.

The steering wheel, the steering wheel and the dash, all that. We didn't apparently...

And I know there's one tell-like missing. That tell-like went on my Super Beetle Baja.

I don't know what happened to the trunk lid.

Or the engine lid. I assumed they were damaged in the wreck or got utilized for some of the Volkswagen. That's all I can tell.

I mean, taking in, looking at this car with the eyes of... When you're a kid, you don't understand the things I understand about cars and impacts that I do now.

Taking in the damage of that car as an adult, the damage is catastrophic. I can't imagine how my mom survived that wreck.

I think we basically figured out just the fact she was short saved her life. She was five foot two and she had her seat belt on.

And we think that's what saved her life. Because the roof is so...

None of this video is going to show just deeply enough how that roof is caved in to that car where her head should have been.

Had it been somebody my height or my father's height? I mean, they would have just...

They wouldn't have survived that accident. I don't believe.

The right rear quarter paddles about the only piece of steel that isn't crumpled a little bit from all the devastating impacts this car took.

I don't know if I've ever told you all this or if I did get back to all this. Originally, I thought...

We'll get into that a little bit. There's a portion of time where I just wondered around the car.

My cousin, Ricky, he was on his way. And I wasn't ready to look in the shop yet.

I wasn't ready to go and pop off shop. I just... I had to brag on my cousins on there.

Jimmy and I didn't grow up together. His dad and my aunt split when he was young and he lived mostly with his dad and their people.

And my people always spoke well of his dad. Big Jim did well and little Jimmy was my cousin.

And he was married to my barber, Jim.

I don't know big Jim all that well, but my people spoke ill of plenty of people. They never spoke ill of big Jim.

That's what I know about him. And he was always nice to me when I was younger, well up on end of my teenage years.

Jimmy's about eight or nine years younger me, which puts him about eight or nine years old when Peppa Clark died.

I found out...

Much to my surprise, he didn't really remember ever even meeting Peppa, which blew my mind.

He's now the steward of what was the old man's dream.

And doesn't even remember the guy, which in my eyes, you know, Peppa was such a bigger than life character.

I'm just so...

That really surprised me. I had a hard time wrapping around my head around it.

I mean, it makes sense. He was raised with his other family.

And, you know, generally most of us, I think, growing up if we had a two-parent family,

we're probably spent more time around one parent's family.

And though I spent plenty of time with the long marriage growing up, I would say I probably spent way more time with the Clarks and the McBrides growing up.

My mom's people.

How Jimmy came to own the wrecking yard is kind of...

So after Peppa died, Granny's gambling got out of control.

She was going in boats in Shreveport every night. She was blowing through her money.

As fast she'd get her little check in.

And then when that wasn't enough, she started going to get these, like, payday style loans in town.

And then she'd run over Shreveport and gamble her away.

And then usually my parents would bail her out of her financial woes at some point.

But at some point she started selling everything she could, get someone to buy out of the wrecking yard.

That's where most of the cars and most of the stuff went.

Usually for pennies on the dollar. If she could get somebody to come out there and buy something, she'd get them to buy it.

And you know, there was all these stories for years about all the stuff people stole out of the wrecking yard after Peppa died.

And before Peppa died.

And for example, that Volkswagen bus that she told me had been stolen.

Well, around that time her and Peppa were separated.

They were fussed and fighting, weren't getting along. They separated. He'd went and lived over this pal Marisa's place in RV.

And then she tried to sell me his El Camino while he was in the hospital.

So sorry, I got an itch back here.

So here's what I really suspect. What I really suspect is nothing's ever been stolen out of that wrecking yard.

That that woman has been selling it off piecemeal to pay for her gambling issues all those years.

And eventually my parents had to like intervene. And this is something y'all don't know.

I actually for a very short piece of time owned that property and gave it up.

Eventually she sold the piece of land behind her house with a shop on it, the big gym and Jimmy's dad.

And he he come out there. He put a real nice trailer house out there.

Module home, what do we call it?

And put a pool and cleaned up the whole area around the shop and he put his house kind of off behind the shop and the woods there.

And and all that junk around the shop and Peppa Wiley's little house.

They just mantled all that stuff and they drug it up on the hill where that Volkswagen bus was and just sort of piled it off in the woods.

To get it out of their way out of sight out of mind.

While they fixed their little piece of land up there's plenty of clearing and work to do on their own little piece of land.

The Jimmy used the shop I think mostly for storage.

He's at you'll see in the videos when we go in the shop he's got a 53 Chevrolet in there.

And a few years later, so the wrecking yard originally all these plots of lands are crazy shaped plots of land that my Peppa bought.

And they're like in triangles and weird trapezoids and stuff and our little plot of land where our gym walkers home was own was its own little plot and it was a part of all the plots he bought.

So you know now the Davidson's own that piece of land that our house is on I found out and and big gym bought the road the access road and all the property going down to almost granny's road on the other side of her house that like meets up with sexton road.

So all the road access gym tub well owns now and that's all his property and Jimmy has a my little cousin has put him a house out there right off the dirt road that goes to the shop and he's graveled the road and done quite a bit of work on it to make it better.

He's got him a little nice place there for him and his family and it's pretty cool.

But my my parents at one point granny got so behind on property taxes that they were getting ready to take the property from.

And she was gambling and blowing through her money and all that sort of stuff and so my mom in an effort to save her from herself went up there and made a deal with the local lawyer and bought all the property from granny for $25.

And that way mom and dad can keep up the property taxes make sure the woman had a place to live and didn't lose everything she owned because she was sure on a path to do that fast forward my mom dies I'm the next to kin I'm her oldest child and the property is going to go to me and I let my dad talk he didn't talk he bullied me.

And to turn it over to you my grandmother.

I didn't want to that time I was going through all the stuff I was going through after my mother died and I was having all the feelings about my grandmother and seeing her through new eyes after I realized what she had done to me.

And most of my original plans when I found out that property is going to be mine involved renting a real big bulldozer and having it delivered to route to box 30 double A over to Texas.

So that I can just bulldoze that house of evil that she lives into the ground.

I mean I thought it would have been real cathartic as hell.

My other plan involved a big big can of kerosene and some bottle rockets.

But and that one would have been she burned our house down let me burn her house down you know which those kind of ideas aren't productive and they're not good for anything but we're all I think we are all you know fall prey to flights of fancy when somebody has owned us.

And that was those were my flights of fancy.

I was going to end that place and everything that had happened there.

A very forced dump style.

But I let my father badgered me until I signed everything over to a lawyer and put it back in drainage name.

Which is just as well.

I don't want to own anything in these taxes.

But I love that Jimmy has that just makes me smile.

I've known Jimmy mostly as an adult.

I just like him a great deal. I think I think he's just really good people. I know he's good people. I know he's good people.

And Jimmy has watched the podcast since the very early days of the podcast.

He may be a day one or I don't know I was so surprised when I learned that he was watching I didn't think anybody my family would watch it.

And he was out West Texas working when I did the episode about mom's Volkswagen.

And he said he said he said man I knew in my heart that I had seen that car out there and buying a shot off in the woods.

He said Susie came home. He said it was almost dark and he took off in the woods and his dad and his stepmom were like where are you going?

And he said well he said I was watching a little Jerry's podcast about his mom's Volkswagen.

And I feel like I've seen it out there.

And he hit me up there. He went out there in the dark man which that's a little sketch in the dark.

There's a big old hole out there near that car that looks like any number of Bobcats Panthers Jagger on day could be living in it.

But he sent me pictures very next morning.

Mom's car off in the woods and I told y'all about it. I was gleefully excited.

And then he said he said he said you know the car's yours if you want it.

Which was just such a kind of magnanimous thing for him due to me after hearing me talk about my mother's car.

And a couple months later.

I made the joke with y'all.

I said I don't know what my last dance when Volkswagen will be.

It turns out we're in the middle of it.

A couple months later he had his buddy with a backhoe pull it up by the shop out of the woods for me.

Tell me his mind to come get.

And I immediately start plotting on how to get it.

I couldn't fathom that somehow the universe was giving me this gift back.

I couldn't the things that had to occur for that to happen.

It felt like kids, you know, I ain't got a lot of money to work with some logistics tricky to move a car.

I don't have what do you call it the money you have left over after you get done paying the survive.

I don't have that whatever that is. I don't have that.

You know 99% of my money goes into my family and our bills and trying to keep me in my wife's cars on the road.

And whatever a little bit we got left over we usually do stuff for the kids or maybe a little thing for ourselves.

But I don't have car building budget money. I just don't yet.

I hope one day I do. I know.

I know it's going to be tricky move a car has no chassis or anything.

This is less than a roller. It's a shell.

Y'all know I game with my cousin Ricky.

The minute I told my cousin Ricky at car was up there.

Ricky said I got a flatbed trailer. I'll pull it down Houston for you.

Let's go get it.

And I also know Ricky likes new resell and stuff like that.

And I have a garage full of garage sell stuff tools some equipment furniture stuff that could all be resold my somebody took the time to do it.

I don't have the time to do it unfortunately. I am very busy. I work all the time.

I just haven't had time. I've gone through it all for organized it but I don't have time to sit around trying to piecemeal sell it on eBay and such and all that kind of stuff.

Ricky loves do stuff. He's very good at Ricky.

Ricky takes a great deal of pleasure in buying things cheap and resell them for more than he bought them.

He's very good at he's a hustler. I've always impressed with his that man gets the best deals anybody ever heard.

He watches the estate sales. He does it all.

So I said Ricky, how about this? How about we'll meet up there. I'll help you load up the car.

And then when you get time you bring it down to my house in Houston.

And once we unload off that trailer, I load that trailer up with all this garage sell stuff.

And there's there's some things worth some money in there.

And you can take all those goodies home and resell them.

And we both get a little something out of this. I get my mom's own car.

I can't afford to spend a bunch of money on them.

And you get a bunch of stuff that you make some money on in the way that you're already good at making money on things.

And Ricky was bad at it. He's like, hell yeah, let's do it.

And the way these two young men came together to help me out.

And more than we're headed out to Regyard, Jimmy texts me and tells me he's borrowed his buddy's backhoe to make it easier to lift this car, move this car around.

And that's not he drove over to his buddy's house, picks up his backhoe and then drives a backhoe down.

Who knows how many miles of backroads to get back to his house to help me out.

And if you've ever driven a backhoe down a bumpy road, by God, you know what the man put himself through.

Ricky, him and his family was out in Dallas.

They were on there. They would come back in Dallas Saturday morning.

Ricky says, as soon as I get back in Dallas, me and Corby, his son, will load up the trailer and we'll head your way.

Throw back from Dallas. Look, when I come back in Dallas, I don't want to do nothing.

Dallas, Dallas just, uh, driving in Dallas just, uh, just sucks it out of me.

But this dude drives back in Dallas, then loads his trailer up and comes over there to help me.

I'm telling you, if my papo had watched this work together, the way we did Saturday, he'd have been beaming the whole time.

Three boys, three cousins sharing a McBride bloodline, four cousins, really including Corby.

That's two generations of boys with McBride bloodline that ain't ever worked together as men or adults.

We still came together and made this happen in an hour or so.

Ricky and Jimmy didn't even know each other. I didn't know that.

I was, I got blown away by that.

Uh, Jimmy never met Aunt Pat or Uncle Ronnie or Nanny.

So he didn't have that, that relationship with them.

And I, I wasn't aware of that.

I didn't know that they had not met each other until that day.

I didn't even make introductions.

I just assumed everybody knew each other, dumbass me.

But we just, we fell into it.

It was so damned harmonious that took me back.

These two men, my family, helping me honor my mother.

She would have been tickled pink about all the attention over Cherokee.

Papo would have patted me on the back for my bartering scheme.

It's the old magic I learned from watching him.

And I told them stories about the wrecking yard.

They didn't know.

I felt really connected to Papo.

The minute I walked down that dirt road, the minute I started walking towards this shop,

I didn't, I didn't, I'm gonna say this without trying to be braggadocious.

But I feel like I'm carrying on part of his legacy in that I'm the storyteller now for that, for those times.

He was a fantastic storyteller.

I was nervous. There was, there was some anxiety.

My granny still lives in that house.

The house y'all keep seeing over through the trees, the red house.

That, she still lives in that house.

Now Jimmy lives right there beside her.

He said he ain't seen her in eight months.

But I don't ever want to see her again.

I have no wish to ever see that woman again.

I have no wish to ever speak to her again.

I was nervous being in that close proximity to her.

Y'all don't know, a few months back, she almost died.

And she was in the hospital for a while.

And I guess she survived it.

But every time she did to me, I don't want to see her again.

Ever.

I don't want to know the bitter twisted a witch she has succumbed to be in.

I know some stuff she did to my uncle Bobby's daughter, Rishanda,

after he died in 2019, that tells me that she hasn't got any less

who she was.

There's evil in that house.

It's so strong you can feel it.

I can.

The thing that struck me the most about the video when I was going back

to watch them is I can't quit touching the car.

And I don't know how to describe this, y'all.

But every time I touch that car, it felt like a spark,

like something was coming back to me, like I'd been given something back.

I had been given something, but like something deeper than that.

I couldn't quit touching the car.

Watching her car rise in the air,

if we hook the chains up, watching her car rise in the air,

it was spiritual.

My heart was in my throat.

I have this playlist I've made called Reckon Yard Radio

that I've been listening to, I work on the book and write these episodes.

And it's just a collection of songs that kind of put me in the place.

And a lot of them are modern songs and some of them are older songs.

There's a lot of Paul Carthon on there.

Paul Carthon has this gospel sort of East Tech.

He's a Tyler boy.

He has this gospel deep East Texas feel that suits my inner brain,

that tickles the workings of my inner brain and makes it easier for me to write.

There's a song by Paul Carthon on there called To Whom Do You Belong.

It feels gospel.

It's very heavy.

And it's just a repetition of the phrase To Whom Do You Belong.

And as that car rose up, the words of that song were booming in my mind.

To Whom Do You Belong?

It was just his big bear.

I was just hearing it in my head as that car rose up.

I've been listening that song on the way over there because I was having big feelings about who do I belong to.

But as that car rose up, the words that song were booming in my mind.

My dad had canceled coming to my show the night before.

The way he had the last time I came up there.

I was wrestling with feelings about that.

I was wrestling with feelings, acknowledging the fact that he quit showing up for me after my mom died.

Not financially.

My dad has always helped me out financially.

I would never say that he has.

I don't need it these days.

But when me and Rachel were younger and first married, he helped us out a number of times.

He helped me out when I had my accident and helped us replace our air conditioner.

But he quit showing up.

He always like problems that he could throw money at.

Those are easy problems.

But he quit showing up.

And I've been in the hospital twice since my mother died with major injuries.

And both neither time did he get in his car and drive down to Houston.

There are four hours to check on his firstborn son.

And I keep his dad didn't show up.

I don't know why I expect him to.

I don't know why I keep expecting him to be different.

I don't know why.

He's not giving me any reason to.

When I tell you I look for his face every time I'm on stage, though, I mean it.

I do.

But he's never going to be there.

And that's okay.

That's okay.

He's moved on with his life.

He gave up on my mom.

She died.

He gave up on everything about her.

He gave up on the record.

He gave up on all that.

He gave up on me.

And that's okay.

It really is.

It was okay to sit with that and acknowledge that.

I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but it's okay.

I realized that my mom was what made him show up.

Every family needs somebody that holds it together.

For mom there was papal clock.

Then there was mom.

And now what's left to my family is scattered to the winds because the glue

that held it all together is no longer there.

And folks that aren't like y'all, folks that don't know the story,

rush to tell me in the comments, this car is worthless.

It's not even worth loading on the trailer.

One dude said you should take that back home, give it a proper burial

when I showed some pictures of it on Facebook.

He didn't mean anything about it.

He don't know the story.

I know looking at that car is worthless.

I know it's bad.

I know.

I'm a car guy.

I know the mountain of work overhead of me.

I know there's nothing left, but I can't explain what it's work to me.

I can't explain others than to say I won't give up on it.

I'm not giving up on it.

To whom do you belong?

You belong to me.

To whom do I belong?

I belong to my family now.

I belong to Rachel and my children.

I belong to y'all.

But I don't belong to that place any longer.

And I was having big feelings about that.

And it's okay.

It was a good, it was a positive thing.

I needed to let go.

There comes a time in your life.

You got to let go of some things.

I needed to let go.

This trip was excellent for that.

I could feel the place letting me go.

Telling me it was okay.

There's still sadness.

I told y'all, there's sadness now that some of the anger's gone.

But the sadness was even the fears of my grandmother in her BS.

The sadness, it was being overwhelmed by joy at working with my cousins.

Feeling that feeling of wrecking your family again.

Three good old boys just getting a job done.

I love for me and my mama.

Once she was on the trailer and strapped down a piece of my soul felt settled.

There was a relief.

There was a big weight taking off my shoulders.

Everything's going to be all right.

Every little thing is going to be all right.

I sat on that trailer Rachel snapped a picture of me, a photo of me sitting on the back of that trailer of that car.

I was so happy.

There's an ancient tells.

There's a mythical bird called the phoenix.

Sure you've read about it.

I read about it when I was very young.

Something mythology books.

It's a bird what can rebuild itself from ashes.

It like flames out.

And then it can rebuild.

It's reborn from its own ashes.

And there's never been.

This is crazy.

I have a phoenix tattooed on my shoulder over here.

This is a terrible drawing I made when I was younger and doing a lot of drugs.

And then hired an equally drug-addled tattoo artist put on my shoulder.

There's no better metaphor for the wrecking yard than the phoenix.

Wrecking yard is a good place for a phoenix.

Hell there was a lot of them there.

I've seen so many things go there and then get rebirth from that place.

That little red Volkswagen hanging from that back hole rising in the sky ahead of me.

Well, while the little rays of sun dance and create little points of light

through the canopy of the impion trees.

With the smell of the petricore all around me invaded my senses.

Cool woods air blowing on me.

And that car rising up like some red phoenix from the ashes.

So I thought when I was growing, I thought I was brought into the world in a place

where nothing was really broken.

It just hadn't been fixed yet.

I just didn't realize growing up how broken we were.

Now I'm going to apologize because I have this.

The rest of my camera work is a little shaky.

I need to get me one of them.

There's this thing they make.

Some y'all probably know it is.

It's a gimbal or a gimbal.

The gimbal or a gimbal.

It's a thing and it holds your camera and keeps your camera steady while you ain't.

And I need to get me one of those things for filming stuff like this.

I don't do a lot of action filming so it hasn't been a need until now.

But it would be helpful for stuff like Hot Wheels events and shit like that I want to capture.

So the camera works a little shaky.

Jimmy, my little cousin, graciously invited me to Wonder Pop-All Shop

and take as many mementos as I'd like.

It was time to go back and pet-ball shop.

I spent hours in this place as a kid.

Walking back through those doors was like stepping into a time machine.

The familiarity of the ghosts and diesel, oil and steel and baiting me.

There's still physical echoes of me and pet-ball in this place.

My father.

My father framed the shop when they built it.

They cobbled together, recycled corrugated steel panels to cover it to sheath it in.

That's why they got so many holes in them.

You could be in this shop in the middle of the day with no lights on.

And it's just as bright as you want it to be.

I didn't use any lights filming this because it was so lit in there through all the little holes.

There's the hubcaps hanging from the rafters.

This is the thing I remember well from my childhood.

But Pat always kept linking and catlack and Buick hubcaps up there because he was a man of style and substance

and appreciated a good fine luxury car.

And Jimmy was like, you want those hubcaps and I said, well, I just want to take one.

I want to leave them because eventually him and his dad are going to clean that place out and make it their own spot.

And they've already started doing that.

And you might want them hubcaps to look at.

Now, do you know the story behind them?

So I just took one.

I climbed up on that little yellow four wheeler over there.

And I didn't take the Cadillac hubcaps because fuck Cadillac.

I took the 63 Lincoln Continental hubcaps.

Maybe because Cadillac gets every bit of my ass all from here to eternity.

Cadillac gets every bit of my ass.

They lost a love.

My old mini bike frame.

You'll see in one of the shots.

There's my old mini bike.

I had a little decumpsy engine on that mini bike.

And I rode that thing all over that pasture, all over that wrecking yard.

And now it lies rusting.

And Jimmy offered it to me.

I didn't take it.

And probably should have.

Probably should have.

I don't need that.

But it did tickle me to see it.

It tickled me because for a long time I didn't have an engine.

And I would just walk it around the wrecking yard.

And then I found a seat for it.

I put a seat on it.

And that made it a little better.

And then I would walk it up the top of the hill and coast it down the hill.

And then Pappall helped me put an engine on it.

One time.

And then boy, boy.

Boy, I was a diamond gem then.

I had that good decumpsy motor.

One of my toys from when I was a child.

And this toy has got a weird story behind it.

But I seen it.

And I knew it when I saw it.

But when Jimmy offered it to me.

So they had found it back off in the shop.

But when I picked it up and felt the weight.

It's a Tonka toy.

It was called a mighty T9.

It was called a mighty T9 Dozer.

And they made this toy in the 70s.

And they made a version of it in the 80s.

This is the 70s version.

It's just all steel.

It's very heavy.

And I don't know how many hours I spent holding on to this steel cage.

Been over at the waist as a young child.

Bulldoze and the wreck-and-yard driveway.

And bulldozes and crannies drive what?

I don't know.

There's a lot.

But the funny thing is that's right before mom has her wreck.

And then mom has her wreck.

And I go live with Aunt Linda and Uncle Paul.

And I don't remember ever playing with this toy again after that.

And what I suspect is maybe the day that she had her wreck.

This got left outside where I was playing.

And then my dad or my pap I'll see it and throw it off in the shop

to deal with it later time.

And it got forgotten.

And it's all a just, you know,

it's just coded and patented and rust.

And all these people like, you should restore it.

You should do this.

And I was like, no, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to fix it

just like we would fix a piece of equipment and the wrecking hard.

The way my people would do it.

I'm going to take me a little wire brush, such as this.

And I'm going to lightly go over this thing.

And I'm going to brush all this rust and dirt off.

And when I get it cleaned up as good as I possibly can,

that already looks cool.

Oh man, now you can see the Tonka sticker.

And when I get it cleaned up as good as I possibly can,

I'm going to rub it down with some bold linseed oil.

And then I'm going to, I'm going to silicone treat these treads,

because they still got a little give to them.

The rubber still feels good on them.

They're not brittle yet.

And I'm going to treat those treads and I'm going to grease the wheels

and get it back in functional condition.

But still old and ugly.

My people weren't paint job people.

It'll be rebuilt in the way things would be rebuilt in the wrecking yard.

And I think it's going to look really cool.

When I get done with it and it's going to make an excellent conversation piece

here for the studio.

The mighty T9 bulldoven.

Being back in that place,

the little steel plates there is where they would sit me.

When I would play with my little cars with my little bulldozer and stuff

and then Pepple and Dad would work on engines right outside that door.

That's where I was sitting.

I've heard me tell a story about Pepple blowing up that 352 engine

out of that Ford Galaxy out there.

The old Galaxy engine that the fuel pump diaphragm was leaking off

in the crankcase.

And Pepple blew the valve covers off that thing.

The big old bull on his ear.

That's where I was sitting while that occurred.

Four to five feet away.

That might be why I got here in damage.

Being back in that place one more time was needed.

And I can never thank Jimmy enough for it.

He will never probably...

There's never anything I can say or do for him that would possibly convey my gratitude.

Other than just tell y'all what a wonderful thing it was.

I'm glad he's the steward of Pepple Shop.

I think it's appropriate.

He's what that place needs now.

It needs new life.

That place needs new life.

That needs Jimmy and his kids.

That needs his family making that place something new with new memories and a new legacy.

My mom used to really get on to me all the time when I was younger

because I would talk all the time about, you know,

I got grown.

I was going to move back to Kilmore and I was going to turn the wrecking yard into a real, real wrecking yard.

He's going to make some big money and we were going to sell all the parts in East Texas

and by God I was going to be the wrecking yard king in East Texas.

That's what I was going to do.

My mom would get on to me.

She's like, why do you want that old junky place?

You need to have...

Make your own legacy.

Build your own shop.

Make your own land.

Make your own legacy.

And it occurred to me while I was there that I did exactly what she told me to do.

I went and found my own family and we have built our own legacy.

I have built my own legacy here.

This is my wrecking yard.

I'm not a dealer of parts.

I'm a dealer of hope.

That's all I sell.

I sell hope and repair.

I don't sell negativity.

I don't sell car parts but I do sell hope and repair.

I have created my own wrecking yard.

I have created my own legacy.

That place needs a new legacy.

And I'm so happy my little cousin Jimmy's one is going to give it to it.

I hope maybe one day to go there and just visit Jimmy

and just to see what he's done with the place.

He's good dude.

We made the hike I wanted to go up the hill.

I wanted to go see where the old Volkswagen bus sat where the giant wooden boat was.

And we made the hike back into the woods and up the hill where the bus I played in as a child sat.

Now mostly in that area you got short leaf and lob lolly pines.

There's two very specific type of pine trees.

Lob lolly pine trees tower a hundred foot in the air.

They're super super tall.

They got big old long pine needles.

Big old pine combs.

Pine needles average like eight to 12 inches in length.

Nearly a foot in length pine needles.

The short leaf pines.

Despite their name still put out a pine needle that's six to eight inches.

And when those needles fall together in the forest, they lock amongst each other

to create this sort of cushion on the ground between you and the soil.

And I would talk about playing in the wrecking yard as a kid.

And all day long you're walking on that bed of pine needles.

And the deeper you get into the interior of the canopy, the deeper those needles get.

Now those needles can be treacherous because they're hiding spot for snakes

and all kind of other nasty nerdy wells that like to get a hold of some young flesh.

But feeling my feet walking on that cushion again took me back.

It grounded me and took me back to something as a child that just washed over me.

Walking into the interior of the canopy of those trees.

Once you get into the canopy, the sun is no longer a concern.

As harsh as the sun may beat, it's being blocked out so strong

and at such a high altitude that it gives the air in the canopy time to cool.

And so the air is cooler in there.

I mean, you still a little humid, but the air is cooler in there.

The air is a little denser in there. The smell of pine is strong.

You smell the resin that seeps from the trees.

You can smell the decay of pine needles.

It's got an acidic tang to it, almost like a batter.

That feeling renewed.

That was my place.

This specifically going up this hill, this was my place.

I was the grand supreme king of everything on that hill.

To see remnants of Papal's treasures and plans still hiding in the pine needles.

You'll see at some point there's a 58 Ford custom 300 front-end.

And I'm actually thinking about reaching out to Jimmy and his dad

and just offering to buy that.

I mean, it doesn't have a lot of value.

They're not like high in demand.

But I thought that one would be cool to have for,

because eventually at some point we're going to move and we'll build a new studio.

And I thought that would be a cool place for guests to wait for they come in the studio.

Would have that old 58 Ford custom 300 mounted on the wall that front-end.

That's some kind of wall hanging to be kind of neat.

The old Apache that I said in, you'll see it at some point,

the old Apache orange and upside down, doors torn off of it.

Funny enough though, that old 58 Apache still has a good windshield in it,

even though it's upside down.

And I know those wraparound windshields got to be hard to find.

And I think Jimmy might should go take pictures at windshield and put it on eBay

because somebody would come out there and harvest that windshield, I believe.

I could be wrong about that, but old glass is hard to find.

It's a shame that truck got tore up total like it is.

It was all complete when I was a kid.

I don't know what happened to it or why somebody decided it was of no value.

It's none of my business.

The boat trailer once held the giant wooden boat is still there.

The boat long reclaimed by the earth.

We found another Volkswagen for paying up there.

I think it come off like a 63.

It's before McPherson struts.

And at the time, I didn't think it'd be useful to me,

but then I've learned a little more about what goes into building a Volkswagen road,

which is kind of what I think about doing a mom's car, like an open wheel type thing.

It's better to do it with the earlier front end and the old Torgent Bar front end.

So I may put one of those earlier generation.

It's a lot of work.

You got to cut everything out one of the bottom and weld it all back up in there.

But I mean, the state that this car is in,

I'll just flip the damn thing over and do it.

You know what I mean?

Who cares?

I don't know if I got the tricycle on video, but Rachel took this photo of it.

We noticed it while walking through the woods.

And it was wild to me.

This dumb tricycle is now three very big moments in my life.

This was my new tricycle when I was little.

I was very proud of it.

I already knew that new things were a scarcity in the Reckon Yard at that age.

But it was brand new, right from the Sears.

Red, beautiful, shiny chrome wheels.

And I would ride it up and down that Reckon Yard road and then our yard.

And I was constantly getting in trouble because I was leaving it out there in the road.

And one day I left it behind Uncle Rolando's truck.

Uncle Rolando was my aunt Janet's first husband.

Uncle Rolando's truck is the 1972 blue Ford F-100 that became my first truck.

That before that was Uncle Bobby on the truck.

And Uncle Rolando bought it from him.

Then I bought it from Aunt Janet.

I left my tricycle behind that truck and Uncle Rolando accidentally backed over it.

And that's why the wheel was all smashed and bent.

And Uncle Rolando felt terrible.

I cried and wailed and Uncle Rolando felt terrible because, you know,

as anybody would feel in that situation that wasn't his fault.

And he wanted to do something about it.

And my dad was like, don't know, you know, and Uncle Rolando left.

And I kept crying and wailing about it.

And my dad and his characteristic manner just started hollering at him.

Well, this is what you get for leaving your things out there.

I'm like five years old.

And he's just railing me for leaving my stuff out.

And this is why I told you to put it up and get what you get type thing.

And I know he's just trying to toughen me up and teach me something, I guess,

in his own way there.

But it's before my mom's wreck.

It's before I've ever been through any big sadness in my life.

And it's a big deal for a child.

I remember the feelings.

I remember crying over that tricycle.

I'd never getting another one of, you know, just a year or two later,

Papa drags me this dukes of hazard bicycle out of a junk cell.

Somewhere my dad fixes up.

And then that was my bike.

And then I moved the bikes.

But.

Some years later, when I was about 13 or so, and I was going through some stuff,

y'all know that.

I was out in the wrecking yard.

And I was out behind Papa Wiley's house in the work.

And I found that tricycle behind Papa Wiley's house where it had been thrown.

And it was, I was reading Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.

I was reading Heady's shit for a teen.

And it was the first time I realized that I was going to die one day.

The rust had taken it.

The rubber had dry-rotted.

I realized for the first time, I think it was the first time I understood

that everything in the wrecking yard had been new at some time.

It hadn't always been old.

It was the first time I realized one day I would be old.

My parts would fill.

It's scared to shit out of me.

Pure terror.

And I'm the one who threw it up on that hill off in the bushes,

so I wouldn't have to see it again.

And then Saturday, we walked across it on our journey.

And when I first set eyes upon it, I smiled.

Existential terror did not arrive.

I was there to say goodbye.

Not goodbye to physical things, but fears, anger, emotions, I can't name.

I was happy to see that we were enduring me and this three-wheeled piece of steel.

I felt okay letting go.

I took this little video for me, but I wanted to share it with you all.

Watching Ricky drive away with my mom's VW on that trailer was one of it.

It was a happiness that I can't begin to put in to just

the boundaries of the language.

The feeling in my chest is that little car made its way up that hill.

To begin its journey to my home.

To whom do you belong?

You belong to me.

Let's take a break.

There are still some testimonials.

And I got a package to unwrap that did not get stolen.

I'm super excited about it.

I like unwrap things as a surprise here when I don't know what they are if they're not hot wheels or whatever.

So those packages that we don't know what they are, my wife will usually pre-open them for me,

take the tape off stuff like that, make it easier here.

So she gets to see it before me, and she's really excited about this.

And I have been trying not to look at it because I don't want to see any clues to what it is,

but she is ridiculously excited about me opening this.

But let's do some testimonials first and some testimonials if you will.

These are comments from last week's, oh, I have these on my phone this week.

These are comments from last week's episode where, ooh, I got a little preachy on y'all about my beliefs and such.

And I felt like somebody had put me in a position that I didn't care for,

and I spoke to that some.

Where the energy's power should print.

Let's turn the sound off.

That is the wrong app.

Let's try again.

At our old buddy, Texas Cipian, you're going to be shocked when you one day go to chasing intruder away naked

with a hammer and find another naked man with a board in a nail.

Hopefully, Rachel doesn't read the comments.

It may give her an idea of how to finally get some things done around the house.

Yeah, I don't know why the hammer is my go-to when there's an intruder,

but they say you revert to the things you've mastered when it comes to fight or flight situations.

So maybe I spend enough time as a carpenter and I haven't spent enough time firing my guns

that I go to that hammer first every day, every time.

I've run a number of intruders real and possibly imagined off with a sturdy S-wing hammer.

It's got to be S-wing because it's the finest hammer they make.

You ought to take it, milwalk the crap, throw it away.

Also, at Texas Cipian, I got your snail mail letter.

I got your actual letter that you sent to the post office

and reading your words gave me a great deal of comfort and gratitude.

I see you, brother. Thank you.

I had a buddy, Cornbread Fred.

Awesome episode, like always. I'm not a day-wander,

but I started listening after my children's mother left

and needed something other than my normal sad country music.

You really helped me get through this hard time.

Thank you, J.W.

and I can't wait to see you in Louisville, Kentucky in October.

Hey, buddy. Thank you for that.

Cornbread. I'm gonna call you Cornbread Fred.

Since I'm gonna meet you, I'm looking forward to meet you too, buddy.

I'm looking forward to Louisville.

I've said it before a bunch of times.

Louisville is one of my favorite cities to go to in this great nation.

I love doing shows in Louisville.

I feel like my voice is at home there.

I love doing shows in Louisville.

I'm really looking forward to that show.

I gotta get off my ass and start marketing it.

But I love seeing my recordy art people at shows.

I can't wait to meet you.

I'm going to call you Cornbread Fred from here on,

because that's awesome.

I like that name.

Cornbread Fred.

At Bug Driver 74, J.W.

You may not realize it, but you are a part of the solution.

This is part of it, reminding us every week that people are people.

And many of us are aiming at similar goals.

Just maybe have different ideas how to get there.

I heard a thing that said it used to be sex cells before those cells

and figured out anger cells even better.

You're right.

We're being sold anger on both sides.

Excellent show.

Thank you for making a point to clarify your stance and feelings.

And I can't wait for more Volkswagen stuff.

I'll probably bother you with more thought out suggestions on it in the future.

You can give me all the suggestions you want.

Please do.

The plan right now in my head

is to build a interesting bulk rod out of it.

And part of that is because I already own a 5.3 LS engine

with fairly low miles that I come across

and some of my horse trading.

And I think it would make an excellent power plant.

I know it's a LS swap, but I'm a basic bitch.

So I'm okay with it.

So my plan I think with what's left of it

is to hammer out what I can

and try to just build myself an interesting little bulk rod out of that car.

So you give me all the suggestions you want.

And thank you for the words you said about what I had to say

about the things I was feeling last week.

I appreciate that.

I just feel I feel there's too many of us lipping in echo chambers right now.

And the tribalism is at an all-time high.

And I don't think any of those things are solutions to our problems.

I think unification.

I think if we can ever get these tribalized communities

to start talking to each other and realize we're all getting screwed

by God, then nothing will be able to stop us from turning things around.

I don't have an answer how to make that happen.

I just try to do my little part from my corner of the record.

But that is what I believe.

That was some boxes thing.

For her to get excited makes me think it's going to be something really,

really cool.

Don't even know who it's from yet.

Alright, it says other side up.

Be careful.

Do not remove this phone top before reading and closed unpacking instructions.

Otherwise, you may accidentally break your can't read with that word as it's all scratched out.

1957.

What the shit?

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Oh, there's a card.

Peter H.J. Mills.

Sir, this is just my way of thanking you for hours of laughter,

entertainment, thought, provoking commentaries.

I saw where this style was one of your favorite pickups.

Thank you, Pan and Pete.

Thank you, Pete.

This is...

Oh my God.

Oh my God, it's so heavy.

Look at this.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold.

This is the finest pickup ever designed by any automobile manufacturer

in my humble opinion.

This is the 1957 Dodge Swebside Pickup.

This is the Holy Grail.

This is probably the closest I will ever get to one.

It's not make a lot of them.

It's so heavy.

Oh my God, it's got like a real steering system.

Look, you see the exhaust and the tailgate opens.

You close this.

The doors of...

Oh!

Now look at that.

That's fine.

Oh, you can see low engine in there.

Look at that.

And I think the steering wheel works.

You can back that thing and drive it in wherever you need it.

Man, there used to be a series of books I read when I...

It was not a series of books, but a book I read when I was a kid.

It was about a mouse, a pet mouse, and a motorcycle, a toy motorcycle.

And if the mouse made the sounds, he could drive the motorcycle.

Boy, I wish I had one of them mice right now.

But boy, I'd have him drive the shit out of this 1957 Dodge Swebside Pickup.

That is...

This is the best in my eyes.

This is where form and function have collided the best they ever have

to create true beauty.

Yeah, look at that front end.

Look at that not gorgeous two-tone one.

Let's put you right over here.

We'll pull it out.

Oh yeah, we'll turn the wheels.

There we go.

Back in.

Yeah, look at that.

We'll leave the door cracked a little bit like you...

We'll pop the hood because it's the Dodge.

And now look how real that looks.

That's fantastic.

Thank you so much Pete.

That's a beautiful gift.

Thank you.

All right, let's get back into it.

You know, when I was younger, I saw another movie.

And I can't remember what it's called.

I think maybe it's called Across the Wire or the Escape or something of that nature.

But the basic storyline that I remember is it's two young people trying to escape East Berlin.

And they're trying to get across the roadblock.

There's a bridge going to West Berlin and there's a roadblock and they're trying to get to West Berlin.

I don't remember what the rest of the movie's about.

I just know they're trying to escape East Berlin.

And him and her in a Volkswagen Beetle and he's driving and they decide

that no holds barred, they're just going to try to drive through the roadblock.

And the German guards or maybe the Soviet guards have a...

You know, the barbed wire and the razor wire and all that stuff.

And he floors this little Volkswagen and he runs through that barbed wire.

As the car catches the barbed wire, the little Volkswagen spins sideways and rolls several times in the bridge.

But they make it to freedom.

They make it away from the oppression.

They get across that line to safety.

And he goes to touch his girlfriend's face or the gal's face.

I don't know if she's girlfriend and she's bleeding and she's died from the impacts of the wreck.

That car didn't have a quarter of the damage that my mother's car had.

I think that girl might have just been a low constitution.

That car wasn't near.

It broke up as my mama's car.

I haven't spoken much about letting go.

Not because it isn't needed, not because it hasn't haunted me like a loose window in the night.

But because it's never been a gift of mine.

And yet last week in the company of cousins and the self-familiarity of the wrecking yard

with its rust and weeds and shadows of what once ran,

I found myself letting go more than I thought possible.

I let go of things I can't fix.

Things I have carried until my hands are callous and useless.

And I knew they had known all along that they belonged not me but out there.

Amongst the iron bones and the twisted frames of that patch aligned.

That's what the wrecking yard is for.

A home for what once was alive and ain't anymore.

A place where beauty hides under ruin if you know how to square that.

And so I traveled back to Houston, the load lighter, though the road was the same.

Though the miles had not changed, though only I was different.

I was emptied out, spent in a way that took rest to cure.

I didn't make much content this week.

I didn't shape words in the laughter.

I just turned it all over in my chest.

Like a socket wrench on a nut that's already tight.

Or you just be sure one more time to fill the resistance again.

I left the things there I could not fix.

And there they will remain.

Until time itself bends to me or I bend to time.

Until fixing no longer matters.

Until the rust either eats them whole or I find them again with new hands.

But I did not leave empty.

I carried away the love I found there.

I stuffed it into the hollows where the emptiness has lived too long.

And though it doesn't fill the space exactly, the edges do not meet.

I found the shape of it enough to make me feel whole again.

My mother's car is ruined.

A body broken in ways that no man would pay the mend.

But it'll live again with me.

Every den I beat out will feel like a confession whispered.

And forgiveness granted, metal ringing against hammer like church bell.

Every crease piece of steel.

A reminder that value is not written in blue books.

It's written in blood and memory in hands that refuse to let go.

People that refuse to give up.

No one else would want it.

Literally no one else wants it.

But to me, it is beyond price.

And maybe that is what love always is.

Worthless to the world, priceless to the one who holds it.

I reckon you too have things that need let and go.

The quiet enemies, the threads that tug at your tapestry when you aren't watching.

Just waiting for some still moment to unravel you.

Sometimes are cruel.

More often, they're indifferent.

It's indifference that cuts the deepest.

They leave scars at thicken and itch like an old wound you scratch until you bleed again.

My here's the truth, I've stumbled on when you replace indifference with love.

When you trade the silence for the remaining voices of those who hold you dear,

letting go does not feel like loss anymore.

It felt like freedom.

You have love here from all of us.

And if you have something too broken to carry, lay it down here.

This yard can hold it.

It is held worse.

The regular is not just a grave.

It's a waiting room for resurrection.

And sometimes in fortune bend your way, you will come back to what you left behind and find it changed.

Find it glowing with life again.

Find a phoenix rising from under the pine canopy, shaking off the dust, dragging itself back to your daylight.

I am rooting for you.

I mean that in the marrow deep way of a man who is carried too much, I'm rooting for you.

If you need to let go of something tonight, set it down.

Turn your back on it.

Walk away long enough to find yourself hold again.

I'm J.W., and I love you.

I could have another little film for you guys here at the end.

As we were driving away from the wrecking yard and driving up the little road that I would walk to school at the Leverish Chapel School.

And I had Rachel film this video from the dash of the car as we drove up.

And I drove into the school park a lot.

I wanted to see it.

It would be a place where you can see it looks like a tunnel that goes under the road.

And that's exactly what that was when I was a child.

That was a tunnel that went under the road.

And on the other side there was a little store where we would go and get snacks and candy bars and such.

In the shadows of field yard,

a rip-off waits and quiet still.

Memories of a driving farm that goes off we tied them through.

From rust and dreams I bring you back.

Restore the light, fire to the macrass.

Through the rust and fading pain.

You see a laughter in the sun.

You tend to story the profile.

In my heart a journey's just begun.

When every brush I breathe the life,

Polish dreams from where they passed.

Together we'll repair the strife as echoes of our love hold fast.

With every turn of the wheel of field her near.

With both of us air it well to guide me clear.

Through gravel roads and the loftwork days.

In the gentle home her love says a place.

In quiet home of summer nights.

Alison, closer lofters your frame.

You travel the engines, sparks new sights.

As I bring her back to life again.

Through the echoes of the winding roads.

With every mileer spurts things.

Restorations more than just a cut.

Tealing hearts and remembering.

And each rust it built a story untold.

But summer drives and dreams made bold.

And on the wheel the wind in our hair.

Through the echoes of time I still feel her there.

"The Phoenix" |S:03E.66

Mazda 3

Jeep Cherokee

Dodge Charger

Type Super Beetle

Volkswagen Beetle

Volkswagen Bus

Ford Galaxy

Ford F100

About this episode

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