WHO ARE THEY…. Bryan Williams

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Where are they? [00:00:04] Speaker B: They're probably upstairs. They never answer the door. Oh, wait, it's Monday night. They're on the second floor. [00:00:25] Speaker A: Hey, guys. Welcome back to second floor sessions. We're on the road. Join us for the ride. It's gonna be a blast. Changing some things up. We've got Brian with us today. He's someone I know. [00:00:38] Speaker C: I'm super excited to meet Brian. It's the first time our guest. [00:00:43] Speaker B: I don't know him. [00:00:43] Speaker C: I have no idea who he is. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:45] Speaker C: But we're fixing to meet him. [00:00:46] Speaker A: That was my first one. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:48] Speaker A: I didn't know Sonia, so. Yeah, worked out good. But Brian, somebody that I had met through baseball, Our kids play. We've got to know each other over the last few years. So we reached out to him for him to be a guest on the show, and we're gonna let him tell his story of who is Briano? Take it away. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Well, it all start from the beginning, [00:01:14] Speaker A: because Brian's unlike us. He's not from here. [00:01:19] Speaker B: I am a transplant. Yeah. Yeah. [00:01:21] Speaker A: So we'll start from the beginning. [00:01:22] Speaker B: So. Well, it started on a cold winter night in the hills of North Carolina. Wow. Yes. Yes. [00:01:30] Speaker C: I love story time. [00:01:32] Speaker B: No, I was actually. All my family's from North Carolina. I was born in Fort Bragg. My dad was military, so I moved around. I've been a transplant my whole life, everywhere I've ever been. So I was born in North Carolina, raised there for about three, four years. Then we actually moved to Hawaii, and I lived there for six years. [00:01:56] Speaker A: And then when I didn't know all this. I love it. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And then so then after that, I was probably, I don't know, 11, 12 years old. We went from Hawaii, moved to Missouri, and then I spent about 17, 18 years of my life in Missouri. And that's where I call home because that's what I used to more than anything. Yeah. So my dad retired out of Missouri, then they moved back to North Carolina, and me and my wife got married, and we said, hey, let's move. And Tennessee puts us in between North Carolina and Missouri. So that's what we decided to do. And we almost didn't even move here because we were looking at houses. I lived in a hotel for 91 days by myself. My wife had my oldest boy, and then she had just had our second one. He was two weeks old. Whenever I moved up here and started working by myself. And so she was back home for 90 days by herself with two kids. And then. [00:02:56] Speaker C: So did you. Did you. The 90 days was that with work or was that with just. I mean. [00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so my work paid for, like, the first 30 days, and then after that, I had to pay the rest of them by myself because I couldn't find a house. So I went all the way from Riceville to East Knoxville looking at homes and lost so many deals on them and just could never get one. And so then there was one that popped up in Loudon, and I told my boss and I told my realtor, and I was like, hey, if I lose this one, God's telling me that we don't need to be here. [00:03:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm going back. I'm going back home. [00:03:29] Speaker B: And it. We locked in on that one. Okay. Within, like, two days. Oh, so then now, was that during, [00:03:38] Speaker A: like, the COVID times when it was, like, hard to buy a home around Right before. [00:03:42] Speaker B: Right before. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Was it? So apparently it was still hard then. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was 2019. Okay, 2018. 2019, something like that. I've been here seven years, I think, almost. Okay, yeah, a little over seven years. Something like that. So. But yeah, so, I mean, kind of backpedaling. So the story of me. So in Hawaii, I went to elementary school there. The schools are completely different out there. It's all, like. All outdoor schools. Yeah. So, like, we just had a big gate around the school, and you walk through the gate and you walk straight to your classroom. And they just had doors on the outside of everything. And then all of it was just all of our walkways and hallways, it was just a covered roof over top of us. And then, like, even our auditorium and stuff like that, we didn't have anything inside. We did everything outside. Outdoor stage, the whole nine yards. And then also, too, our gym slash cafeteria was actually the hospital for Pearl Harbor. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Really? [00:04:42] Speaker C: Oh, Joe. [00:04:43] Speaker B: They had all kinds of ghost stories about that place. Right. But dang. But yeah. So I lived on the beach for a long time whenever I was a kid. [00:04:52] Speaker C: What age were you then? [00:04:54] Speaker B: I would say anywhere from three to about 12. So, like, I can remember some of the stuff, you know, start surfing. I did, actually. Yeah. I served snorkel dove. Like, I learned how to swim in the ocean when I was three years old. Me and my dad would go out there. He was a big diver, and so he would just say, hey, Chuck me out there. Swim back to me. We're in 50 foot of water there. I am just pedaling. But. But yeah, I mean, that's all I knew for a long time. And then when I moved to Missouri, complete culture shock. I mean. Oh, I Bet when I lived where I lived in Missouri, it was pretty much just cattle ranchers and cowboys and that's it. No, not really any much crop farming and stuff because where we were at, we always said that we grew rocks. Like we had four rock quarries in the same county that we lived in. Wow. And not even counting these two, they were already retired, tired out, so they just used them as big swimming holes. But yeah, but we were pretty much two hours away from everything, middle of nowhere. And I just started as I was getting older and playing baseball and stuff with a bunch of friends. I've met farmers and ranchers and just worked for them. And then we bought our own place. And then I was in 4h FFA showed cattle, livestock, hogs, showed a little bit of horses. I wasn't nothing super crazy like some of those guys out there, but I definitely dabbled in it a little bit. We roped a little bit. Not much. Me and my wife, we used to go sorting a lot and then we'd trail ride almost every weekend. [00:06:31] Speaker C: Sorting, what is that? [00:06:33] Speaker B: So sorting is you got two horses and you got a pin of calves that's like from. They're numbered 1, 2, 3, all the way up to like say 8. And then. So you go in there, it's a timed event. It's you and your partner, and as soon as you cross the gate, they'll name out a number. So like, they'll say number five. So then you've got to take that number five to this back pin, but it has to be in numerical order. So you go 5, 6, 7, 8, then back to 1, 2, 3, 4. And whenever they're all clicked in, in that order, then it stops the time. And then you can win money and stuff like that. Yeah. [00:07:08] Speaker C: Do we have anything like it up here? [00:07:11] Speaker A: Not like that. We're not. We're not. [00:07:13] Speaker C: We have rodeos, but that's like only thing I'd even. [00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah, they use cutting horses for that, right? [00:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of them were like. For me, I mean, I was broke back in them days, so I just used my old quarter horses and stuff. Like we just, we would try to make them do whatever we could make them do, you know, we'd get away with it. [00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah, them horses are. They're so they call them their neck reigned. So if the rain touches their neck, you don't have to pull on their bits. Like, you know, you say you sit there on that horse's back and you, you neck rein them. You just move your hands one way or another and that Horse jumps. [00:07:43] Speaker C: They're acting like. I know what they're talking about. Really have. [00:07:45] Speaker A: I'm trying to, I'm trying to explain. [00:07:47] Speaker C: I know, but I, I don't know anything about horses or anything. [00:07:50] Speaker B: That leg pressure too, you know, you can use that on your leg pressure. But, but yeah, like probably the most of the stuff that I was really into was like showing livestock. So I'd go buy calves and stuff. I'd halter break them to teach them how to lead behind me, basically like a dog. I'd set them up, show them, we'd shave them, clean them, groom them, all that kind of stuff. And we'd take them to our county fairs. And then. Same thing with hogs. Like we would feed them hogs out, get them to a certain weight. We'd win prizes by rate of gain. Like I had a hog one year, I think it rated gain was like 3.48 pounds a day is what he gained. [00:08:28] Speaker C: Almost four pound a day. [00:08:29] Speaker A: That's a fattening hog right there. [00:08:30] Speaker B: Which I mean. And I mean you definitely, you do. It ain't just like out here. Like a lot of guys, they'll just, you know, feed slop or whatever. Like we're, we're feeding good high dollar protein feed. You know what I'm saying? And then, and then after every county fair, we would sell them. And so the local community and the businesses would come in and buy those animals from us and basically be writing us checks. [00:08:54] Speaker A: And they'd be slaughtering them. [00:08:55] Speaker B: And they would slaughter them or they would donate them back and then somebody else would buy them and then they would slaughter them. Yeah. So like we have a bank back [00:09:02] Speaker A: home and 4H makes the money off that. Is that right? [00:09:05] Speaker B: No, no, it's ours. [00:09:06] Speaker A: It's yours. [00:09:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's mine to keep. [00:09:08] Speaker A: I would have a payback for everything you put into it. All year. [00:09:11] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:09:11] Speaker C: I would have a hard time on something like that. Once you rate, you know, you do all the things with it and then you got to get rid of it. You know, it's fixing get eight, which. I know, that's how it works. [00:09:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:18] Speaker A: But you're aggravated with that stupid thing as much as you went through it. [00:09:21] Speaker B: I guarantee number one rule is never name an animal. Yeah. If you plan to eat it, you better not name it. Yeah, yeah. [00:09:29] Speaker A: Call it cow. [00:09:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, T bone or something, you know, because nine times out of 10, if you name it. Yeah. You ain't gonna kill. [00:09:36] Speaker C: You're done. [00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but yeah, so we did that a lot and then, and then I kind of, that's kind of how I got dabbled into auctioneering a little bit. I used to do a little auctioneering back then. I'm not a professional, I'm not licensed or anything, but I used to, I would do that at the county fairs and stuff like that. So I'd sell the kids as animals and I was a kid myself, you know. And then I would do benefit auctions and stuff like that. And that was all for raising our 4H and FFA. Like our FFA we used to do what they call a labor auction. So like it would be like you and a buddy would link up and say hey, we could do this, this and this. We're going to sell either two hours, four hours or six hours of our time and labor. And then we'd get up on stage, you'd have the auctioneer there. We'd make like posters and stuff of what we could do and how we could do this or that. And the farmers and ranchers back then, they would buy us. First we would sell ourselves and then we would go and work on their farms for that amount of time. Yeah. And that's how we would raise money for our FFA trips and stuff like that. [00:10:39] Speaker A: So dang different world in that area. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we worked in sale barns and stuff. You know. I went to, went to Rolla High school and we've got a big votech school. So like I was 17 and we built a 24 foot gooseneck from the ground up and we made it to where it was. You could have it a 24 foot flat deck or you could drop the dovetail down to four feet and you can bring it down with a jack, put a pin in it. And then it have about two foot ramps. But we started out with four, four pieces of I beam on the floor. Welded it from there all the way up to the top. Did the electrical, did everything. We put it in the state, state fair competition. I think we got like seventh or eighth out of it. And we, we build bell unrollers, bale feeders. I've. I've built me some creep feeders for horses and cattle myself. Continuous fence panels, log splitters, just anything you could think of. We're making it cool and, and I mean we're. That's an experience right there, you know, good exposure. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:46] Speaker B: You know, and so like we'd have tractor days, we'd drive our tractors to school. And when I was a senior we used to, we went and got a couple of chickens and stuff. And we turned them loose out in school one time. And we can't do that stuff now. But you know, back then it wasn't too bad. Everybody had big trucks and whatnot. You know, we'd show up to school, horses and cattle in the stock trailers with us and stuff for meetings or whatever, and we'd just turn around and drive off and. But I mean, that's just what we did. And I mean, we lived on dirt roads, you know, like where we live. We could drive. We'd take our four wheeler side by sides and we'd go ride. And we could ride probably 200 miles. And the only time that we ever hit a paved road was to cross the state highway. Everything else was just straight dirt, gravel. Wow. [00:12:33] Speaker C: So assuming it's all flat, is it flat out there? [00:12:36] Speaker B: For the most part. Like, it reminds me a lot of this area here. [00:12:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:39] Speaker B: You know, like where I'm from, it's just north of the Ozarks. So I'm. I'm in a little town they call Rolla. And the reason why I say little is because, like it may be 19,000 or 20,000 population, but when I lived there, there wasn't anything there. Like we had a JC Pennies and Walmart. That's it. You wanted to go to St. Louis or Springfield. That's an hour and a half each way. Yeah, one way. You know, like I worked at a place in Washington, Missouri, and it was like from my driveway to their driveway, it was 74 miles. And I drove that twice a day for six days a week. [00:13:18] Speaker A: There's your long haul. [00:13:19] Speaker C: I thought mine was bad at 42 or one way. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah, there's your long haul. [00:13:25] Speaker B: But I mean, when you get on them interstates out there, I mean it's straight shot, right? You know what I mean? Like you're on there, you're going straight now. [00:13:30] Speaker A: What's the speed limit out there? [00:13:32] Speaker B: 70. 70, 70. I mean, whatever you can get away with, you know, I've had a few of those, but. But yeah, when I was, you know, I did a lot of that 4H FFA, played a lot of sports. When I was a freshman, I lettered as a. For wrestling. Then my sophomore year I started, started on varsity my sophomore year, went through my junior year, blew my knee out, had to get surgery, couldn't play my senior year. So then that kind of changed a bunch of plans for me. I was kind of hoping or trying anyways to, you know, go play some type of school ball or maybe go and in for wrestling or something like that, but even too, like our colleges back there, they have some here in Tennessee too. But like we had rodeo teams also. So like I had some kids that I went to school with that they went and got a college education and they were on a rodeo team. So they went out to like Kansas, Colorado, Northern Missouri, Illinois, stuff like that. [00:14:30] Speaker C: I didn't know that was a thing. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Oh yeah, Wyoming. [00:14:33] Speaker A: We gotta go to Wyoming. [00:14:34] Speaker B: I've not been, I've not been. Now my horseshoer though. My horseshoer, he, he rode in PRCA and he wrote at Cheyenne. Cheyenne Frontier Days out there. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:43] Speaker B: In Wyoming he was a saddle bronc rider. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And he's the dad of them all. [00:14:46] Speaker B: Oh, that's it, man. That's it. Eight seconds. It's in the car now. [00:14:50] Speaker C: So now in your, in your school time there, what was your favorite sport? What did you like? I mean, what'd you like? [00:14:58] Speaker B: My, my two main sports was football and wrestling. Okay. So I did play baseball and I enjoyed baseball like when I was 12 years old. I've got a state championship when I was 12 years old, you know, Holy cow, that's crazy. You know, but, but Yeah, I was 12. We played a lot, you know, like we played 14 new tournaments and we're 12 and 11 and we won a state championship down in Branson. But, but yeah, so when I started going into high school, I was focusing on football and wrestling. So like I was working out twice a day. I ran six miles, three days a week. We had two a days. We had off season training, we had spring training. Oh yeah, like we, we just, it never stopped. [00:15:40] Speaker A: And conditioning all the time. [00:15:42] Speaker C: Yeah, something all the time. Oh yeah, absolutely. [00:15:44] Speaker B: And the size of those guys, like I remember when I was a freshman, believe it or not, I was shorter than I am now. And, but main, like everybody on our O line was like 6 foot or taller and every one of them was like £300 plus. Like they had some big kids and I'm just getting trucked every day. [00:16:03] Speaker A: They grew up working on the farms. [00:16:05] Speaker C: Yeah, that O line, that O line's like a, every time you get down on there, it's, it's a fight every single snap. [00:16:12] Speaker B: We used to make goats because the only one that was smaller than that, he was like 5, 10. He was our center. And I was like, well, the only reason why he's up there is because he's the only one that been down to grab the ball. You know, they just squat down, put their fingers on there. It's just like hitting a brick wall. Like they're big dudes, man. We had a lot of kids that went and played and, you know, played for Mizzou. A lot of D1 colleges, a lot of D2 schools. But like, wrestling in the Midwest is huge. So like now they didn't have this back then. Like, we had to wrestle girls back then. They didn't have a. They didn't have a separate team. Well, they do now. So, like our high school has a girls wrestling team and a boys wrestling team, and now they have their own states and stuff. But we had like kids club wrestling and stuff. There'd be 500 kids, man. We'd be gone every weekend to a tournament. You have to weigh in on a Friday night, and then you'd be done by Sunday wrestling, you know, so. But yeah, cutting weight and stuff like that, that's crazy. I've had to do that a couple of times. But it's. I mean, it was fun, you know, it taught discipline, things like that, you know, and teamwork and things like that. But I think where I got most of my stuff was from, you know, the 4H and FFA. It taught me responsibilities and things like that because we had a. We had a local bank back home and I think they'll still do it now, but they used to call it cash recruiters. And so they would let us as keep kids come in and get a loan for animals so we could show them. So like I would say, hey, here's my plan. You know, I need a thousand dollar loan back then, you know, calves, you can buy them calves for about four or 500 bucks. And so you're like, hey, I need four or 500 bucks. I think I'll have about, you know, $600 in feed. I need. I need a loan for a thousand bucks. My mom and dad would co sign on it and then it would help us build up our credit as we got older. And then they would give us like 30 days to pay the loan back after the fair. [00:18:06] Speaker C: It's like a. That's like another life. It sounds like it is like a new day. [00:18:11] Speaker A: It's completely different. [00:18:12] Speaker B: You're right. [00:18:12] Speaker A: It is another life. [00:18:13] Speaker C: Different life. [00:18:14] Speaker A: So let's. Let's rewind. [00:18:16] Speaker B: All right, let's do it. [00:18:17] Speaker A: And let's go back. Let's go. Let's go to Hawaii. [00:18:25] Speaker B: All right. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Because you're really too young in North Carolina to really get there. So where was your dad stationed at in North Carolina? [00:18:31] Speaker B: So my dad was stationed at Schofield Barracks. [00:18:34] Speaker A: And what branch? [00:18:35] Speaker B: Army. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I'm I. I've got a cousin who's in the army, and he is. He was in. He's in South Carolina right now, I think. But he was in Hawaii too, for a little while. So he was in. He was where at North Carolina. [00:18:53] Speaker B: North Carolina was Fort Bragg. So he started out. He started out in the airborne. So my dad used to be jumper or paratrooper, however you want to look at that. But yeah, so he started out there and then he went into like the chemical branch of it. And so he did a lot of that stuff, gases, things like that, with the, with the Army. And then. So then when we went to Hawaii, he was stationed at Fort Brett or Schofield Barracks. And so that's on Oahu, which is like the main. Yeah, that's the main island. Not the biggest, but the main island. And. And then. So we lived just on the outskirts of Schofield Barracks. I went to Wheeler. Wheeler Elementary School or something like that. And they were, of course, they were warriors and things. And there's a lot of cool history about Hawaii. Like, I always tell people to go and check it out because, like, you learn a lot of, like, the mountains and stuff like that. Believe it or not, there's a lot of farming in Hawaii too. One of the largest ranches in the United States is on the Big island of Hawaii. So they've got tons of cowboys out there. [00:20:01] Speaker A: Wow. [00:20:01] Speaker B: And I actually, I was listening to a podcast because that's what I do. I drive a lot, so I listen to podcasts. And there was a guy that had down in Texas and he had some ranchers on his podcast that was from Hawaii, but they moved to Texas and he was telling a lot of stories, stories about that, and it was pretty cool. But. But yeah, so, I mean, you guys [00:20:21] Speaker C: never would have guessed that either. [00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:23] Speaker C: All I can think is beaches and just, you know, laid back, Laid back environment, nothing crazy like that. [00:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:20:32] Speaker A: So you're. [00:20:33] Speaker B: You're. [00:20:33] Speaker A: Or he's in Hawaii and you, you lived there, you said, for about six, [00:20:40] Speaker B: seven years, something like that. [00:20:41] Speaker A: Six, seven years. What. What kind of things did you get into in Hawaii there in that time frame? Or was it. Or because dad was on the military base or y' all lived on the outside of the military base. Was it more strict and you didn't get to really do a whole lot? [00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, it wasn't nothing like that back then. You know, of course, it was like the late 90s or mid-90s if you want to call it that, but my parents pretty much it was like, hey, you come home when the street lights come on, you know, so. So, like, if I wasn't in school, we were just riding bikes or skateboarding or, you know, rollerblading and stuff like that and hanging out, playing football, climbing trees. Like, we had a huge macadamia nut tree in the little section that we were living in, and a big avocado tree, too. So I used to climb up that sucker and just eat on macadamia nuts all day long, you know. And then they'd be like, hey, come on, come on. They'd be screaming. You could hear him miles away. Or, you know, back then, Domino's, you know, they had that big slice of pizza for like, five bucks or whatever. So me and my brother, we'd climb on our bikes and they'd give us a little bit of money when they'd go work, and we'd just drive down to Domino's and we'd share a big old slice of pizza and we drive by. [00:21:54] Speaker C: Them was the days, though. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:56] Speaker C: I wouldn't dare let my kids out now. [00:21:58] Speaker B: Heck no. Anywhere. [00:22:00] Speaker C: We used to burn up last night. I mean, tear it down. [00:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:04] Speaker C: And I could not imagine letting my kids ride their bike, not run their bikes down, down the sidewalks and stuff. [00:22:11] Speaker A: You get hit by a car nowadays, man. There's too many of them on the road. [00:22:14] Speaker B: I used to. I used to get my butt whooped because I'd always be coming in late, you know, because, like, being in the military, I was always hanging out with older kids, you know. Like, that's part of some of the things. Like, I. I have a hard time getting along with people my own age sometimes times, because it's like, man, like, y' all are just kind of, like, immature, a little bit childish. [00:22:34] Speaker C: I'm sorry, but you're kind of childish. [00:22:36] Speaker B: Yeah, like. Like, I joke around and stuff and make jokes about it, but, like, when it really comes down to the nuts and bolts, like, man, y' all are just immature type. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Y' all don't even know what's going on. [00:22:44] Speaker B: Right. You know what I mean? [00:22:46] Speaker C: And so, yeah, I mean. Well, then for you. I mean, you. You kind of. You're kind of a strict. I mean, your dad's military, so, I mean, you. You probably, yeah, pretty well disciplined. Like, others aren't, you know. [00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah, he didn't play, nor did my grandma or anybody else, for that matter. Like, they was pretty rough on us, you know, But. But, yeah, so we do that. And then, of course, we paintball like crazy, and we'd go to the beach. Every weekend we'd camp on the beach. [00:23:12] Speaker A: You know, I'd like to go to Hawaii just to see Pearl Harbor. I mean Memorial and everything. [00:23:18] Speaker B: Dude, I've been there. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Was it the Arizona that sunk there? Is that right? [00:23:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I've actually, they've got a model ship there and I've been on it a bunch of times. Yeah. And it's cool. Like I've been on it and like the, I think it was the USS Missouri or something like that or Mighty Mississippi or something. I can't remember what the ship was. There's two or three different ones there and man, we climbed all over those things. I've been to Pearl harbor like 50 times when I was younger. [00:23:44] Speaker C: That's awesome. [00:23:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And still like, still today, yet you go over there and see that ship and it's still the oil still coming up out of that, out of that ship. You know, it's crazy. Absolutely nuts. But yeah, we, we did that a lot. Surfed and like boogie boarded and stuff. Like I was, you know, seven, eight years old and I was surfing 10, 15 foot waves, 20 foot waves, you know, just getting the crap beat out of me. Hitting that, just coming up, faces all bloodied up and I just get cleaned up and go back at it again. [00:24:16] Speaker A: Just bury in the sands over those. [00:24:19] Speaker B: Sometimes if you're a little too shallow. Yeah. You know, but, but yeah, we used to just. We'd grab our surfboards or whatever. My dad would go dive and then we'd show up later and we'd see him way out there, you know, he's about 100, 150 yards off the shore. We just get our stuff, we just go paddling out there. And he'd say, here, put this mask on. And I'd go down there with them and we're just seeing all kinds of stuff and shells and. But it's, it's pretty rough over there. I mean you get. If you're not a local, it can, it can get pretty tough. [00:24:50] Speaker A: Did they view you? Yeah, that's what I've always heard. Did they view you guys as local? [00:24:54] Speaker B: Well, not, not at first. Yeah. But there for a while, like we was there for, I don't know, maybe two, three years. And my dad always talks about it now is like, he's like, we. I can't remember what they call it, but basically we got like local discounts at shops and things like that because then they looked at us as a local then, but there for a while. No. And like when my dad would go dive at certain beaches. You know, they, it sounds bad, but they would find, you know, there'd be homeless people all over the place. And so like there'd be a guy there at the beach and he's like, hey man, when you guys go dive over there, you know, take a 12 pack of beer and a. About three or four packs of cigarettes and that dude's gonna watch your cars and stuff for you. That way nobody gets in them. And so he'd have that one guy, he'd show up with some beer and a carton of cigarettes or whatever. [00:25:37] Speaker C: And so when you say, when you say it was rough, like, what, what? [00:25:41] Speaker A: They don't treat tourists. [00:25:42] Speaker B: That's what I was gonna say. [00:25:43] Speaker C: So, so even though they're a part of the U.S. yeah. [00:25:48] Speaker A: But they're still, I think, what is it, Samoan? [00:25:52] Speaker B: Samoans? Samoans, yeah, Samoans and like Polynesian. [00:25:56] Speaker C: Never would have thought that. So they don't. Like, if we go, if we go back over there as today, like, they're still going to be a little. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:03] Speaker C: Edgy on us. [00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don't think they like tourists at [00:26:05] Speaker B: your, at your resorts and stuff, you'll be all right. But like, when you start going out and like actually exploring those towns and when you start getting out into these like, neighborhoods and stuff, like, people look at you, you know, and like, even, even too, like, never would have thought that. [00:26:21] Speaker C: Yeah, never would have thought that. [00:26:22] Speaker B: Not life, man. Like, I hate to say it, but it's like hookers, homeless dudes, drug dealers out there getting their money, right? And like we, we didn't hardly ever go anywhere after dark. [00:26:35] Speaker C: So when them street lights come on, [00:26:36] Speaker B: you better be home, huh? Like that's, that's, that's no joke, okay? Especially like downtown, like when you go to Waikiki, that's the big, that's the big area where everybody goes. Waikiki, well, they call it a concrete jungle, cuz that's all it is, is just skyscrapers as high as you could go. I mean, roads are about that big and. But like, if you want to see some real pretty stuff, you go on like the north side of the island or the, the back side of it, but like Oahu. There you could, you could drive that whole island in about an hour and you'd be back in the same spot you started in. Like you drive around that whole thing in about an hour. But like, North Shore is really cool place to go and see. That's where they do all the stuff. Surf competitions, huge waves, out through there, and then. Then they've got the mountains, waterfalls. They had, like, Stairway to Heaven and stuff like that, which. It was just a stairway that could take you all the way up above the clouds. And you're. [00:27:30] Speaker A: So you're on a mountain? [00:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tons of mountains out there. I mean, that's all it is. Volcanoes, mountains and things. But. But yeah, so we. We did a lot of that. A lot of. [00:27:40] Speaker C: I did not know that about Hawaii, though, so. [00:27:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:42] Speaker C: Just figured it'd be accepted. Just like, one thing. [00:27:45] Speaker A: I've heard that before. You know, I haven't really talked to my cousin much about it, but when he lived over there. But. So you. So you left Hawaii? Anything crazy happen in Hawaii? [00:27:57] Speaker B: Not. Not really. Not really to us. I remember we. There was a really bad car wreck one time. We were all sleeping, and this dude, I guess he. He was in an El Camino at all things. El Camino. And he's driving. Driving home drunk or something, and, I mean, just flat getting it down the road. And all you heard was boom. And hit this telephone pole and broke the telephone pole, and it laid on top of him, and pretty sure it killed the guy. And, like, I remember I was, like, 2, 3 years old. Woke up, and I'm like, what the crap? Like, scared. Scared me to death. My mom and dad's running outside. [00:28:34] Speaker A: This is in Hawaii. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:35] Speaker A: Well, you'd have been older than that, wouldn't you? [00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm four, something like that. [00:28:39] Speaker A: So right after you got there? [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. You can remember it like, it was like a year or so. And of course, you know, everybody talks about these stories, you know, so you just kind of. [00:28:46] Speaker C: You just keep playing it back. [00:28:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:48] Speaker C: It's almost like you remember it. [00:28:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:28:51] Speaker A: So you left there then and you. And then he. Y' all went straight to Missouri. [00:28:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:55] Speaker A: Now, where was he? And that was military, also traveling. Yeah. [00:28:58] Speaker B: So he. He was stationed in Fort Leonard Wood. Okay. Yeah. [00:29:02] Speaker A: Is that where he retired from? Yeah. [00:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So he retired. I think he retired in 2004 is when he retired. [00:29:11] Speaker A: How old was he when he retired? [00:29:14] Speaker B: Well, 50. He's 44. 60 now. So I think he was right about [00:29:20] Speaker A: 40, 20 years ago. [00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah, 46, something like. [00:29:23] Speaker A: That's great, man. [00:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah, he did. He did 22 years. Yeah. And he was actually gonna go. And he was up. So he retired as a first sergeant. He was going up for his next rank. And then they wanted us to move to Alabama for, like, a year to do training and stuff. My mom was like, look. Well, I'VE been all over the place because, like my older brother, I've got two older siblings. My sister was born in North Carolina. My brother was born in Germany because they, they, he got stationed in Germany, but then my sister's been to Spain, California. Like, they just kind of bounced all over the place with the military before I was born. Yeah. And then he moved out there and he's like, well, I can. Y' all can stay here and I'll go for a year and I'll come back. And she's like, well, you do whatever you want to, but I'm not moving again. Like, the kids are in school, everybody's liking it. We're having a good time. Like, we're not moving. And he's like, Well, I got 22 years and I guess I'll just go ahead and retire. So that's what he did. That's awesome, though. Yeah. [00:30:20] Speaker C: I couldn't imagine 40, 46 years old and being retired. [00:30:23] Speaker A: That's crazy. Four more years, I'd have. 22 years, in a word. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I mean, he, he went in at 18 and then did his 22 years and then just boom, he's done retired and then now he still works. He's a, still another subcontractor for the government. So he just works for the Defense Department on that. And it's all kind of high tech stuff. I don't know nothing about it. I used to tell people all the time when I was in high school that my dad was a hitman for the military because everybody was scared of him anyway. So I was like, whatever. They'd always ask him. He was like, well, if you've not been in the military, you're not really going to understand what I do. And so he's. I'm like, they're like, yeah, he's a hitman in me. I'm like, yeah, he is. [00:31:08] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:31:09] Speaker B: He is. Don't. Just don't make mad, you know, don't mess with him. Don't know what day. [00:31:13] Speaker A: So I feel like the age that you was in Hawaii, and I think about my oldest and your oldest too. You know, it wouldn't be long before they're moving from Hawaii. So that's kind of their little golden years where they're just. You're just growing up and you don't have a ton of responsibility. Maybe you're taking out of the trash or whatever, you know, but you're not really working or doing anything yet. You moved to Missouri and I got to assume that that's Started. [00:31:41] Speaker B: Oh, different ball game. Yeah. But yeah, so like the Hawaii thing, one, one weird thing for me is like I never was used to this, but before when I was younger, I actually had hair and it was like bleach blonde, white. Like, I mean that you get it wet. I look like I was bald headed. Like it was just bleach blonde. And all these Polynesians and Samoan people and, and even Asians and stuff like that. They've never seen hair like that. So. So we'd go to Walmart and people would always want to come touch my hair and rub their hands through my hair. And my mom's just like, it's okay, just, just hang out. It's not a big deal. It's okay. And I'm just sitting here like, you know, I'm like five, six years old. I'm like, these people are touching my head, like, what am I doing? And I'd have a whole crowd around me because they'd never. Like, my mom always told me it was a Coppertone baby. Like that's exactly what I looked like. On the bottle was a copper tone baby. Complete tan, but pure white hair. And like those people just ate that [00:32:38] Speaker A: up because they all have black hair. [00:32:39] Speaker B: All black hair. Yeah, dark brown. [00:32:41] Speaker C: That's what we was. When I went, when I went to Israel, that was another. That was like we went to Bethlehem. [00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:47] Speaker C: And I remember how it had that big old fro. [00:32:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker C: Big old curly, but looked like it had a perm. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:53] Speaker C: And I went over to Israel and we went to a. Was in Bethlehem and we went to a. All girls school and we played music at their school. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Ah, that's what Elisha was talking about. Them girls went crazy over you. [00:33:07] Speaker C: Yeah, they went. Me and Elisha and Micah. Well, Micah and Elisha had blonde hair, you know, just long blonde hair. And I had a big old fro. And they wanted to just come over and rub their hands. All they had was black hair, you know, so I was like, gosh, this is weird, but I kind of like it. [00:33:22] Speaker B: You know, [00:33:25] Speaker A: this is when I was [00:33:25] Speaker C: what, 16, 18, something like that. [00:33:27] Speaker B: Was that, Was that after the incident of the hat or before the hat? [00:33:32] Speaker A: Yeah, when they told you to lose the hat. [00:33:34] Speaker C: Oh, you know, that was. No, no, that was before or no, that was after. No, that was after because I was going through customs. I was. Yeah, I was going through customs. [00:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:33:45] Speaker A: So when did you start having to. [00:33:48] Speaker B: So you moved. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Moved to Missouri. Now what did you guys have out there? Did you, did you guys have like a He's living in like a subdivision. You have a house on a small amount of acreage by ranch. [00:33:58] Speaker B: Yes. So at first my parents bought a house and like it was a subdivision, but it was on the outskirts of the city limits. So like we, like our backyard was pretty much the property line of the county and the city. [00:34:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:11] Speaker B: But all them houses out there, man, like every house out there has got an acre to maybe two acres with it. So we had a whole acre to the house. They bought it and for about the first two years I lived there, you know, I was just getting to know people and making friends. Baseball teams. Well, then we ran into a guy that me and his son played on the same baseball team together. Well, they owned at that time. Now he's, now he's got 250 acres and he sold the other 200 or 300 acres that he had across the road from him. And then that's whenever it all started. So that's whenever I got into the cattle deal working on farms. [00:34:52] Speaker A: So getting to know him got you into that? [00:34:55] Speaker B: Yeah, got to know him and he sold off his, his brother was a house builder. So he, he sold him like 200 and some acres or 300, I can't remember. I think it was 2, 270 something. But anyways, he sold him 200 and some acres and he started putting houses on. And all those houses were. We'll have like five, six acre tracks with him, maybe 10, maybe 20 different things like that. He's building these big, you know, high end houses and this guy's still running cows. So he's running all registered Angus cattle. He's got 100 head of them. And we're out here. He's like, here, pick up this feed sack. And I'm like, what's feed sack? You know, like I didn't know anything about it. That's £50. That's how much I weighed. [00:35:34] Speaker C: So you was like cold, you was like cold turkey. Then you went Hawaii to straight farm boy. [00:35:40] Speaker B: And yeah, within a year, I'll tell you this, we moved from Hawaii. Flute flew in to St. Louis, went to our house. The, in the military, you know, they'll, they'll ship all your stuff for you. So like you've got movers and everything in the military will pay for it. Well, the movers didn't show up when they were supposed to, so they wouldn't go show up for another two weeks. So my dad was like, well, school ain't started. We'll just go and drive all the way to North Carolina and visit family because we haven't seen them in probably three or four years. So we drove all the way to North Carolina from Missouri. Been over. We were over there for like two weeks. Came back moving truck showed up there. Then we just started unloading and doing work and putting everything in the house and just started making it home, you know. And then, and then I met, met the, these big ranchers that we worked with a lot. And like they, they were my second friends family. Like that was my second dad, my second mom. Like all their, all his family. I still talk to him to this day. And yeah, I just get in it and learn it. You know, I'm standing in the wrong spots. I get kicked or I'm over here, I get slammed by a gate. Well, where am I supposed to be? Somewhere out of the way, you know. And of course, of course in Missouri, a lot of them guys don't talk as nice as what some of these people talk around here. Like some of them are just, yeah, just grouchy. Straight to the point. [00:37:00] Speaker C: Yeah, straight to the point. Just get it done. [00:37:02] Speaker B: And yeah, one of them, like the dude is good as gold, but like he will cuss you like a dog, but that's just, it means nothing. Means nothing by exactly. That's just the way he talks, you know. And so, so yeah, I started that, started working with them, got into it. Then they built a big house in a 15 acre lake behind their house. And my dad and, and us help them build that. And then we would go around and basically just rob everybody's ponds and stuff with their permission. But we would go fish everybody's ponds and stocking. We put, we had big feed barrels, you know, them big 50, 50 gallon barrels in the beds of the truck. And we put aerators and all of them. We're driving down these county roads. Fish are flopping out everywhere. Like, stop, hang on. We just pick up more buckets of crack, crappie or whatever, put them back in there and we just, and we just kept feeding that thing. But yeah, so that's, and then after, for after a while I was working on that farm, then they were like, hey, you want to start getting into this stuff? We'll let you start keeping some animals on this property. So then I, I, I think I raised up ahead of about five or six cows at one time. Cows and calves. Still doing my hog deal, still having my show steers and heifers. And then he was like, hey, like we're getting kind of to the point where y' all are Gonna have to find a piece of property. So then my dad found a piece of property, we bought it, and it was just straight land, put cows out on it. And then when me and my wife got together, we put a house out there and we lived on it for about four or five years before we moved out here. But. So I had had a small, small little herd of cows, and then I bought a couple horses and stuff, and the next thing, no, drought killed us. Sold all cows. And then I started buying horses like a dummy idiot. You know, I had. I had. I had five horses. You know, it'd be different if I was like, you know, one of them guys out there. You know, like, them guys use them, so. [00:39:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:39:01] Speaker B: But like me, like, I don't have nothing to use with, you know, like, all these guys are cowboys. You know, they go work in their sale barns and they're pinning kids. Seattle in the back on horses and mules and stuff like that. And then I went out with my horseshoe a couple times. He's like, yeah, you come out here, I'll show you some things. And he said, make sure you bring a rope. I'm like, I'm not near as good as a roper as what you are. Like, I can. I can get it done, but I'm no, no near what you are. Well, we show up and it's a 300 acre field, and there's about 200 head of cows in there. He's like, we got a few. The doctor, they show up with a whole trailer load of horses, and I'm just show up with my one. And he's like, come on. And as soon as we got on them, never stopped until we were done. One of the coolest things I ever done though was we pinned up a bunch of these cows and we had six semi truckloads to come load up calves, and we pinned all them cattle and loaded them all up in them trucks by horseback. We never got off our horse one time. And that was just some of the funnest stuff I'd ever done in my life. Yeah, like, it was a blast. [00:40:04] Speaker C: So now how does that work? You run them. You run them. Run them in a chute and heard them hurt them? [00:40:09] Speaker B: Yep. [00:40:10] Speaker C: Run them up, huh? [00:40:11] Speaker B: Okay. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Run them into a big round pan, bunch of panels set up. [00:40:14] Speaker B: Well, I mean, out there, it's like they're corrals, you know, so, like there's. There could be a big catch. So they're permanent? [00:40:20] Speaker A: Yeah, they're permanent. [00:40:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:22] Speaker C: Okay. [00:40:22] Speaker B: Okay. Like, they're. Yeah, they're not going nowhere. Yeah. You know, and then the trucks would just come in and he said, hey, turn around down there, come back, back up to the chute and we just load them up, you know. But yeah, so, and then that's when I got into my hay hauling. I did a lot of that when I was in high school. So when I was younger I had to learn how to haul hay with the farmers that I was working with. Had to earn my keep, you know, and so I didn't have to pay no money for keeping my livestock there. I just had to work my butt off. Yeah. So they had me for life pretty much. And, and so here I am, I'm struggling with these bales. And I remember like I was 10 years old, I'm like, dad, you know, I'm feel that, you know, I'm starting to get a muscle here, you know. And he's like, yeah, that's what happens when you work hard, you know. And then next thing you know, I'm 16 years old. And we put up 10,000 square bales in four days for the sail barns. Yeah. And like I'm talking like two trucks, five men, crews picking from the ground, stacking them on the trailer, driving them to the sale barn, unloading them and putting them up in the hay barn in the back of the pins. We'd fill up about 13 pins in the back of that cell barn. [00:41:30] Speaker A: Now are these, these semi truck trailers? [00:41:32] Speaker B: No, no. Flatbeds. Yep. 24 foot to 30 foot goosenecks, 24 footer. You'd probably, depending on how they, how they bail them because you can bail them loose or tight, tight or you know, so if they're bailed right, you can fit about 200 to 205 on a, on a goose neck flat bed. [00:41:49] Speaker A: So I'll tell you a story real quick. I've, I've hauled a lot of hay through the years too. Not 10,000 bales, but one year we, I think we did put up 1200 right over here at the Chapman. But anyway hauled a lot of hay one time. So I used to buy my hay now Belmont hay, but used to buy my hay from a good friend of mine. And one time we were down on the other side of Philadelphia exit down there in a field that he had and we went down there and we were. I think about Marvin from where I think about his story about being in Afghanistan. He said, he said that them guys, them guys in Afghanistan, the Afghans, they were so lucky lazy that they only wanted to make one trip and maybe it had something to do with fuel or something, I don't know. But they'd take them little Isuzu trucks and if they had to haul mattresses, they'd stack them as high as they absolutely could. And he remembers one of them guys getting killed over there because he's riding on top of like 10 mattresses on the back of a truck trying to hold him down. He gets slug off of it. So this story makes me think of that. So one time we took, we took our gooseneck trailer. [00:42:59] Speaker B: We've gotten. [00:42:59] Speaker A: It's a 24 foot with a dove on it. And we take. Just like you're talking about where that dove could retract, you know, make a flatbed. Because that's what you need it for when you're hauling. Hey, well, we didn't have that. So we'd take a piece of plywood and put right there and put boards under it to make it a flat, true flat all the way back so we could haul more. And one time, one time we stacked that thing so high. And this time my father in law wasn't involved. It was just me and Megan, my brother in law, maybe a buddy of his, buddy of mine too, all out there. So there wasn't no talking sense into us. You know, we're like, we don't want to come back out here. So we just kept going higher, higher, higher. And finally we got it so high and we're. You're out there in them fields, you've got to have it stacked good. And you can't have it too high because you're moving around, you know, no lean and get off kilter and whatnot. Man, we had. Before we got back out to the road off the, out of that field, we had that thing so high. I remember that we could barely drive this thing down the road. The, the front of it, I think it was the front. I'm trying to remember, but I think it was the front of one side of that trailer had fallen out on us, right. So we had, we and we had, we had straps, you know, over. You try to, you try to stack a trailer, you know, one way and then the next row goes this way. So it locks every, ties everything in [00:44:16] Speaker C: and then you lace everything and then. [00:44:18] Speaker A: Yeah, and then you can bring one dot down the top, top rope that one. It, you know, you can haul it. All right. Well, when you go so high and get so lopsided, it don't work that way. We had ratchet straps everywhere. You could think of pulling this thing back in to Try to keep from coming off. And we had it so high when we pulled in down here. Well, we used to call it the pig in Philadelphia, but it's a different. Different gas station now. When we pulled in down there, we pulled beside the gas pumps, and it was so high we would not have fit under them gas pumps. We wasn't going far, you know, just from Philadelphia to here. Yeah, but. And we were putting them up in that bar. I think that's the year we put up. I put up over 600 something square bales in this loft, you know, so that's. That was a lot because normally I didn't put up that much, but yeah, but yeah, we. I don't know how many we actually had on that trailer, but it was way too many, I'll say that. [00:45:13] Speaker B: Way too many. [00:45:14] Speaker A: Anyway, so back to yours. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, I. I think so. My dad. My dad's buddies, they used to. They had a horse barn too, so they did like horse boarding and stuff, too. Big indoor arenas and stuff. And so they'd let me keep a horse there in return for some labor. So they bring semi loads in. Hey, need some help unloading this hay? Well, here we go. We'd have elevators going up to the loft. We're just grabbing them and going, grabbing and going. And so, like, I think one year I tallied it up one year and I touched, literally touched both hands. A little over 30,000 square bales in a summer. Well, you. [00:45:57] Speaker A: You would. I mean, so how, like, how many horses does he board there, though? How big was it? [00:46:02] Speaker B: Well, that wasn't just for them. That was for all the customers that I work for. [00:46:06] Speaker A: Right, right. Okay. [00:46:08] Speaker B: For him, like the boarding facility, I mean, he'd have about 30, 30 some head there. Yeah, you know, 30 to 40 horses, something like that. And then that's how I got into the horse riding and stuff like that. Started going to his barn. I'm like, hey, this is cool. I want to get into this. My dad's like, all right, well, we'll do it. But it's going to take work. It's going to take money. You got to be willing to do it. So, like, the school bus would drop me off at the horse board facility, or they drop. Or my. My buddy's other dad that had the cattle, he'd pick me up from school. Hey, we need them. All right, you can grab them. And I just. I just went with anybody and everybody, you know, just went around and worked like crazy and. But yeah, so the, the hay hauling, man, you. You Want to wear out a pair of boots and a pair of jeans. Go. Go do some hay hauling. Because, like, when we. We never did the long sleep, a sleeve deal or nothing like that. We just a bunch of young, dumb kids. We're out there, no shirt on. Yeah, you're ate up. [00:47:02] Speaker A: Your son burnt. [00:47:03] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. We get out there, you know, in a miserable cooler full of beer. You know, we get a lot of stuff done when we was that age, you know? [00:47:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:10] Speaker B: 17, 18 years old, I remember, we. We'd load up at hay. The hay trailer, and then we would all get up on the neck and ride down the outer road of the. Of the interstate. And we're up there on the neck of this hay trailer. They're just hanging out. Yeah. No safety chains, no nothing. We're just sitting there, feet dangling. We got pulled over one time because he was like, hey, one, y'. [00:47:31] Speaker C: All. [00:47:31] Speaker B: Y' all need to watch your feet, he said, because he takes that turn too sharp, and y' all don't pay attention, it's gonna rip somebody's foot off. We're like, yes, sir, not a problem. And we just back in the sail barn and unload it all. And then what we would do is we'd call it a handstand. So we'd go over there to the water spigot, stand up upside down, and we'd wash from the belly all the way down, and it would refresh us. And then we'd get up on the neck again, ride it all the way back out to the field to cool us off. And then we was ready to go for another load. One year, they got too smart. They had about three trucks going, and we had one crew in the barn. One crew in the. In the field. Of course, since I was the shortest one, I was in the crew in the barn. Yeah, I was at the very top where I went like, yeah, my head's gonna hit the top of that barn, and that metal's just heating up. I mean, it gets hot there, you know? I mean, it's like today, it was like 92 degrees over in Missouri today, and it would get up to 105, 110 degrees. And we're just going anywhere and everywhere picking up hay. I mean, I never truly had, like, a real job, so, like, when I was in high school, I didn't go work for, you know, a fast food restaurant or anything like this. I hauled cattle. I hauled hay. I worked for people. I built fence. That's how I made my money. Yeah, I just. I always had something to do. You know, that's pretty interesting. [00:48:45] Speaker A: So what was the biggest. What was the biggest ranch out there that you had to. Or cattle operation or whatever, whatever. Hay operations, catalop. I mean, what kind of numbers are we talking here with that or acreage, whatever. So that you was involved in? [00:49:01] Speaker B: So I always say in Missouri, that I. That I've seen in Missouri, our hobby farmers would be anywhere from five head to 250 head. And those guys are still working secondary jobs for the insurance and stuff like that. But I've got some good buddies of mine back home. They're family friends more than anything. But he's a cattle broker. So what he does is he goes to sale barns five days a week and buys cattle, brings them back to his house, pins them up somewhere else, backgrounds them feeder calves, things like that, and he'll ship them all over the United States. And he told me one year because I used to sell him John Deere equipment. And he told me one year. He was like, he said this year I think they dealt with about 40,000 head in one year. [00:49:50] Speaker A: Like broker. [00:49:51] Speaker B: And I mean he didn't touch all of them, but like that's. He bought or sold, you know, 40,000 head of cattle. Yeah. And I tell you this, it was funny because we have like all these big farm shows and there was a guy there that used to make like, you know, like games, board games and stuff. So they took like the, the Monopoly board and he had a farm on every one of them squares for the Monopoly board. [00:50:15] Speaker C: The. [00:50:15] Speaker A: Yeah, one guy. [00:50:16] Speaker B: Yeah, one, One outfit. One outfit. Like his house is probably, I don't know, probably thousand, twelve hundred acres. His son lives on about 250 acres. His daughter lives on another 300 acres. I mean he's got them all over, all over the place. [00:50:33] Speaker C: This is like a different world to me because I'm over here thinking like my wife wants. My wife wants two or three acres. And I'm like, y' all are talking like you've got quite a bit of acreage. You've had a ton of acreage. And I'm over here, like if we get through four, three or four acres, I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't hardly keep up with what I got now. [00:50:53] Speaker A: Take care of it. Well, it looked like like this pig sty. That's what you look like. But if you go down to my [00:50:59] Speaker C: other place, I just, I ain't never been. I had never really been in that like that. [00:51:05] Speaker B: You know, there's a Lot of registered breeders out there too. Like there's a lot of guys that just do strictly registered Angus or there's guys that only do red Angus or charolays and this and that. Like you pretty much find anybody. Like we had a, we had a vet that he's passed away now, but he's, he, he'd run about 350 head of cows. He's never owned a tractor day in his life. Dang good. [00:51:30] Speaker A: Because he's got cropland, I mean, got pasture. [00:51:33] Speaker B: Just leave him out on pasture. And, and like out there everybody's got a hay bed on their pickup trucks. So they got big farms like that, they've got a hay bed on their pickup trucks. And we unroll hay bales or they foam up in feeders, we whatever with that truck. And so like this, the one guy that I was just talking about 40,000 head is his son. In the wintertime he'll spend 12, 14 hours days just feeding hay. Like he put a hay bed on his truck and they just go. He's got a little Toyota truck, he's got a feed box on it that throws out the crane. And he built his own little flatbed on his truck. It's a sweet little outfit, you know, but them guys, they put 200,000 miles on a truck in a year. [00:52:13] Speaker C: Yeah, in the field though. [00:52:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, and they're hooked up to a trailer every day of their life. Like they're hauling 3236 foot goosenecks loaded down with cows and they put 200 mile, 200,000 miles on a pickup in a year or two years. [00:52:27] Speaker A: Well, they're moving for. You're moving that much if you're buying five days a week and selling probably five days a week too. [00:52:34] Speaker B: Well, he told me one year he spent $2 million just in trucking, not counting as own trucks. $2 million in just semis, like ones y' all see out here on the interstate. Yeah, semi big pot loads. He said he spent $2 million in one year in trucking fees. But he's got his own barn set up. Like he's got a hydraulic chute, his own weigh scale that he can literally stick a piece of paper in there, put in how many head it's on it, it'll print it out. Print out the average, print out the lowest, the highest, how many head it is, Boom, here you go. And I mean he'll just buy cattle right there. Like on Sundays you can go to his property, unload. He's got it to where he can, he can Load out one semi and two other trucks at one end of his barn. You can unload three trucks at the same time. And it's all pipe, fence, cable, like the whole. Whole shebang, you know what I mean? [00:53:26] Speaker A: He just turned it into his own, just as. I mean, he cut out the middleman. Yeah, he became the. [00:53:31] Speaker C: The. [00:53:31] Speaker A: Yeah, the cell barn. [00:53:33] Speaker B: Basically never graduated high school. [00:53:35] Speaker C: Yeah, we've got a few people that's like that. [00:53:37] Speaker B: Yeah, he went. He. He. He quit school after the eighth grade and started buying farms and stuff. And his parents had a. One big farm. And he. He kept telling his mom. I remember his mom was telling me about this, basically my grandma, you know, and she's like, you know, one of these days he just kept telling me, I'm gonna buy this farm. I'm gonna buy this farm. It's about 400 acres. Sure enough, one of these days, turn around, wrote him a check, you know, I mean, just. [00:54:02] Speaker A: But it. [00:54:02] Speaker B: But I mean, it like to kill him twice, you know, I mean, like, he never got no sleep. The stress, the. The. The wear and tear on his body and things. Like his family goes on vacations. He don't go. Yeah. If he. If he ain't here, he ain't making no money. So he's like, sorry, peace out. See, y', all, like, y' all can go anywhere you want to, but I gotta stay here and sell cattle and buy and move them. That's what they do. But. But yeah, there's some. There's some big outfits out there. Like right now. My dad's friend that we built the big lake for when he retired, he started buying land and stuff like that. And now he. He runs about 500 head of cows. He's got. He's got one farm, and it's just. That one farm is like 850 acres. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Yeah, just 1, 500 head of beef. Cows is a lot. [00:54:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:54:51] Speaker A: That's a lot of. That's a lot of. [00:54:54] Speaker C: Sit over here and fed 12. I bottle fed 12 calves thinking I was doing something. [00:54:59] Speaker A: You are. [00:55:00] Speaker B: You're bottle feeding, man. Bottle bottle feeding is a whole. Another ball game right there. Heck, no. I had a couple of them too. And we. Brittany makes a joke about it, but we used to have baby lamb lived in the house with us. [00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:12] Speaker B: And we had some friends of ours had. They'd have lambs and, you know, they'd always have, you know, twins or triplets. Yeah. And they always. You'll have one that don't take. And so they're like a little show lambs and stuff. And I was like, hey, this would be good. We can figure this thing out and we'll eat it. You know, lamb's pretty good. And she's like, all right. And so it was in the wintertime, it was too cold, so we had to put her in the house and put a little diaper on her, cut a hole around in the diaper. So for her tail, man, she'd just be bopping around. We'd feed her feet, feed her formula out of a little Mountain Dew bottle. She just a little black lamb. [00:55:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:46] Speaker B: Lived in the house with us. Put her in the dog cage. [00:55:48] Speaker A: Bet you didn't kill that one. [00:55:50] Speaker B: No, no, they sold it. They sold it to another lady, and I think. I think they still have it now. But I told her, I was like, we're gonna eat this sucker. I don't care. We're gonna eat it. I mean, we're gonna eat everything else. [00:56:01] Speaker A: I don't really like lamb. I've had lamb before. I don't really. [00:56:04] Speaker B: I like some lamb. [00:56:06] Speaker A: I don't. Man. I honestly, I think it's something about knowing I'm eating a baby. Truthfully, I think if it was a big, giant sheep, I'd be okay with it. But it tastes like. [00:56:14] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, we're gonna feed it up, you know, I mean, it's still gonna weigh about 200 pounds when we. When we butcher it, you know? Like, I ain't gonna take this little thing like this. Like, what am I gonna get? One lamb out there that ain't nothing. Like, I'm one for a few days. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Well, that's still a freaking sheep. That's a sheep by the time it's that big. [00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:33] Speaker A: Why they call it lamb? [00:56:35] Speaker B: I don't. Lamb chop? I don't know. [00:56:37] Speaker A: Heck, I thought they were actually killing. [00:56:41] Speaker B: I don't think so. [00:56:43] Speaker A: Well, you don't. You ain't like, oh, I'm gonna kill his calf and eat it. You're gonna kill that steer and eat it or that. [00:56:48] Speaker B: You know, pretty much, yeah. [00:56:50] Speaker A: Why they say that? I don't make no sense. [00:56:52] Speaker B: I don't know, man. I don't know. [00:56:53] Speaker A: Well, I'm ignorant to that if that's [00:56:54] Speaker B: the case, but, yeah. Yeah. [00:56:56] Speaker C: I'm assuming that it's. That's not the case. I figured they have to be before they kill them. They got to be £200, I'd imagine, or, you know, man, you. [00:57:04] Speaker A: You kill them. Lamb weigh 200 pounds. That's a big one. [00:57:08] Speaker B: Yeah, they probably. That ain't no, baby, they probably weighing like 150, 175, something like that. [00:57:12] Speaker C: They full grown, though. Yeah, they're ready. They ready to die and eat. [00:57:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I might as well get it before coyote does. You know me. [00:57:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:21] Speaker C: Yes, that's right. [00:57:22] Speaker B: True. But. But yeah, no, just grew up there and hunt and fish a lot out there. Big, big hunter. Love doing it. Go to South Dakota every year. We go out pheasant hunt with me and some of my buddies and stuff. But yeah, I mean, that's just what we did, man. We run big trucks and you know, like, you talk about your 250 out there, you know, we soup them up and we get in trouble, things like that. We used to do that off lot whenever I was in high school. And one. I guess I could say my. One of my first jobs that I ever had is I worked for the Blue Beacon. [00:57:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:56] Speaker B: Truck wash. Y. I was a trailer man. Yeah. And I worked there during the winter time and a little bit after that. But dude, that was brutal. Let me tell you, man, winter time [00:58:07] Speaker C: at a truck stop. [00:58:08] Speaker B: Oh, man, that hand. [00:58:10] Speaker A: Do you have that want. Yeah, I've heard people fuss. [00:58:14] Speaker B: 13ft is how long that sucker is. [00:58:16] Speaker A: And you got to hold it one hand, right? [00:58:18] Speaker B: One hand, yeah, yeah. Like, one thing that I would do is I would. I would hold the hose on the bottom of it like this. But, man, it's on the rack and you spray. You spray it from the rack. Better have a good hold of it because it's coming up. And as soon as it comes up automatically, it's right here. It's all in the wrist. And you would hold that thing and then all of a sudden you would just easily just bring it down somehow to hit the top tops of them semis. [00:58:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you're guiding it. [00:58:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:42] Speaker A: You're letting the oil pressure take you [00:58:44] Speaker B: where you want to go. But when I worked there, our training was they had those, you know, the block walls, right? And so they were like, hey, we don't want your fan to be any bigger than an 8 inch block. So they'd say, hey, go get on the wall. We ain't got no trucks. So I just stand there all day, just washing, just washing, washing block all day. And then we'd get a truck, they'd say, hey, put it up. Get back here. And then they'd come through. So my wife speak. It's crazy because, like my wife's brother, who I didn't know at the time, he was. He was a supervisor there and so he'd come through with that little flashlight. Hey, now I missed a spot right here. No, this is still dirty here. And they just walk around that truck [00:59:24] Speaker C: and boy, that drive me crazy. Yeah, clean the freaking spot yourself. [00:59:28] Speaker A: I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. [00:59:31] Speaker B: Oh, man. And you'd be soaking wet. Like no matter what you could do in that place, you'd be soaking wet. You're wearing rubber boots from Walmart, you know what I mean? And them dicky pants or whatever, just hotter and crap. Got your earplugs in, you can't hear nothing. And then every Tuesday or Mondays, man, they'd have them sales and then Friday nights they'd have special cow sales. Well, guess where every single one of them cattle pots come and loading up and we had to polish and brighten up all their trailer and it's like every little piece. [01:00:04] Speaker A: Them cattle hogs, they're proud of them trailers, dude. [01:00:07] Speaker B: Let me tell you. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Chicken lights all over them. I mean, they're proud of them. [01:00:10] Speaker B: I've seen some nice rigs, don't get me wrong. Like, I've seen some nice trucks. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I believe I'd eat off the floor of that one, you know what I mean? Like they're sharp, you know? Yeah. And then I'm like, but why are we cleaning this thing when you going straight down here to load up Whole, whole load of cattle. [01:00:26] Speaker A: Gotta look good when you pull in, man. [01:00:27] Speaker B: Gotta look good. That's what it is. If I pull in with a raggedy old looking trailer, you think anybody's gonna haul nothing? Nope. They want that thing shiny like a brand new penny. Yeah, so. So, yeah. So back then when I was doing that stuff and that's when I started getting into the auctioneering deal. And that's how I met my wife was I was actually at a fair and buying some livestock because at that time I was working for, I was working for a John Deere dealership out there. Well, I guess I can back up. I got into sales, so I used to work on the road a lot as I went to school to be a heavy equipment operator. So we have a tech school in Missouri that you can go in, you can learn how to be a mechanic or diesel mechanic or caterpillar mechanic, lineman operator, that kind of thing. So I went to the operator program, learned how to operate dozers, excavators, all that kind of stuff. This job or this place has a 98% job placement for all of their programs. It's like 11 months. Last month of it is you do an internship with a company, they can offer you a job or you can go find something else. Well, so I got in with fiber optics, and so I traveled around a lot doing fiber optics. So I've been to Colorado, all over the state of Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas, you know, things like that. Just doing all that. All that. [01:01:51] Speaker A: And then, like, the fiber lines in the ground. [01:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:01:54] Speaker A: So was you. Was you on the little machine? You see, that's always. Yeah, there's a little drill always in the freaking way everywhere you go and there's traffic backed up. You're that guy. [01:02:02] Speaker B: I. I was. I wouldn't. I wasn't a drill operator. [01:02:05] Speaker A: Okay. [01:02:05] Speaker B: I wasn't a drill operator. No, I was part of it, though. Yeah. Yeah, part of it. I mean, I was a cleanup man. So, like, I'd come in, like, first company I worked for. This is crazy because I was 18, not almost 18, 19 years old, something like that. And I went to go apply for this company, and they're like, yeah, okay, we need you to do a physical test. So you had to dig a hole, you know, 3 foot by 3 foot by 3 foot deep, within a certain amount of time. You had to carry like 50 or 60, 70 pounds, whatever it was, certain distance and all this stuff, make sure that you were physically inclined, that you could do this job. And so I did it. And then they were like, all right, hey, you got a cdl? And I'm like, yeah. He said, well, let's go do a driving. Driving test. So we had a little single axle dump truck with a float trailer on it. I drove around, did their little thing, and he said. I said, hey, here's your keys. When we got back, I said, here's your keys. He said, I'll just go ahead and keep that. I'm like, do what? He said, yeah, just go ahead and keep that. He said, show up Monday, got a job. I was like, all right then, huh? So. So that my first job, I drove all the way to Fulton, Missouri, which was two and a half hours away from where I was from. And we did a. We did a job for AT&T. And I was getting like, prevailing wage. So back back then, you know, I was 18, 19 years old. I'm getting paid 32.50 an hour, you know, And I was like, yeah, this is it. That's what I'm talking about. You know, I went and bought me a motorcycle, cycle and a truck. Boy, I had a couple thousand dollars in my pocket and just chasing women, you know, Like, I thought I was way high up there. I wasn't, I wasn't. So. So yeah, my dad, of course, he's like, hey, save your money, save your money. Use it for down payment on place, whatever. Like in, in about six months I cleared like 30 grand in the bank because I was working like 12, 14 hour days. Like if I'm not going to be at home, I won't be working. Like I'm here to make money. But we also played a lot harder than what we worked too, you know, you're going to work hard, we're going to play hard, you know. So that's kind of the bad part of my life was, you know, When I was 18, 19 years old, I was in bar scenes and stuff like that when I was younger, but I was old enough because I had a receding hairline that nobody would check my id. So I just never had no problem, you know. So it's just like one of them deals, you know, they're like, hey, you got your id? And I'm like, nope, sure don't. And he's like, oh, this dude's older than me. He's like, yeah, take your hat off. And I take my hat off. She's like, oh, yeah, you're good, you [01:04:38] Speaker A: know, you got your id Good enough. [01:04:41] Speaker B: That's good enough. That's good, you know, and so, so yeah, so I traveled around there, did that for a while and man, like one of the, one of the scariest stories I think I've ever had is I worked for a company and we were up in Boonville, Missouri. This was the second company I worked for because you know when wintertime hits, you ain't doing nothing, you know. And so I'm like, hey, I gotta make money, you know. So I just, I jump around companies because I needed to work. And so we were up in Boonville, Missouri and they were like, hey, we got some good news for you, but go ahead and close out your hotel this Thursday, come into work, finish out today, and then you guys get to go home for a three day weekend. We're like, sweet. That's what I'm talking about. I'm like, I ain't staying in no raggedy crap, you know what I mean? Like, I want to make sure I'm safe, I take a shower, chill the whole nine yards. So we were like, sit. Staying in a Hilton, man, that Friday come around. He's like, man, we only got like, you know, like we would have goals. Like we'd shoot, you know, we try to get 1500ft a day, day in of a shot. Hey, well, we only got like two more shots, man. I think we can, we can hit this, you know, we can rack out this manhole and just whip it right in. What do you guys want to do? Well, I guess we'll just stay and do it. So my three day weekend wasn't a three day weekend. So we're like, well, man, we need to find us a hotel. Well, there was a hotel across the road from the Hilton. And not mean anything by it, but it was a low ending guy that had this hotel and I mean, it was rough, bud. $20 is what it cost a night. [01:06:11] Speaker C: Okay, that should have been you first. That should have been the first out right there. [01:06:15] Speaker B: 20 bucks. And I'm like, yeah, I think I got that. I go in my room and there's a hole in the shower this big around, like, not even lying. [01:06:26] Speaker A: That's not the drain. [01:06:27] Speaker B: No, no, it was, it was the second drain. Then. Well, let me back up. When I'm driving around the parking lot to find my room, I was like, hey, put me and him side by side because we work together, you know, we're driving one truck. We work together. So me and him driving around, they got these little picnic tables out front of these other rooms. Well, there's some old pimp out there that just had some, had some, you know, some women out there with them and they just, just flowing in and out, you know, paper bags and whatnot. I'm like, man, like, this dude's got a business going on here. We better not screw this up, you know? So like, we, we go in there and like, I look at this room and it was so bad that I slept in my work clothes on top of the covers of this room. Yeah, I was like, I can't sleep in my truck because this is what's going on over here. So I was like, yeah, I'm sleeping in there. So we get up the next morning, didn't die, get up next morning, go work, come back. Well, that next Monday we had to go back up there, get our equipment. Well, next thing, no, we're looking and it's all roped off, caution taped off. And we're like, what the heck's going on? And so we were asking some people in the around, around that town, and they're like, yeah. You guys didn't hear about that? We're like, no, what happened? Oh, man, somebody, somebody, they got, had some kind of drug deal that went bad. And they busted down the, the door and shot this dude. Laid up on the bed and just shot him like three times and killed this dude. And I'm like, at that hotel, they're like, yeah, it was room like 23 or something. I'm like, that's my room. That, that's the room I stayed in Friday night. [01:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:07] Speaker B: And he got killed Saturday. [01:08:09] Speaker A: I'm like, man, the difference was you wasn't buying drugs. [01:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's true too. But I was like, like, man, this is crazy. $20. [01:08:18] Speaker C: $20. [01:08:19] Speaker B: $20, man. I'm like, dude, I ain't never doing this crap again. You know what I mean? Like, it, it was, it was crazy. But, but up there, there's a lot of Amish up there too. Like, even where we were from, we had a bunch of Amish around there. So like Boonville, it was fun. And we were up there and every morning there'd be a guy come in there, a horse and buggy, have a big 55 gallon barrel drum. He, he'd go gas pump, fill it up, full gas. He'd go in there and buy him a couple cigars. He'd like them dang cigars. Get on the road. He just slap that horse down the road and he smoked a cigar with a 55 gallon drum of gas in the back, back of his buggy. Like, what the world? [01:08:57] Speaker C: Wonder what run on gas. [01:08:58] Speaker B: I. I don't know. [01:09:00] Speaker A: It should have just drove it to there. He was going to go out there [01:09:02] Speaker C: and get probably, probably a generator or something. [01:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe for, for a store or something. [01:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, like some of their hay equipment, you know, like their hay equipment, they can run little motors on them to run the belts for their balers and stuff like that. And so they'll run that gas in those engines, but they'll pull it behind the horse. [01:09:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:17] Speaker B: And then I was putting up road signs and I had like three little kids out there on horse and buggy. And they had, they had a young horse, you could tell. And so I put up this big orange, you know, road construction ahead or whatever sign. That horse starts freaking out. This little boy just grab that whip, just, I mean, just whooping the hair off that thing. And that horse just turned its head. He just kept stepping like, golly. I'm like, sorry boys, I didn't mean to scare your horse or anything teaching, but dude, they had a hitching post at their Walmart. [01:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:51] Speaker B: Like that's how, how much they had. [01:09:53] Speaker A: They had a huge community. Athens does too. [01:09:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't I didn't realize. [01:09:57] Speaker C: I remember that. [01:09:59] Speaker B: I didn't realize that, but. [01:10:00] Speaker C: So you'd said something just a second ago. I was just curious. You said you met your wife while you were auctioneering. [01:10:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So after. So after. After I was working on the road, I came back and I was working for a John Deere company. [01:10:14] Speaker C: Right. [01:10:15] Speaker B: So whenever I got done traveling around and things. Actually, no, I'm sorry. Let me back up. She's gonna kill me because I got that wrong. So I was still on the road. I was working with her cousin on the road, which was. I didn't know it was her cousin either. Me and him just worked for the same company. His uncle was a superintendent. And so. So I met you was all tangled [01:10:34] Speaker C: up in the family before you was in the family. [01:10:36] Speaker B: Oh, dude, I had no idea. [01:10:38] Speaker C: What'd you say? Her brother. [01:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, at the. At the Blue Beacon. [01:10:42] Speaker C: At the Blue Beacon. [01:10:43] Speaker B: So I was. I was all top. Tangled up with the whole family. Had no idea. But yeah, so. So I was auctioneering at this. At this. The fair. And then whenever I'd get done, I would just haul all their. Their livestock to the. To the butcher shops or to the sale barn, wherever they want me to drop them off at. And I just do it for free, you know, just help these businesses out, because that's what they did. And. And like, where we were at, like, the businesses, if you didn't support their kids and their 4H and FFA, you wouldn't get no business from those people. You know what I mean? Like, we had guys that would buy a pickup truck from somebody just because he went and bought a steer from their son at a county fair. It didn't matter the price. But you supported my son. I'm gonna support you. Like, we would make our kids. And even, like, me, I'd have to go into these businesses and sell myself and sell my livestock. Like, I'd have a piece of paper that I typed out, like a little bio or whatever, had some pictures of my project animals, and I would literally talk to these businesses and try to sell it. [01:11:44] Speaker A: That. [01:11:44] Speaker C: Man, that's crazy. [01:11:45] Speaker B: It's so wild. Yeah. So. So then. So when I was hauling. Hauling cows and stuff, her brother called me during that fair, and he's like, hey, what are you getting into tonight? And I was like, I got, you know, one more load of cows to do and I'll be good. And I was like, I was thinking about just going up to the county fair and hanging out and, you know, going to beer garden, whatever you Know that kind of thing. And he's like, well, we might meet. Meet you up there. And he said, you care if I bring my sister with us? And. And I was like, yeah, no, I don't care. [01:12:12] Speaker C: That's fine. [01:12:12] Speaker B: And of course I was late, running late. And so I was like, well, he's like, man, we're not gonna go to the fair. He said, you guys just want to go around and ride the dirt roads and back road and stuff. That's what we always called it, you know, we just get a cooler beard, just ride around, look at deer and stuff like that, you know. I was like, yeah, that's fine. I said, I'll meet you down here at the Walmart down there in the parking lot. I said, I'll unhook my trailer and I'll meet you down there. Well, he brought his sister with him. And she was like, let's go. This dude, you know, stood us up or whatever. I guess I didn't know it was a date. She, I guess knew it was a date, but I didn't know. So I'm just like. So I come in there on two wheels and I'm like, get in the truck, let's go. I'm like, I gotta get ice on this stuff. Like, come on. And she jumped up in the truck and we've been together ever since. It was crazy. But yeah, so she, she came. I was still traveling around a little bit. She visited me in Colorado and then we got married and then I came back and I started working for her uncle. That's how I got in sales. I came back, me and Brittany got pregnant or she got pregnant. I didn't get pregnant, but she got pregnant with my older. [01:13:21] Speaker C: You gotta be correct about that. [01:13:23] Speaker B: If she's pregnant, oh boy. [01:13:24] Speaker C: If she's pregnant, then you're pregnant. [01:13:26] Speaker B: We're pregnant. [01:13:27] Speaker C: We're pregnant. [01:13:29] Speaker B: I Learned that myself, 100% or we're pregnant. So she, so we got pregnant. And then I was like, well, man, I'm not going to be riding around out here on the road working and not be my kid's life, you know. So I was like, I'll, I'll come back and find me a job. So thankfully my three year job in Colorado didn't last but three months. And they shipped me back. And so then I was like, then they, then they put me on, on the layoff list because they're like, man, we're getting, we can't do nothing. I'm like, well, what the crap am I supposed to do, you know? Like, I gotta work, man. I gotta do something. So then I got to working for the city. I went there and worked for the city and plowed snow, did road construction, storm drains, concrete, you know, just about anything you can think of. I was one of the city workers, you know. And so when I worked for the city, then her uncle was talking to me. He was in the car business for like 15 years at that time time. And he was like, hey man, like, I just want to talk to you about some stuff. He's like, I've been in the sales business for a long time. And he's like, when I know somebody's got it, somebody's got it. And he's like, and that's you. He's like, you come work for me or you go work for another company. But he's like, I'm telling you, you'll make a lot more money in the sales business and things like that. He's like, you need to try it out. He's like, and it just so happens that I'm, I'm looking and I'm hiring. And I'm like, all right, cool. Like, I'll interview, whatever. And so that's when I went to Washington. Well, this car dealership, I didn't know how car dealerships worked at that time, you know, on the worker side of it. Well, he had this guy from St. Louis, three piece suit, about $5,000 worth of jewelry hanging on them, you know, that kind of stuff. And I was like. He called me one day, he's like, hey, what are you gonna wear to your interview? I was like, ryan, just gonna throw me on pair of jeans, nice jeans, you know, my, my nice jeans, my going out jeans. Yeah. You know, and a button up shirt. And he's like, no, no, you're not. He's like, you need to go get you a tie. I'm like, dude, I ain't never wore a tie in my life. Yeah, I still don't know to this day. I had to have somebody tie my bow tie. [01:15:32] Speaker A: I gotta watch a YouTube video every time I go to the town. Yeah. [01:15:35] Speaker B: I'm like, God bless. [01:15:37] Speaker A: That's wrong. [01:15:38] Speaker B: Every wedding I've been into, I just handed somebody say, here, tie this, tie this. [01:15:41] Speaker A: Well, see, Megan worked at Rarity Bay for so long they had to wear ties. So Megan knows how to tie. Tie. Yeah. So I'm like, tie my tie for me. [01:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So. So I went down there, interviewed with this guy. He was like, this is what you need to say, you know, he's going to do this triangle deal. And he's like, here's, here's everything that you need to say. And I was like, all right, cool. So I went in there and he's like, well, how do you think you did? I was like, I don't know. I did everything you told me to, you know? He's like, all right, cool. Then I think you're good, you know, so. So I started. So I worked at a car dealership and I sold cars for a year and a half. [01:16:12] Speaker C: Golly, you've done everything. [01:16:15] Speaker A: That's so funny. [01:16:16] Speaker B: Hey, let me tell you something about. [01:16:19] Speaker A: So you sold cars for a year and a half. How'd you do it, though? [01:16:21] Speaker B: Oh, b. Willie lived some life, okay? We. We've experienced some stuff, you know. [01:16:27] Speaker C: Nothing you haven't done. [01:16:29] Speaker B: Selling cars. I sucked. Well, because, like, here's my thing is like, I. I wanted to know what we had in it, you know what I'm saying? Like, I, I like to know where you mean dollars. [01:16:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Like where I can stop. Yeah, yeah. Because like, I like to give people good deals. Like I. It's probably not the best thing, but like, I work off of emotions too, you know what I'm saying? Like, if I'm building a good rapport with somebody, I'm not just going to just, you know, rear in some. Somebody with it, you know? So like, so I was telling him about that and. And he's like, well, you don't need to worry about that. He's like, here's your price sheet. And when I'm talking like a dealership, I'm not just talking like some little used car dealership. Like we had a hundred used cars on the lot and 200 new cars on the lot. Yeah, like a dealership. We dealing, Dealing, you know what I'm saying? Like big, big, big dealers, like dates. Like the top salesman there would sell about 20, 22 cars a month. [01:17:27] Speaker C: That's a bunch of cars I got [01:17:28] Speaker A: making a bunch of money. [01:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You know, and he had like seven of these dealerships, you know what I'm saying? [01:17:33] Speaker A: Is that the dude in the three [01:17:35] Speaker C: piece suit with all the jewelry? [01:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah, no, he was, he was actually like. He was, he was like the CEO. He was like the CEO of where he would be out on his. On his Twin Engine 350 yacht on Lake the Ozarks while we're out there busting our humps trying to get him some more money, you know what I'm saying? [01:17:55] Speaker A: Like, what a lie. [01:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah. He was the big guy of the Dealership, you know, we only seen him about once every couple months, you know, making his rounds, you know, but, like, he'd come in there, like, my first day I sold a car. Like, I wasn't even supposed to be selling. He told me, hey, get out here. Get familiar with these cars, learn all this stuff. Like, I'm like, man, I can still barely tie my phone to the radio, let alone anything else, you know? So I'm out hearing these Dodge Darts, and it was a Chrysler dealership. And so, like, I'm. I'm looking at these big trucks because I'm like, man, I ain't gonna. I ain't pedaling with these little big cars or nothing. Like, I'm gonna sell these trucks. Yeah. You know, and so I'm out here just looking at them, and I see somebody, like, all the way across the lot, and I'm talking, like, it probably quarter mile, almost like it seemed big. Not really that big, but it's pretty big. And I'm like, man, these people been out here fighting 45 minutes and ain't nobody talk to him. I said, heck with it. I slammed that door and I said, hey, how can we help y'? All? And he's looking for a car and everything. I get talking to him. I said, yeah, come on in here. I wouldn't even set up in the system. I had to go give it to another salesman. I said, hey, these people want to buy a car. This is his name. This is her name. We're looking at this car. She done. We've already done test drive, done everything. Like, let's work some numbers. And he's like, do what? I just. This big old black dude, he's like, do what? I'm like, we need to sell these guys car, you know? And like, I. I didn't fit in well at that car dealership, cuz, like, I. I was in here. Slacks with cowboy boots with some pretty, you know, wild paisley printed shirts and things. And. And they. They, however, are not, you know what I'm saying? Like, they're out here. Oakley's, Nikes, white country boys, you know what I'm saying? Like, they coming from St. Louis to work, and I'm coming from way west to work, you know, and. And so, like, first day I sold a car, got half the commission off of it. And then after that, it was just, you know, like your first year. It's either feast or famine, you know what I'm saying? So one month, I'm doing good. I've got seven, $8,000 here to play with. And then the next month I'm paying bills with a credit card. Then the next month I'm doing good, getting credit card paid off. Then the next month I'm back down, you know. And, and the other thing is, like, I drove 74 miles one way to work to that dealership for a year and a half. Yes. And then a lot of times I would meet her uncle in Sullivan, which was about 45 minutes for me. And he said, well, you just ride with me. Well, me being the dummy, I'm like, yeah, sure. I saved me on some fuel and whatever else. Well, since he was the gm, he can't leave until every deal is done. Oh, shoot, there'd be two o' clock in the morning and we're leaving and I'm. And he's dropped me off. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna go hit the bed. And I'm like, dude, I got a whole nother hour to go. Or 45 minutes at least, you know. So like me, me and her just never really seen each other. I worked six days a week, every holiday, the whole nine yards. I just, I didn't like it. I just didn't like it. And like, people would come in and I'd build that relationship with them and they're like, hey, well man, we can't do that. We need to be here. And I'd go in there like it was all the time, back and forth. One time I walked like eight miles one day at work because it was cubicle to cubicle. Yeah. Just going all over the place, you know. And they're like, hey, no. Like you can set your price and you go wherever you want. You start. Like, just because price sheet says 30,000 doesn't mean you can't start at 33, you know. And I'm like, man, that's just. I just don't like it. [01:21:17] Speaker A: But it's got to have an advertised price price on the car though. [01:21:20] Speaker B: Only if they look. Only if they. [01:21:23] Speaker A: That's the first thing I look at. Like I don't know what anybody else is looking. [01:21:26] Speaker B: Well, it's the same thing like when you go buy a new car. [01:21:27] Speaker C: Well, some people don't even think about a price. [01:21:30] Speaker B: You go look at the new cars. I saw, I saw a. I saw a salesman that walked. Had a. Had a lady walk in there and she said she wanted by a brand new truck. She was getting in the hot shot and whatever she wanted by brand new dually. Okay, cool. She saw the window sticker on that truck. Well, they all got rebates on guess what? You don't ask about the rebates. You ain't getting the rebates. [01:21:53] Speaker A: So. Oh, wow. [01:21:54] Speaker B: Sold that sucker right at sticker. And he. He made some money off of it, and they kept the rebates, but, I mean, hey, sorry. Yeah, like, that's the way they thought about it. So I was like, man, this. It ain't for me, you know? I mean, it just wasn't for me. So. So then I started looking around, and I seen a John Deere dealership in my hometown was hiring. I was like, that's the ticket right there. So then when I went to work for that John Deere dealership, man, I could see everything. Like, I. I knew my margins, I knew what we had in everything. And so, like, when I'm looking at a $100,000 tractor, I'd be like, okay, I could sell this at 3% margin and still make them enough money. I'm making, you know, 500 bucks. He's getting a heck of a deal. He's going to come back to me anyways, so, like, I could work that stuff like that. I'm cool with it. And so that. That's whenever I really started selling. And excelling in the sales business is. So I worked for that John Deere dealership for about two and a half years. And then my wife, we were talking about moving and everything, and she's like, hey, it's time for us to move. I'm like, well, all right, then. So I just get on there, start looking at John Deere dealerships. Found one in Maryville, Tips, Tennessee, and put in my information. And the guy sent me a thing, and he's like, hey, when you get out here, when you move out here, just let us know. We'd love to interview you. And I said. I said, well, I've got a wife and kids. I'm not moving unless I have a job. And I said, if I wasn't serious about it, I wouldn't give you my information. You know, Like, I'm a pretty straightforward guy and. And honest as could be, you know. So I just told him, and he's like, well, do you care to do a background check? I said, nope, here's my information. He said, where's your closest airport? And this is another crazy story. I can't ever have nothing go right, you know, for me. But. So this was in, like, February. I said, St. Louis. St. Louis. Hour and a half away. I got to be there three hours before my flight time, because that takes that long to get through St. Louis's Airport, you know, through the security and all that and parking and everything. So I get up there. It's like 4:30 in the morning in Missouri, and we're an hour behind y'. All. So it's like 4:30 in the morning for me. I cross the time zone. He picks me up at the airport. All I've got is a. Is a notebook and a. In a little thing case. Like, not really a briefcase, but, you know, something looked a little professional. Picks me up. I got no clothes, but the ones on my back. We go in, take me to lunch. We sit in for an interview. He's like, hey, we got to get you back. We'd love to have you. Boom. We're offering it to you right on the spot. And I'm like, all right, cool. And then I get back to the airport, and they're like, your flight's been delayed. I'm like, well, this is awesome. So my dad's teaching me, talking me through all that, because he travels every week, and he's like, hey, go up to the front desk, get you another flight, see when it's coming. They're like, hey, well, it's two hours from now. I'm like, all right, cool. Put me on that one. Yep, we're good. When there's no direct flight to McGee Tyson. So I had to go from St. Louis to Chicago. Then. Then the McGee Tyson. Yeah, well, same time, it's February, St. Louis, Chicago got hammered with snow and ice, so they shut down the airport in Chicago completely. Shut it down. Yeah. I'm sitting here, I'm like, what the crap am I going back do? Like, I ain't got nothing here. [01:25:13] Speaker A: I had that happen to me while I was in the air above Chicago one time. [01:25:17] Speaker B: Oh, man. [01:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:19] Speaker C: Step her and fly around till it quits. [01:25:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:22] Speaker A: But it was for storms. I mean, it was storms coming through, so. Yeah, we finally had to fly to Iowa. Yeah, we didn't even like it. We were just going to run out of fuel, so then we had to fly back. But anyway, go ahead. Run out of fuel. [01:25:33] Speaker B: Gotta go get some more ethanol. [01:25:34] Speaker A: So you snowed in. So you're snowed in away from home. [01:25:37] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm snow snowed in away from home. Mind you, when I'm here, my wife's. My youngest. My youngest son, Heston, he's only a week old. You know, he was born, like, February 28th, and this was, like, two. Yeah, March 1st. I'm sorry. It was like, right. Right in There that, that week time or something. So I'm like, well, I'll just stay the night down here at the hotel, sleep up underneath the stairs or something, like it ain't no big deal. And I just get on, get on plane, you know, because like St. Louis's Airport don't ever shut down. That thing runs 24 7. So like if I'm waiting on plane, I can sleep right there in the chair, go to my gate and I'm good to go. Like, I'm already locked through security. Well, then this, my boss calls me and he's like, hey, what are you gonna do? And I was like, well, I talked to one of the workers and they said that the airport closes down. But she told me about a stairwell over here that I could just rest my head up behind and go to sleep and then wake up and go walk up the stairs. He said, no, man, you ain't gonna do that. No, hey, I'm on my way right now. I'm gonna come get you. I'm like, but then, but how am I still gonna get back? He said, hey, I'm gonna get you a hotel room. And he showed up with a little bag of stuff, had some deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste for me, paid for me, a hotel. And he said, if the shuttle don't get you back to the airport, call me in the morning, I'll come get you and I'll take you back to the airport. I said, all right, cool. So my flight was supposed to be at 6 o' clock that morning. So I get up, get on the show, go to the airport. And I said, hey, here for my flight and everything? Yep. No, it's, it's, it's on four hour delay still. And I said, man, let's think here. We're only eight hours away. I said, heck, I'm gonna go down and rent a car and I'm just gonna drive back to Missouri. [01:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So. [01:27:16] Speaker B: So I go down there to the car rental place. I said, hey, I need to rent a car. They said, well, we only got trucks and minivans left. And I said, well, I'm driving miss Missouri. So I'd say probably the minivan. So I put me in a little Dodge Caravan. And here I am, you know, 25 years old, 10 and 2, baby, heading down the interstate. Then this guy caught my boss calls me at like 8 o' clock in the morning. He's like, hey, did you make it? And I said, no, I'm on the road. He said, what are you talking about you're on the road. I said, my flight was another four hour delay, so I said, I just figured, the heck with it. I just hit the road. I said, I'm already in Kentucky. Like, I'm gone. And. And he was like, well, why didn't you call me? I said, well, you wasn't gonna take me back to Missouri, so I just figured I'd do it on my own, no big deal. So I had to drive all the way back to St. Louis, drop my car off at the airport, get on a shuttle at the airport, go to, Go to the parking garage, get my truck, pay for the parking, then drive all the way back to. To where I was from, which was an hour and a half away. Still got home like 9 o' clock that night. Then I. I had to go back to work the next day because I was only going to be gone for a day. So then I had to call them people and say, hey, man, you know I ain't going to make it in tomorrow. I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I hate to lie to you, but I'm sick, you know, Like, I'm just not going to be there because I'm not in the state. So then I got up, finally got there, and, you know, of course Brittany, she's like, well, what they say? And I said, well, they offered me the job. She's like, do what? I said, yeah, they offered me the job. And she's like, oh, my God, what are we gonna do? I said, I don't know. You tell me you want to move, we'll move. If not, that's fine. And he's. She's like, well, when do we have to move? I said, well, he told me that we could have Heston and he'd give us, you know, about a month or so afterwards, and I'd be all right. And she's like, okay. Well, that next two mornings after that, my wife went into labor. We had to go to the hospital in the middle of an ice storm. Had him. The hospital shut down. Nobody could be there. It's just me, her and my son. And so then. So we had a lot to talk about, you know, this whole job deal. And I was like, all right, well, hey, if you want, I'm good to go if you are. And she's like, yeah, let's do it. And so I texted him back and I told him, I said, hey, I can come and work. He said, when do you want to start? I said, I don't know, March 25th or something like that. Be fine. He's a month old. And I was down here working, got in the Wood Spring Suites on Alcohol Highway. That's where I stayed. Wood spring, sweet 91 days. And then. [01:29:47] Speaker A: Then you finally closed on the home. [01:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah, finally closed on the home and moved everybody down here. Which that was a trip in itself too because we had like four. Well, first off, we had a newborn baby with us. Also two. Had a four year old with us. Then we had four vehicles loaded down. So I closed on my house on Friday. My dad flew into St. Louis Friday morning. He went back to his house, got his truck and camper, drove all the way to Tennessee, went to the closing with me. Me and him loaded back up in the truck, drove all the way back to Missouri that night. Got there about 11:30 at night. The next morning we was up at 8 o', clock, went and got the moving truck and I had everything thing loaded up and unloaded in our house in Tennessee and I was back to work. Monday. I moved. I moved my entire family in three days. [01:30:38] Speaker C: That's wild. [01:30:39] Speaker B: One weekend. One weekend we was hoofing it. We was hoofing it. [01:30:48] Speaker A: But so how have you like to live here since. [01:30:50] Speaker B: Dude, I tell you, we love it. I mean, the only thing that I will say, say that I do miss is just like, you know, the farming and ranching and, you know, just that lifestyle. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like. Yeah. [01:31:01] Speaker A: The being away from everything. [01:31:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:03] Speaker A: Because here we're kind of. [01:31:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I know, I know I'm a transplant, but I think it's time that we cut to cut borders off, you know, let's shut them down a little bit. For sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm a good one, you know, I don't know about everybody else, [01:31:17] Speaker A: but you definitely are some of these people. [01:31:22] Speaker B: Oh yeah. But, but yeah, no, like I, I always talk to my wife about it, make jokes with her. I'm like, hey, if you want to move back, you know, we can move back. She's like, we are not moving. Like, no, we're staying here in Tennessee. I'm like, all right, sounds good. You know, we, we love it. You know, and the kids playing baseball and sports and doing all the friend stuff. You know, me and Bo, we, we had a little, little record there going last year. No slow dogs, buddy. We, we did all right. But, but no, it's, it's a blast. We, we enjoy it here. We love the mountains. I mean, just some of the prettiest country you could ever see is Right here. And. And I get to see a lot of it because I still sell. And so I travel around. I'm still in the equipment sales, so I travel around a lot with my job that I've got now. And I see all the mountains and been on backside of Gatlinburg. Been up to. What is that, like English Mountain or something? I've been to the top of that thing. That ain't fun at all. But. But yeah, we love it. Love it. People are great here for the most part. Some of them a little iffy, but no, we. We enjoy it. It's fun. [01:32:32] Speaker A: What'd you think when we asked you to come on this podcast? [01:32:35] Speaker B: I don't know. I just. I bounce around like crazy. It's hard to kick me. [01:32:39] Speaker C: Fit in really well, I can give you that. [01:32:41] Speaker B: My adhd, man. Like, I just go and I mean, you've seen Heston. That's where he gets it from. You know what I mean? Yeah, he's wild. He's all boy, you know, I mean, he's. And he's a. But he's a good kid, though. He's a good kid and he's got a good heart on him. But man, he just. When he's up, it's, let's go. And it don't matter how 100 mile an hour, we're getting there. I'm the same way, though, so. But yeah, I jumped around a lot, but I really didn't know, you know, like, what was going to be asked or what I was going to even talk about because, like, I got to think I'm like, really, I kind of. I'm kind of born life, you know, like, you know, but. But yeah, like, I don't think I've [01:33:22] Speaker C: ever even met somebody that has lived in Hawaii. [01:33:26] Speaker B: Until tonight. Until tonight I have. [01:33:29] Speaker C: Not so. [01:33:30] Speaker A: Well, only because of my cousin did. [01:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah. But yeah, now we, we just. We. We've been. We've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things and [01:33:39] Speaker C: I've lived in one house my whole life. [01:33:41] Speaker A: Except you ain't done it. [01:33:42] Speaker C: Except the one that I own right now. [01:33:45] Speaker A: But, I mean, you could say I lived in two houses. [01:33:47] Speaker C: Well, whichever. But I mean, I'm just saying it same. I've never. Yeah, you've never moved. [01:33:52] Speaker A: You know what's more boring about me than you? I grew up. And what I live in now, too, is my papa's. [01:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:58] Speaker A: So I was here half the time. I was at my own house. [01:34:00] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's my wife. Like my Wife. When me and her first get together, we've been married 10 years. Been together 12, 13 years now. She'd never been outside state line of Missouri. Yeah. Whenever me and her met, and first time she was on the plane was with me. First time she's been to the beach. First time, you know, any of that kind of stuff. And then when she said she wanted to move, I was like, I'm taking that opportunity. We go, we are gone. [01:34:25] Speaker C: You know, I mean, my wife, she was. They were. Her dad was in the nuclear field, so they moved all the time they moved. It wasn't like she'd counted up. It was like 13 times they moved. [01:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:34:36] Speaker C: That's freaking nuts. Yeah. People just bouncing like that. That's just crazy to me. I don't. I don't even. I didn't like moving from mom and Dad's to my house that I bought. [01:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm dreading moving 20 minutes down the road here. [01:34:47] Speaker B: Here. [01:34:47] Speaker A: Coming up. [01:34:48] Speaker B: So it ain't too bad. [01:34:50] Speaker C: It's really moving, Missouri here. I mean, to Tennessee in three days. Every movie, everything. [01:34:57] Speaker A: It'll take me three months. Move what I got here, you can move all the way across the state lines in three days. [01:35:02] Speaker B: Hey, there ain't nothing wrong with that. You got all time in the world. You ain't got to worry about selling the place. You know, you just take a little bit at a time, you know, that's [01:35:08] Speaker A: what I'm planning on doing. [01:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's. That's the best way to do it, honestly. Either that or pay somebody to do it. Because every time I get to moving, I'm like, gosh dang it, somebody next time. And then here we go. We got El jefe right here. Just moving boxes, loading up the trailer and loading it down. I mean, the first time I moved, we loaded everything up in the stock trailer. [01:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:31] Speaker B: You know, that's good. We loaded up Gooseneck and that's best man. [01:35:35] Speaker A: Stock trailer. [01:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Moved it all there. But. But, yeah. No, I. I don't know. I just. The way I look at is like. I just didn't think anything was real exciting, you know, that I've done. I just thought it was kind of normal, but I guess it ain't. [01:35:49] Speaker A: You are not normal. [01:35:50] Speaker B: No, no. [01:35:51] Speaker A: You are not normal. It's a whole lot more normal than you are. [01:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And you. [01:35:56] Speaker C: Car salesman, Hawaii. Yeah, man. [01:36:01] Speaker A: Thanks for coming on. [01:36:02] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:36:03] Speaker A: And telling the story of you. I hope our viewers like it. [01:36:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:36:07] Speaker A: Thanks for watching and listening, y'. [01:36:09] Speaker C: All. [01:36:09] Speaker A: We'll be back next week with something else. [01:36:12] Speaker B: Yep. [01:36:12] Speaker A: Thanks. [01:36:13] Speaker C: See you guys next time.