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Charge Forward Podcast
The Charge Forward Podcast: Dedicated to those who choose to Charge Forward into the Storm when hit with challenges. This is what makes them different and has lead to their success. When in doubt.... Charge Forward!
Charge Forward Podcast
No Quit in Our Blood: The Unstoppable Lives of James and John Cripps
What does it mean to Never Quit?
In this unforgettable episode of The Charge Forward Podcast, host Jim Cripps sits down with the two men who taught him everything about resilience—his father James Cripps and uncle John Cripps.
From Post Depression-era Nashville mischief to near-death experiences in their seventies, these brothers embody grit, ingenuity, and an unshakable zest for life. You’ll hear:
- How they "borrowed" a boat as kids and paddled miles downriver
- Why John, at 69, flipped a RZR 1000 Turbo at 70 mph and still landed on the podium
- James' powerful journey from military service to leading veterans through the broken VA system
- How they built lifelong skills in metalwork and carpentry without formal training
- And what it means to live by the motto: "You don't stop—you just slide into something else."
Their sibling rivalry pushed them to excellence. Their work ethic kept them independent. And their stories will change the way you view aging, purpose, and what it means to keep charging forward—no matter what life throws at you.
💥 “Be somebody worth dying for—because so many have died to give you this opportunity.” — James Cripps
🎧 Listen now for a rare glimpse into two lives that prove resilience isn’t about survival. It’s about how you live while you’re here.
🪖 Want to know more about VA Claims?
🌐 Youtube: VA The Red Neck Way
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I wanted to leave them with the moral of the whole nine-minute speech was be somebody worth dying for because so many have died?
Speaker 2:When they came out with them. We saw them, thought they were pretty neat. So we closed Charlotte Avenue one night. About 6 o'clock in the evening, it got dark in the winter and we closed the road off, made a detour. We had a hedge in front of the house. No, no, you don't need to tell that one either.
Speaker 3:All right, good afternoon everybody. Jim cripps here with the charge forward podcast and I have a special treat for you today. I have my uncle, john crips, and my dad, james crips. Welcome guys, afternoon. How we doing today. Wonderful, it's a wonderful day, that's right. That's right now. Um, obviously, both of you grow, grew up here here in nashville, just not too far away from here, right and the nations, the nations and the nations off Tennessee or Alabama, pennsylvania, pennsylvania, okay, and went to Catholic school out of the gate, right, st.
Speaker 1:Ann's Father Ron finished up Hume Fogg Charlie went a different direction.
Speaker 2:I went to St Ann's West Junior Hume Fog.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. So both of you finished up at Hume Fog, and you know, both of you obviously can work on just about anything, but you went neck deep and one of you went in metal and the other one went in wood. Yeah, and so, john, I remember, from as early as I can remember, you worked in tool and die, right exactly. And you know, give me an idea, like what I know, you worked at parthenon for a long time, bridgestone uh, I worked in various machine shops.
Speaker 2:The first one I worked there was custom tool and I a neighbor of mine said he'd give me a job when I got old enough, and he did. I was actually driving a company truck to Franklin back when I was 15 years old. Yeah, that kept me out of the military occupational deferment. We had a military contract, so I hung around and built parts for bombs and missiles for a few years, yeah, and several machine shops after that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then long-standing at Parthenon yeah, 20 years total. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then after that went to Bridgestone no a couple of places between there and Bridgestone yeah, yeah, but then a long time at Bridgestone. A couple of places between there and Bridgestone?
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, but then a long time at Bridgestone after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 12 years at Bridgestone. Yeah, for Cumler Machine and Bridgestone. Yeah, that partnership yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, and then some fun stuff with Marathon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's my hobby job and after I retired before I retired actually I started fooling around with Marathon. My best friend and neighbor, barry Walker, owns Marathon Village in Nashville and the cars are very rare. I get to drive the cars, I maintain the cars.
Speaker 3:I've got a shop down there that I work, work out of, and it's uh, it's a fun job yeah, well, and both of you are big into car shows and and tinkering these days, so what does that look like? What's the car show scene look like?
Speaker 2:uh, I stay busy. I go to several. A couple out of state every year go to rat totoberfest in Paducah, kentucky. It's a big one. We go stay two or three days. I've mostly got rat rods, some custom cars, but mostly rat rods is what I deal in. Older cars is what I enjoy, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then same kind of era, but Dad's more on the restomod side, and you just got a new one yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:I got a 68 chevelle convertible uh dream car, something I've always wanted. It just had to get old enough for me to afford. But the thing about it is, you know, that's like a rat chasing his tail. When that car came out it was about $2,800, $2,900. Now it's $40,000. So you know, it's hard to wait for times to catch up with you. That's right.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, if we go back, I can remember as a kid, dad, you talking about the 396 chevelle when it came out, and I can remember, uh, two things specifically. Uncle johnny, I remember, um, I think you left the car in the parking lot going around in circles while you went in to get something to eat yes, I.
Speaker 2:I drove a 40 Chevrolet. I gave $35 for it. It had flower daisy, flower stickers all over it. Everybody at school called it flower power. It had plenty of room. It had suicide doors. Big old, long car I gave everybody rides to school and back 57 Chevrolets and stuff. And we'd go to Shoney's parking lot out at Harding Mall. We'd go across the road and I'd actually turn the wheel all the way to the left. It was so worn out it would hang turning and pull the throttle out and actually get out and watch it.
Speaker 3:Do circles in the parking lot Quite an experience, yeah, and then I think at some point you tried to make your own lift kit out of 2x4s on a Bronco or a—.
Speaker 2:A 57 Chevrolet station wagon.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:I jacked it up and drove 2x4s in leaf springs and shackles to lift the back end up. That's what I done. I bet it rode real good. That was my budget. That was A 2x4 was the budget. I wasn't worried about how it rode.
Speaker 3:That's right it looked cool, that's right, uh. And then you know, fast forward. I mean, really, as I was a kid, um, you know, dad put me on a motorcycle pretty early and I remember, coming over to your house, dad was on um, his kawasaki 175 and you were on a big red four-wheeler, I mean big red three-wheeler, three-wheeler right, and, uh, me looking off the edge of the power lines going no, that's not for me, and you guys just tearing it up. Yeah, so you know it's. I kind of look at you know, both of you've had incredible health scares, um, in the last 12 months, um, well, I guess last 18 months. You know I can remember sitting by your bedside and I see you and doctors saying it's, it's game over, you know if you have anything to say, you need to go ahead and say it.
Speaker 3:and then, dad, you know, just since your last visit here, uh, 60 days ago, um, nearly nearly, uh crossing over and and not being with us anymore, and you know, coming in here on a wheelchair today, um, too close for comfort, too close for comfort, but at the same time I think it just, it shows, uh, you know, some of it is just right time, right place, and then some of it is just you guys are just tough as hell, like the grim reapers over there, just going like damn. I don't know about that. The Grim Reapers over there are just going like damn. They're hard to kill.
Speaker 2:It would have killed an ordinary man. That's right. That's what I say as a joke, okay.
Speaker 1:You just have to go through it, pick yourself up, shake it off, see what you got left. Yeah, use what you got left. That's right, because you don't know how long you're going to have that much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what. You don't know how long you're gonna have that much. Yeah, well, if we back up, if we go all the way back 25 plus years ago um, you know the day of your 48th birthday. Uh, it's lucky that it was your birthday party, because, because you're over there just singing and playing the harmonica and luckily, uncle johnny was there and decided to break a few speed limit rules in order to get you to the hospital.
Speaker 1:Funny part about that is Johnny gave me the ride of my life that night. I remember one cross road we went airborne. There was a cop waiting on the other side and he couldn't catch us. Stopped us at the next red light and I think, john, you told him either escort us or leave us alone or something like that. But the hell of it is, we got ready to come over here today. Johnny ain't riding with me. He called me last night. He said okay, we're going your way, but I'm driving. I said the hell, you are.
Speaker 2:Ain't riding with him either. That's right, that's bad.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, from a driving standpoint. You know, one of the other things that I remember from a long way back is you know, in your 40s you were ranked as a four-wheeler racer, exactly yes. And you know, these days it was just. You know, a lot of people wouldn't even fathom that. You know, I think of it. Right now I'm in my 40s and I feel like I'm in pretty decent shape, but I don't know that I'd want to ride what was Blackwater 100 miles.
Speaker 2:100 miles Toughest race in the world, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and actually I went with you to that in 93. You did and you know, just watching the race I was filthy, much less racing in it.
Speaker 2:It's just fun. Not clean fun, but fun yeah.
Speaker 3:And these days not only are you into cars but into razors and off-roading Right, and had a little racing part of that too Right. Who was the road with John Barge of that too Right. Who was it that you rode with John Barge? That's right. Yeah, and you had an interesting finish line situation a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were doing 70-mile-an-hour uphill and topped a hill and went 70-foot in the air and flipped three times end over end and broke three ribs and passed the guy that passed us while we were flipping and actually ended up on the podium in a race.
Speaker 3:We're done pretty good. And so how old were you when you were in that race and broke three ribs?
Speaker 2:69 years old. There you go yeah.
Speaker 3:So not what most 69-year-olds are doing on a Saturday.
Speaker 2:I think I was the oldest guy there.
Speaker 3:Watching or racing, yeah, yeah, and I think you guys, both you just don't give up. It's just not in your spirit, no, no, it's just not in your spirit, no, no. So out there right now, somebody, somebody's you know it could be brothers or siblings, or somebody here growing up in Nashville or some other place, and they got no idea what they want to be, they got no idea what opportunities are out there. And, uh, what would, what would you tell them? They're a teenager, they're about to try to figure out if they're headed to college or getting a job.
Speaker 2:I would tell them to look real hard at what they want to do the rest of their lives and with their lives. You know, if they want to get in a race, then start hanging around the people that do that. If they want to get in a drywall, start hanging around people and get a that, do that. If they want to get in the drywall, start hanging around people and get a job doing that. If you want to go in business, go into a field that's a business you're wanting to get in and learn it from the bottom up and then make the jump and do it. It's more opportunity out there now than it ever has been. I think, yeah, it really is. Dad, what about you?
Speaker 1:I don't know. You're talking about giving up and quitting. I'm sitting here thinking you know what's the signal. At what point do you actually decide it's time to quit or give up? Or I think I'll just sit around the house from now on, or I give up, or I think I'll just sit around the house from now on. If that's the case, why even go on? Why get out of the bed in the morning? Right, you know, I don't know what quitting looks like yet. Not looking forward to it, whatever it is, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think that's a difference maker, because so many people out there are looking for comfort, meaning they want to sit down, they want to take it easy. And the reality is, if you sit down and you take it easy, at some point, that's all you're going to be able to do and you'll lose the right. You'll lose the ability to go out there and do something.
Speaker 1:Well, don't put it past me to drag up a stool and sit down, but if I'm sitting there, I'm thinking about what I want to do next. If I run out of the will or the physical ability to do something, there's always something else. You don't stop, you just slide. Always something else. You know, you just uh, you don't stop, you just slide into something else. Get interested in life, because there's plenty of things in life, uh, don't require a lot of brains, don't require a lot of physical ability. There's always something out there. Get interested, get interested in people in life and and doing things.
Speaker 3:Remain proud, yeah well, you know, I think of, uh, even what you do now, helping other veterans with their claims. It's not like you set out for that to be a thing oh it's, uh, I didn't, I stumbled into it.
Speaker 1:uh, the very first thing is, I fell into that hole on my own. I tried to figure out how to dig myself out of that hole and in digging myself out of that hole, I found out how to dig other veterans out of the hole. And I still help veterans. That's a daily thing. My phone rings off the wall. A lot of people depend on me. I've learned the ins and outs. I have a website, va the Redneck Way. I write these things down how to go about winning your veterans' claims and coping with the disabilities, trying to help other veterans out there hundreds of thousands out there who need help. But yet you look at it, we're only 1% of the population.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, it even came up yesterday. In fact, I missed a call during my last podcast with a friend of mine whose dad had no idea anything about benefits, had no idea about any of that. In fact. I asked what his VA rating disability rating was and he said he couldn't remember what it was. And I said, well, if you tell me how much your monthly check is from VA, I can get pretty close. And he said, well, I don't get a check from VA, so well then, you don't have a disability rating, it's zero.
Speaker 1:You know, this is something like if the federal government told you, when you're 96 years old, we're going to tell you that you could have drawn Social Security when you were 65. Yeah, suck it up.
Speaker 3:Right, you know. Shame on you for not knowing is kind of what their stance is Exactly so, trying to get the word out.
Speaker 1:you know, it took me 40 years to ever figure it out. That the VA may owe me something. Mm-hmm, that the VA may owe me something, and not only that your medical care, right? You know, we're veterans exposed to all kinds of toxins, and those toxins are costly on your health. The ones who outlive it manage to outlive it, like me. At almost 76 now, we finally got our medical care. The ones that didn't outlive it never knew they had medical care coming. So for me it was a bite and for those guys it was a fatal bite. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, for all the things that have kind of happened negatively because of your military experience, you know there are also some pretty good stories from some times y'all had too. One that comes to mind that I remember y'all telling as a kid is I think there was a New Year's Eve party where y'all got a Jeep stuck. That resulted in three or four or five different wreckers getting stuck.
Speaker 1:Yes, we did. What was it, John?
Speaker 2:Five wreckers, six Five wreckers a Jeep, a Bronco. This was on New Year's night, 1968,.
Speaker 1:What was it John? Five records, six Five records. A Jeep, a Bronco. This was on New Year's Night, 1968, I think. Yes, I forget the reason, but John had come down to visit me. I was a military game warden.
Speaker 1:John had come down over Christmas to visit and I got a call New Year's night and there was a several day rain. It was wet, cold. We had to go over like a mountain and there was a tree down. So we had to reverse our course and we came to one bank where it was beached going in and beached coming out. Well, when we came back, it was beached going in and a bluff to climb. When you came out, we hit that bluff and bounced backwards and the Bronco, the clutch, got wet. There we sat, I know. We went downstream five miles, busting out beaver dams, trying to lower the water.
Speaker 1:Finally, we just picked up the radio, abandoned the Bronco, walked back to my office and started calling wreckers. I called for a 20-ton tactical. They said a five-ton commercial. He didn't make it, he went off in the swamp. So we crawl out of the swamp and we get back to where we get a radio signal. And I called for another one. They sent a 10-ton commercial off in the swamp. We go again. We went in swamp about five times that night. Ended up we just left everybody in the swamps. Went back the next morning in my jeep and there were chinook helicopters hooked to those records, sucking in the mud trying to pull those treacherous out of the mud. We went over the mountain and my Jeep came out right in front of the Bronco, pulled the Jeep out of the water, dried the clutch off and went back and went back to sleep. Meanwhile they're out there pulling it. They're out there with Chinook helicopters. Yeah, that was so.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile I drove the Jeep back, followed him in a Bronco. I'm 15 years old, no license on the military base, security of death. I'm going to go to jail. That sounds about right it was.
Speaker 1:He followed me to work one morning and we parked in a parking lot across from the motor pool. I said you follow me to my office. When I come out of there, I'm going to be driving a green sedan. Every sedan that came out of there was a green sedan. Right, he followed the first one out. I had to put an all-points bullet out for him.
Speaker 2:All the MPs on me. Mps finally stopped him. I was scared to death again. I was going to go to jail. Probably the best story was the dog, though. Don't even mention that one.
Speaker 1:That was horrible. Yeah, I got a call Dog on post in the house and area and that's a no-no. Well, I had to pick up a dart gun. It was a 32-gauge shotgun that shot darts. And you load the dart by how many pounds the animal was. You had a whole kit, anywhere from two and a half, three pounds different bottles pulling up to 285 pounds. So you sight the dog or cat and then you load up according to the weight. Well, I never saw a dog that weighed less than 285 pounds. So I loaded up the dart and we pull up in the housing area and the dog wagged his tail. I said nothing wrong with that dog. I'll go get that dog, We'll carry him over to the vet.
Speaker 1:Well, I just happened to carry my shotgun with me. The dart loaded shotgun and the dog lunged at me. When he did, I just swung around and fired. Well, the dart and the dog lunged at me when he did. I just swung around and fired. Well, the dart hit the dog in the neck and he ran under the barracks and he was squalling and he was hollering and the guy run out, great big sergeant. He said did you shoot my dog? John said no, sir, I think that guy over there did, I wasn't supposed to be there.
Speaker 1:Right. So the guy comes over and he said I'm going to catch you out sometime with that .45 off of your hip. Well, the dog shut up and I crawled under there, brought the dog out. I couldn't find that dart. I made spaghetti out of that dog and I still couldn't find that dart. So I carried him over and put him in an incinerator and the vet gave me an improvised dart with a little blood on it. It kind of saved me there, but I did honestly shoot the dog with a dart. I don't know what happened to the dart, but I've never forgiven John for telling on me.
Speaker 2:Well, the man's wife was on the second story, the barracks throwing cans of dog food in a bag of dog food hit me in the head with it.
Speaker 1:Well, I wasn't hungry, you know.
Speaker 3:Well then, y'all used to hunt in Fort Campbell too After we got out of the military. We did, and I think there was a story, maybe it was Jack. Somebody had a boat on the top of a Volkswagen and let's just say his securing method was not ideal and it slid down over the side while you were going down the highway, or something of that nature.
Speaker 2:No, that was. I had an Oldsmobile 442, and I saved up my money and put a silver metal plate paint job on it like 600 bucks, which is like 10,000 now, yeah. And we were going to shoot them down and Jack didn't tie his side of the boat right and we went on a curve and the boat jumped off the top of the car, stayed tight on my side and was 50 mile an hour down the road with the boat running beside us bouncing up and down tearing my paint job up. I mean that was real exciting. Yeah, I guess so. But at Fort Campbell we did donate a deer to a guy one day.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We put a deer on a guy's car that he didn't have any luck getting a deer, so we gave him a deer while he was hunting. He probably had a surprise when he got back.
Speaker 1:That's right we did dot the I on a deer sign while we were down there. Well, yeah, we did. Yeah, I heard a shot go off and I heard something go bong. John shot the deer sign.
Speaker 2:I actually shot at a deer. I was up in a big peach tree with a lot of limbs on the side of the road and I could see a curve in the road and a bridge and a deer crossed the road and there was a sign that said five-ton bridge and I actually shot the deer and shot the sign too.
Speaker 1:Anybody that can't tell a deer sign from a deer, I ain't going hunting with them no more.
Speaker 3:Yeah but, but y'all have spent a lot of time in the woods, a lot of time, you know. One of the things that I always found humorous, um, is you know we would go different places, whether it be, uh, you know, back then you had to draw for the hunts, and so you know Catoosa or Cheatham, a lot of wildlife areas, and you two have the innate ability to get out of the car and go in opposite directions and somehow or another, run into each other.
Speaker 1:Yes, Just about every time we hunted.
Speaker 2:We'd go opposite directions and I'd go five miles and run into him somewhere in the middle of nowhere. So I got him where he would let me out of the truck two miles before we was going where we was going and it might be raining or snowing, and at about 10 o'clock I'd start walking looking for deer. If I hadn't seen any, and he'd do the same, and we'd meet up somewhere, I'd hear somebody shoot and look and see him going down a hill to get a deer Right. And we're supposed to be two, three miles apart. We just had the ability to find each other somehow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if I ever got lost in the woods or hurt. If you could take John out and turn him loose like you would a bloodhound, that would have been a good dog. It wouldn't be long, right, he'd find me.
Speaker 3:What do you think is the best story you got from growing up? Either one of you, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know. We had some pretty good ones. We had a routine. When we were 10 years old we had a boat we had it tied up to an actual ship in the mouth of Richland Creek on the Cumberland River. We acquired the boat I guess you could have called it acquired. They used it at a pumping station in a rock quarry and we found out that we could actually, with enough of us, pick that boat up and carry it up those rocks and put it over in the river. We'd paddle two, three miles to Cox's Island and back. We also had a cement mixer over in a creek that we used as a boat, Paddled it with brooms.
Speaker 1:We hopped trains. That's how we had bicycles and we lay our bicycles along the tracks. We knew what time the trains came and we knew where we were going. We'd hop a train. We could go swimming cascade, hop off the train. We'd get back on another train going on out to Faroe Fiberglass. Get in their dumpsters, get the big marbles to shoot in our flippers, get back on the train, ride back to Donesco, get in their dumpster and get shoe tongs for our flippers. Yeah, Stop by the service station, go ride back to the service station, get old inner tubes for rubber and we would actually kill rabbits and squirrels with those flippers. We got good at them. Yeah. What about you, John? What was your world with those flippers? We got good at them. Yeah. What about you, John? What was your?
Speaker 2:I guess I had as much fun riding bicycles. All we had was junk bicycles made out of parts. That's where I learned to start working on things and turning wrenches and we'd get on our bicycles. We'd start on Saturday morning, of course we lived on our bicycles. We'd start on a Saturday morning, of course we lived in West Nashville. We'd ride the Hendersonville, back Goodlesville, back halfway to Dixon. We went everywhere on bicycles and done everything you could do on bicycles. One of our favorite things a friend of mine, bubba Naley, and I we used to go down to Cleges Ferry, ride down the ferry ramp and go off into the Cumberland River. We'd talk Jakey Keaton, which was a ferry attendant, and he'd let us ride the ferry across the river. We'd get halfway across the river and ride off the ramp to the ferry boat into the river. We'd tie a rope on our bicycles and we could swim back to the ferry and get our bicycle and drag it back to the bank. But riding bicycles, I guess, was a big thing. We went everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nashville, all of Nashville, was our backyard.
Speaker 3:Well and correct me if I'm wrong, but back then White Ridge Road was the end of town. It was in the country.
Speaker 1:it was a two-lane road and it was gravel or everything past that was gravel yeah, I can't remember it being gravel, but I can remember being just a little bitty narrow road with no shoulders. And, and my grandmother and granddaddy happened to live on white bridge road. They lived at 181. Like I say, that was out in the country when they lived on Whitebridge Road. We would visit them. They had chickens.
Speaker 1:One memory about Easter my granddad went to the post office and there were crates there piled up with a sign on it chickens, 1,000 chickens. No such address, pay the postage and they're yours. Well, he paid the postage and he brought those 1,000 chicks home and he had an airplane nose that he put them in in his basement. It had lights in there. I can remember the little chicks running in and out of where the props go into the nose and they were dying so quick. He had a coal scuttle and they had coal-fired furnace heat and he was shoveling those chickens into the fire and the whole neighborhood smelled like chicken Smelled good. Yeah, it did, and this was before Colonel Sanders. Yeah, it was, that's right. But anyway, 52 of those chickens lived, 52 out of 1,000. 52 out of 1,000.
Speaker 2:It was so cold they were dying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they got chilled.
Speaker 3:But they had a good set of chickens, I guess after that.
Speaker 1:And then there was a guy lived down the road. We'd all get on our bicycles, sometimes eight, 10, 12 of us, and we would load those bicycles down. We had fishing poles, we had frog gigs, we had a skillet, we had loaves of bread, we had everything gigs. We had a skillet, we had loaves of bread, we had everything that we needed. And we would stop by Frank's hen house, raid his hen house and get eggs and we'd build us a fire and use our skillets. We would cook fish, catch fish, frog legs and eggs. We had a time on the Harbors River. We'd pedal down, we'd stay a night, two nights on the gravel bars, just good, clean fun, never hurt anybody, never got hurt.
Speaker 3:And you were what? 10, 12 years old. Eight to 12. Eight to 12?.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then John, how many years younger than three? Okay, yeah, and then fast forward a little bit, not too much later. Then Robert comes in the picture, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, poor Robert.
Speaker 1:He was a guinea pig. We were riding bicycles. Big, long, tall hill had a big curve in it 90 degree curve and then when he got to our house, you went straight up a bank. Well, we've decided we were, we need to be a little braver. So we took our handlebars off. Everybody had to leave their handlebars in the ditch, go to the top of the hill and we would race down that hill, around that curve, hit that bank and jump up into the front yard. We wore a rut in that hill Pull. Robert comes out and he said what are y'all doing? First thing that came into my mind I said we're riding our bicycles backwards down that hill. Robert said well, if y'all didn't do that, I didn't do that too. That didn't end up too good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can see that Well. Then you know big times down at the farm and then on y'all's properties too.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well you know, when I got out of the service I brought home some contraband. I brought home about 10 parachute flares. They're a really, really powerful flare that you shoot up into the air and they come down on a parachute. They're made to light up the battlefield Right. Also brought home some hand grenades and I had thrown many a hand grenade, but it was all in training areas and wide open areas.
Speaker 1:So I was standing out by the car one morning. Mom was standing beside me. I said, hey, mom, what's this? And I pitched one of those hand grenades. Well, I ain't never heard a hand grenade go off in a neighborhood, and neither had anybody else. It shook the whole neighborhood. The guy next door was a body defender man. He came running out of his shop. By then Mom and I had run in the house but the smoke had hovered up around the transformer. He called the electric company and told them their transformer blew up. We took the rest of those things down to the farm and blew up the pig house and smoke house. We had a time with those grenades. If we got caught with those we'd still be in jail, that's right. We would. The parachute flares, no matter how harmless they seemed, they came out, came back down and all the grass home fire. We had about 10 grass fires going at once, so not a good idea.
Speaker 3:But I remember granddaddy stopped by the house one time and stopped in the shop, was talking for a few minutes and then casually said did you set the bank on fire outside?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I did that, burnt all the woods. Well, we had 35 acres, it was clean as desert, but we didn't have any idea Things were burning by the time he finally saw it and came in and said something about it. Everything was burnt, everything was gone no grass, no trees, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:But good times, that was a scary, that was. That was a scary one. That was a scary one. Yeah, um, what about, uh, what about down at the farm, besides the, besides the hand grenades, um, well, what's a? What do you? What do you think is a good?
Speaker 1:good story from down there well, there was a lake down there. We enjoyed fishing down there. John and I went down one morning going deer hunting. And you have to understand Bill. Bill was from up north. He wanted to be a southern boy, wanted to be a farmer. So he saved his money. He was a steam footer for the union. He saved his money. When he retired he bought his money. He was a steam footer for the union. He saved his money. When he retired he bought a farm and we went down to hunt. One morning we were going deer hunting. Bill was sitting there eating breakfast. He had eggs and something else. I said what are you eating, bill? He said pheasant. I said Bill, where'd you get pheasant? He said, oh, I killed it out back. I go out there and me and Johnny go out there and look One of those big red headed woodpeckers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, feathers everywhere Feathers were all over the back porch.
Speaker 1:Then Bill decided he wanted a horse. So he goes and buys big red. We go, look at Big Red, and the guy walks up to Big Red, touches him on the leg. Big Red bows down in the front. The guy climbs on him. He touches him on the leg again. Big Red stands up. They ride him around the field. They come back and he said would you like to ride Big Red? Bill said yeah. So Bill touches him on the leg. He goes down in the front, comes back up, they ride around a little bit. Wasn't exactly a gallop, it was hang on for dear life. But anyway, we load him on the trailer, get him back to the farm, turn him loose. Five years later they still ain't caught Big Red. Yet I think John caught him one time. What happened, john?
Speaker 2:I caught him, rode him one time and he was just as gentle as you'd want him to be. I rode him for maybe an hour all around the pastures, up in the wood trails, up down the road. I brought him back, I tied his bridle to the fence beside the house there to a gate, and Susie wanted to ride him. Sister, she came out there and she got ready to get on him and he stomped his foot or something and she jumped and he jumped and he snatched the fence off the hinges and it hit him in the side and he tore out down through 80-acre pasture fast as he'd go with a fence going over his back, hitting him on the back. It took me three hours to catch him and cut the gate off of him with a knife, just cut his bridle, finally got it off and that was in the end. He. You couldn't get near him ever again to ride him. That was the end of getting close to that horse. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, it really scared him.
Speaker 1:Well, bill ran up adding a paper for the horse. Some guy comes riding up. He said where is your horse? Bill said he's out there in the pasture. I can't catch him. The guy whistles. Here comes, big Red Walks right up beside him. Guy touches him on the leg. Big Red goes down the front end. He gets on him, rides him around, pays bill loads him on the trailer. That's the end of big red I love it.
Speaker 3:Um well, and one of the things I remember um, as a kid I guess I don't know how old I would have been young is swimming in our lake at the house. And was it Robert that held on, got afraid, didn't let go of the swing and then came back and swung into the tree.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a tire swing on a cable. We were swinging out dropping off in the lake. Robert wanted to try it. I don't guess he'd ever done that. He was afraid to turn loose and he came back and slammed that tree and broke about three ribs. He did. But we'd go down on. We had a little building down there. We called it the hoochie. Sometimes there'd be 10 or 12 people staying at the hoochie overnight. The lake was right outside the door. We would me and John were farming back then We'd carry about 12, 15 watermelons down, throw them in the lake, let them be cool, spend a night down there, go deer hunting in the wintertime, go swimming in the summertime. We had some good times down there. No, you did, sure did.
Speaker 2:I shot through the roof one time, I don't know how you know, scared everybody to death. How do you know it was through the roof.
Speaker 1:We never did find a hole.
Speaker 2:Well, the gun was pointed up and I was inside. Yeah, came in deer hunting. I stood my unloaded my gun and I stood it in the corner behind the door. We had identical guns. And a little while later he comes in and takes my gun, lays it on the bed and sets his gun in the corner. I come in a little while later and I knew I had my gun unloaded. I just picked it up and I ended up sealing it's gonna go click and put it on the bed and sets his gun in the corner. I come in there a little while later and I knew I had my gun unloaded. I just picked it up and I ended up seeing it and it was going to go click and put it in the case I didn't want to leave, you know with a spring kit week, right, and I went boom, and I'm like how did that happen?
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's the truth, the whole truth. And I don't know if that's the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. But that's the story. I think he was just checking to see if the safety was on, and it wasn't.
Speaker 3:Might have been. Yeah, might have been. Well, I remember the first time I drove a five-speed. Well, it wasn't a five-speed, it was a four-speed. So you know, I learned to drive. I mean, obviously, riding motorcycles, but first time in the car I used to drive back. Dad had the paint contract for what is now Lifeway Christian Resources Used to be the Baptist Sunday School board and he'd pull over at the end of the road and then later he'd pull over in national city and I'd drive home at eight or nine years old and then, when I guess I was about 10 or 12, uh, you, let me borrow your dune buggy yeah, volkswagen yeah and the battery was dead on it, so it had to be jumped off right.
Speaker 3:and I remember you unloaded it in the field and y'all gave it a push as I was in the front seat, and you yelled pop the clutch in second. And as I popped that clutch I realized I had never driven a manual shift vehicle before. Yeah, and dad yelled don't, let it die. And so that was how I learned to drive a manual. That's how you do it.
Speaker 2:It's the best way to learn.
Speaker 3:And then you know both of you have, you know you can fix just about anything, but I remember this, so you know if you're running what is just a Volkswagen with the front end cut out, Volkswagen with the front end cut out, volkswagen with the front end cut off, yeah, so if you're riding, that it is inevitable you are going to bend a tie rod, right. And so I remember this was about day three I bent a tie rod and Dad said, well, you got to unbolt it, take it off of there, go put it on the press and get it back straight, and go put it back on press and get it back straight and go put it back on. And so I did that. And I guess the next weekend or so you came down, you, uh, you were riding and I was riding and it wasn't 10 minutes and we bent the tie rod again, right. And I said, well, you know, I'll, I'll go get the tools. And you said what are you getting tools for? And I don't remember if it was a two by four or a piece of metal or whatever. You put something in there, bent it back and we were back riding in five minutes.
Speaker 3:And I think it just shows that both of you know how to fix things and then kind of depends on the situation it does. In the first scenario it's sitting there. It's right beside the shop, right. In the other scenario, we're in the woods and we just bent the tie rock right. Both of them are the correct answer based on where you are in the situation. I know where you are and what you got, yeah, yeah. And then I remember, uh.
Speaker 3:So the day I brought it back to you, um, there was a bunch of people over at your place, right, and somebody said something about uh taking and taking the the bug across the pond, yeah, and you said, well, we're gonna run up, run up behind uh on the other side of the road, real quick. And you told me on the other side of the road, real quick. And you told me on the way over there, you said now we're going to hit this hill and when we land, I got to cut the wheels all the way to the left because we got to go around a tree. We're going to land right in front of the tree, right.
Speaker 3:And I remember, like it was yesterday, we hit that tree in the air, so we went a little too far, yeah, and the seat broke loose, and too far, yeah. And the seat broke loose and so my seat went through the floor of that. Volkswagen thought I done, killed you well, you know well. And then, on the way back, um and again, I remember this again just like it was yesterday. We're on the way back and the uh, the strap that was on the front end of the hood broke and and the hood flew up and, without skipping a beat, you just looked through the hole where the radio was in order to get us off the side of the road.
Speaker 2:You know, do what you got to do. Do what you got to do, sure enough.
Speaker 3:So that's fun. Well, you know that was a long time ago. What's the most fun you've had recently? I have fun every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we ride razors, climb big hills, everything with them unimaginable. We don't ride them like most people. It's hard for me to get somebody to ride with me, they all want out in a few minutes. It's hard for me to get somebody to ride with me, they all want out in a few minutes. I took a boy and girl that came over from Sweden riding a couple of days ago and I think it kind of scared them. They were laughing the whole time but they were kind of scared. But they wanted to do it again. Mm-hmm, Uh-huh, and it's just I do fun things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dad, how would you describe Johnny's ability to ride slash race?
Speaker 1:I ain't getting ridden in one with him again.
Speaker 2:Well, I can't get anybody to get in a Razor. I got a Corvette. I want nobody to get in a Corvette. Nobody ride my truck with me. But I can get people to ride in my ghost car. There you go, which should be scary because I drive in the back seat and you can't see out. But people will actually get in there and ride with me. Yeah, and I have a lot of fun with that. Yeah, it's pretty unique.
Speaker 3:One of the things I like about I mean the two of you is both of you know. I like about I mean the two of you is both of you know, without a shadow of a doubt. If you know the proverbial shit hits the fan, you can call each other and you'll figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we usually figure it out. You know, there's one thing that I ain't never been able to figure out, but it don't need any figuring out. I got the best brother in the world. I wouldn't trade him for anything. But we can't work together for five minutes without somebody threatening somebody. I swear I don't know how it happens, but he's got to be the boss and I've got to be the boss, and it just don't know how it happens. But you know he's got to be the boss and I've got to be the boss, and it just don't work.
Speaker 3:Well, but I think it's interesting then that y'all have figured out how to work through that in that so let's just say it's a metal project You'll get it to a certain extent and then drop it off for Johnny to finish up or whatever, and then vice versa, if it's in your area of expertise, he'll lean on you to take care of it, or you just say, can you fix this?
Speaker 1:Or the best way to do it is say I bet you can't fix this, yeah, and then just shut up.
Speaker 3:Well then you also have a rule that if you need a part off of something, you have to take the whole thing. Got to take the whole thing, so there's a McCullough chainsaw that I think has been passed back and forth a good 10 times.
Speaker 1:Well, that started out with a snapper lawnmower. John comes over and he said you still got that old snapper lawnmower up on the hill. I said yeah. He said I need that little part, so-and-so I said you got to take the whole thing.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we don't ever throw anything away. Well, he came to my house and needed something and I had an old recliner set out there that I drug out and fixing to carry the dump and I said you can have it, but you got to carry the recliner and the recliner went back forth before the chainsaw and I don't know what happened to the recliner. It made several trips in a truck and it was heavy, it was hard to load and then the chainsaw episode and I don't know whatever happened to the chainsaw. And here in the later years it was actually a toilet seat couple of years ago. You know anything about the toilet seat.
Speaker 3:I remember hearing about the toilet seat. I don't remember the story.
Speaker 2:We went to a Thanksgiving party outside of Gallatin at some 10 people's in-laws and it was. You carry a gag gift wrapped up and you draw names. And I actually got a bundle of notebook, a bundle of paper. I knew what it was without opening it. And my aunt got a toilet seat. So I traded her for the toilet seat and then you could give your gift away. So I made him take the toilet seat. He opened it up, toilet seat it was a new one and he threw it in the trash before he left. And I saw him leave and I said so I got it out of the trash and I put it in his car the next time we had to get together. But it started getting a little dirty and a little stained and stuff just from being in the garbage cans. So it didn't look real good after that. And I don't know how did you get the toilet seat last time? Ups.
Speaker 1:FedEx? I don't know, but I think you actually used it and then gave it back.
Speaker 2:I think last time I shipped it last time to your house, I thought you, what did you do with it? Shipped it. I thought so. Is that what you thought? I said, or something else? Yeah, okay, so, something else, yeah, okay. So I don't know what's become of the toilet seat Now. I hope it's gone. I think it's at your house. No, it's not at my house, but I know where they sell them.
Speaker 1:There is actually a use for a toilet seat, yeah it's a use. You take that thing and you put it over your head and you open it up and you got a tray right there about, even, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:About years ago on the lake. I had a place on the lake, he had a place on the lake and I built a cabin and he had a place A couple miles from each other and I decided to put up a mailbox. I started me a checking account in Waverly, tennessee, and it more or less moved down there so I could do business and I put up a mailbox. He said I'm not going to put up a mailbox. I said well, you know, I might get a big check in the mail. So I put up my mailbox and I wrote myself out a check on my personal checking account for a million dollars and I signed it and I put it in an envelope and I mailed it to myself. So the next Saturday we're fishing, we got through fishing, we're going to my place. About noon I said looks like I got some mail, pulled it out Check million dollars. Look here, I got a check for a million dollars. Let me see that A million dollars. And then he figured it out.
Speaker 2:Well, the next week I got three rolls of toilet paper in the mail. I got some bud itching cream in the mail, some corn cobs in the mail. I got stuff in the mail for six months. So then I started going, and every time I saw a bulletin board in a shopping mall or a store, I'd get these papers fill out for insurance, fill out for a free sample, fill out somebody comes to you medical products. He finally put them in a mailbox. It was full of junk mail for six months. I believe that. Yep, then we junk mail for six months. I believe that.
Speaker 1:Yep, then we come in from fishing. Once he said let me check my mail on the way. In Got out that little box in there. I wonder what this is. Somebody sent me something, opened it up and it was bud cream.
Speaker 2:You know that worked pretty good on mosquito bites, Especially on your nose.
Speaker 1:I never had a mosquito bite me there.
Speaker 3:Well, and so shellcracker fishing was a big thing. Oh it was, and obviously Harry Horner was a big part of that. He was, he was great, yeah, and really it's kind of his fault that everybody ended up with a place down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really yeah. Yeah, because he bought a place and I bought a place and it just kind of caught on. Those were some excellent years. It's wonderful. We had some wonderful times down there Called Harry.
Speaker 1:I said did you catch anything? He said yeah, I got 200. I said well, I got about 200. I said yeah, I got 200. I said, well, I got about 200. I said I'll come on over and we'll clean them together. I get over there and he's got about eight fish cleaners sitting there. They're all cleaning fish. He said have a seat, you want a beer? I said, yeah, I'll take a beer. He said in that refrigerator over there Hell, I said I better. The refrigerator was sitting outside. The refrigerator had gone out with fish in it and you're talking about stink. It's been sitting there a year. Oh, that refrigerator like knocked me down. I think Harry's still laughing. He probably is.
Speaker 2:You know he was going to build that pontoon boat and he took the rails off of it and everything. He was going to make a duck hunting boat or something. It had a port-a-potty sitting on it. I come through. Once there they knocked on door, wasn't home, but I'll use this port-a-potty before I live on his boat.
Speaker 2:One of my favorite things, though, he's talking about seeing coyotes down there, and he said he ran over a coyote on his way in at the first house on the corner there. And I come through there and sure enough there was a coyote laying there when I was leaving. It's about noon. So I said, you know, I told him earlier. I said I forget her name, the old lady down there. I said that's her German Shepherd. You ran over, not a coyote. No, I know it was a coyote. You ran over, not a coyote, no, I know it's a coyote. I said no, that was her dog. She was out there looking for it. So all the way back through I stopped and I took my belt off and cut it off shorter and I put it on that coyote and I told him. I said next time you go through you get out and look, it's a dog. It's got a collar on.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty good. We had some good times down on the lake. Yeah, we did.
Speaker 3:Every weekend we'd go down. Now you had an interesting one. I don't know that anybody listening would know that you can hit an air bubble with a boat in the water. You can sink a boat, so you're tootling along, thank goodness on your pontoon boat Right Could have been any other type of boat hit a sink right there.
Speaker 2:Oh, it would have sunk. Yeah, I was going to cross about a city block behind a towboat and this towboat was turning and I didn't know their props create big air bubbles underwater. This air bubble was as big as an elevator or, you know, bigger than a car. And I hit this air bubble and the front end of the boat went like five foot under the boat. You know, a 21-foot boat stood straight up and took about two minutes to come back up and resurface, even though it wasn't going to sink. It bent the front rails on the boat, bent the sheet metal in it, done a lot of damage to the boat. And then I got to asking around and talking to people and telling them what happened and I'd heard other cases of this happening. Yeah, yeah, Kind of scary.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, like I say, if it had been any other type of boat, it would have sank it right there, right, yeah Well, I say if it had been any other type of boat it would have sank it right there, right, it would have you just got lucky in that, it being a pontoon, exactly, but that's also what blew the sides off of it, oh, yeah. Yeah, because the water's got to get out. Yeah, it tore it up. Yeah, well, you know what? Have y'all ever come across? Anything you couldn't fix? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of bolt motors. Yeah, a lot of them. I didn't want to fix.
Speaker 1:A timer on a washing machine. A timer on a washing machine. After taking it apart and putting it back together about seven or eight times, I finally spied that big old lug that goes to 220. And I told Sandra, I said watch this. And I took a big screwdriver, run down, hit that thing and grounded that washing machine. It went poof and I said now you can't be fixed, that's right.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 2:Actually, I'll tell you about the lawnmower. You're part of this and didn't know it. You've never heard this story. You gave me a lawnmower, yeah, a garden tractor, pretty nice one to carry down to my fish camp.
Speaker 1:The green machine no this is a red one.
Speaker 2:This is before the green machine. I took it down there and I had it down there one season and mowed with it and it done just fine. I went the next year and it had a tire Rear tire blew out on a rock. So I went the next week and the grass was higher, I put a new tire on it and the second week the belt broke and I put a belt on it and the third time they still had both. My yard, the gas line broke, All the gas ran out. I didn't have any more gas or another gas line. Then a front tire blew out and then a battery busted and then a battery cable burned in two and for the whole season. That year I actually cut my whole yard with a weed eater, which was miserable Right.
Speaker 2:And the next year I went down there and the throttle cable hung up and broke and then the cable going to clutch or whatever something else broke the gear shifter and I fooled with it and I fooled with it and I fooled with it and I passed a guy on a climb road down there that had a snapper for sale. And I believe in snappers. They're great mowers, Brand new looking, and once I bought the snapper and put it in the truck. I brought it back unloaded and the Murray brand new looking one. So I bought the snapper and put it in truck. I brought it around loaded and the murray was sitting behind the house. And I looked at the murray and I said, man, I spent more money on this thing and I fixed it, and I fixed it and I fixed it. Man, as long as it's sitting there, I'm gonna keep fixing it, probably. And I went and got a shotgun. I went there and shot it right in the gas tank and I said I know I won't fix it now. Yeah, and that was the end of it.
Speaker 1:And I bet I caught more fish that year than he did Because he's working on a lawnmower.
Speaker 3:He's working on a lawnmower yeah.
Speaker 2:He had to go down to the driveway and quit running and I'd get Christian to pull me back up to the driveway in a truck. Yeah, several times I pulled it back up the driveway to the barn to work on it. Starter went out on it, flywheel cracked on it Unusual things. Yeah, it was jinxed. Now I know why. You gave it to me no.
Speaker 1:So he drills wells, and this well is how deep?
Speaker 2:140 feet, 140 feet. Well, yeah, it's a good well.
Speaker 1:So he calls me and he said boy, I sure would like to put that pipe in it. Well, but it's storming and raining. I said, well, we'll go down and spend the night, maybe to quit tomorrow. Well, I had a van. So we took my van, we put the pipe and the pump and everything we needed in the van, we go down. We put the pipe and the pump and everything we needed in the van, we go down. We're sitting there about midnight listening to the radio out on the deck watching it rain. John says I sure would like to get that pump in. I said, well, let's put it in. I said we can back the truck, the van, right up to it and you can stand behind the van and you can guide the pump down. And I'll get in the middle of the circle, the coil on the inside of the pipe, and I'll start turning that coil where it'll go around and around and around me and you lower it down, and ain't neither one of us going to get too wet.
Speaker 1:So he gets out, he starts it down the well. I'm sitting in there in the middle of the coil and it's going around and around and around, going down and down and down. Well, we didn't think about it, but there was a cork stapled in the end of that pipe and as it's going down it's building pressure in the end of the pipe. So I twist it around and all of a sudden something goes pow, johnny grabs his hind end and he said what in the hell did you do that?
Speaker 2:for it shot me in the butt. Nobody else around Right me in the butt, nobody else around Right Dark Raining, I hear this cork ring shaying up through the woods. It took us a minute to figure out what happened. I see staples sticking out of the pipe and we got to thinking. We used that kind of pipe before and it comes with a plug in it to keep the dirt out. It hurt. Well, yeah, I mean it was like Didn't bother me a bit. It wasn't as much as a shotgun, but a lot harder than a BB gun. I've got shot by them plenty of times in my life. We used to have BB gun wars, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bb gun wars, hedgehog wars, rock fights, firecrackers, firecrackers, firecrackers.
Speaker 2:I guess one of my best stories to tell. Not a good ending, but you know, tom Sawyer didn't have anything on us at all. I could write a book and people wouldn't believe it. Church up on the hill behind where we lived and they were adding on a church and it had a big backhoe up there a huge backhoe about as big as it could get A guy ran over a piece of rebar and cut a hole in the tire and it went flat. Well, a tire truck came out there and changed a tire and left that tire laying there. Well, there's a sailor Williams. He was an old guy, great big guy. Big guy cussed a lot, drank a lot. He'd run us out of his yard and he had a chicken house behind his house on the side of the hill. So we're going to get this tire up with some poles and we're going to roll it down the hill. It was full of ice and it was going to go down the hill and jump two ditches. It's a curve in the road.
Speaker 2:It's a curve in the road but it was going to go down the hill and jump the road and wipe his chicken house out. We got it up, it started down there and when it got to the ditch it hit. The ditch jumped up Middle Road and turned 90 degrees and went straight down the road to Whitebridge Road. Off that hill, where Brookhollow Church is, they had just built a two-story apartment complex. Apartments were new in Nashville, didn't have condos or anything and it was a two-story upper-end apartment complex, probably 40 units.
Speaker 2:And old man Gant that ran the hobby shop had a brand-new Chrysler Imperial like a 56 or something, had the little lanterns hanging on the back over the fins and had a drive-out tag in one. In fact had a spare tire mounted on the back. Oh yeah, this tire went across Whitebridge Road with people blowing their horns. It was just like seeing the movies Hit. This car went up the back of the car over the roof, caved the trunk in, broke all the windows, hit the side of the DeVille apartments and went halfway through the brick wall into somebody's apartment. Of course we were out of there.
Speaker 1:We ran home, changed clothes, took a bath, turned the TV on.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, another one that sticks out for me is the Indian.
Speaker 2:Oh, we had an Indian. We had a pet Indian. I'll let him tell that he's in charge of the Indian. Oh, we had an Indian. We had a pet Indian. I'll let him tell that he's in charge of the Indian. It was his Indian actually.
Speaker 1:Kind of reminds me of the book the Indian and the Cupboard Right. So they're building Beacon Square. It's a subdivision down on the Cumberland River. We're on our bicycles down there investigating. You know, a bunch of cars parked down there and people standing all around doing a bunch of nothing. So we go down on our bicycles and we investigate.
Speaker 1:So we find out that they were digging some foundations down there and they started hitting Indian graves, some foundations down there and they started hitting Indian graves and these Indian graves were about I don't know, 12 to 18 inches deep and they lined the bottoms of them with rock and then stood rock up on the side, put the Indian in there, crossed their arms, covered them with rock and they had what looked like seismographs or something. You know they're walking along looking for these Indian graves and they're from the colleges archaeology teams. So we get to watching what they're doing and we figure well, you know, we could go home and take the axle out from under our wagon and sharpen one end of it and get a hammer and come back and if we put that thing in the ground enough times we're bound to hit an Indian grave. So we come back and we get down in the grave. So we come back and we get down in the corner, away from other people, we start pounding that thing in the ground, we start hitting Indian graves.
Speaker 1:We heard if you dug up an Indian and had a Tommy Hawk, you'd get rich. So we'd dig one up, not uncover him. He's laying there, you know, just like he just went to sleep. Just bones.
Speaker 2:Just bones one up not to cover him. He's laying there, you know, just like he just went to sleep he's just bones.
Speaker 1:Though it wasn't just just bones, oh we'd we'd start pounding the ground again. We're looking for another one. He didn't have, he was pouring it. He's like we are. So we dug up what six, eight, it's in the book. Yeah, it's in the book. Yeah, anyway, the last one we dug up. We got tired of pounding that thing in the ground and not getting any tomahawks. So the last one, I picked up a colonial bread bag, put all them bones and teeth and everything in a colonial bread bag, hung him over my handlebars and took him home, put him in my dresser drawer. Every once in a while I'd take him apart, put him on the floor, put him together, take him apart, put him back in the bag. When I joined the Army, mama finally carried him outside and reburied him. Finally carried him outside and reburied him. But yeah, later on John worked with a guy. I was telling him about them building Beacon Square and digging up Indians and he said there was a book, we had pictures, we took some pictures.
Speaker 2:I still got pictures, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the guy brought the book to Johnny and it had where all the graves were and which college dug them. And then there were about six or eight graves down in the bottom that said unknown diggers. Yeah Well, they weren't unknown.
Speaker 2:I know who they were by some, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that was the Indian in the cupboard. There you go we grew up fairly poor.
Speaker 2:We didn't have toys. We had to make our own amuse ourselves. I guess a lot of it. I'll tell you one thing I remember when we was—it wasn't very old we lived a house on Pennsylvania Avenue and it had 10-foot ceilings and you could see through the side of the house. They had to come home on Saturday and bring hot dogs and double colas. That was our biggest treat in life. So on Saturday night we'd have hot dogs and double colas. And one cold night Mom forgot and left the double colas on the kitchen table. Before daylight they froze and busted Inside the house. Inside the house we had like five army blankets on each bed, no heat whatsoever in the house. After dark Dad would let the fire go out because he was afraid the house would catch on fire. It was pretty cold.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'd run. Jump in bed, pull a cover up over your head.
Speaker 2:Well, my sisters, they slept in one bed and we slept in a bed in the big room in the back of the house. Oh, I was hoping you wasn't going to do all that part.
Speaker 2:And it's so cold I mean it's freezing and snowy weather and everything else. It was cold back then. You know, I was born in the blizzard of 1951, and Mama didn't think I was going to survive. She kept me in blankets, with them over my head, for three months. You know, I didn't even see daylight, had an operation when I was two days old and it took me a year to walk. You know, I don't guess I knew that. Oh yeah, you had the same operation, didn't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's circumcision.
Speaker 2:It took me a year to walk, that's right.
Speaker 1:Put the operation on the wrong thing.
Speaker 2:But it's so cold, you know, and Dad did build a bathroom. We had an outhouse and Dad did build a bathroom on the back of the house. But you had to go out of our room in the cold and out through the kitchen on the back porch, across the long back porch into the bathroom and it had no heat. So we'd have to shortcut, we'd have to go pee off the back porch and as it got colder one of us decided it's about as easy to jump up and run over to my sister's bed and pee on the bed and hop back in the bed. And they got blamed for it Several times and they didn't know they wasn't.
Speaker 1:We'd lay there, act like we sleep, watch my sister get up.
Speaker 2:She couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1:We didn't tell her no different until we got too old to whoop us, was it Susie or Zan?
Speaker 2:Both of them in the bed. Right, they go where, just pee on them. We'd hop back in bed, they'd wake up, they'd blame it on each other and arguing about it, and we're smiling on the next leg. Our bed was dry. Yeah, we're high and dry.
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness yeah, that's pretty good, but we and we had a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty good, but we had an unusual childhood, I guess. I mean people don't have the chance to grow up like we did. I don't think. Today the opportunity's not there. We used to go down the road when we were working on the road and get the smudge pots and go drop them in the creek, off the bridge, stuff like that. We closed Charlotte Avenue. What did we close Charlotte Avenue for? We closed the road, I don't know Built a fire in the middle of it. Well, we got some of them horses with them, flashers. When they came out with them, we saw them, thought they were pretty neat. So we closed Charlotte Avenue one night, about 6 o'clock in the evening, it got dark in the winter and we closed the road off.
Speaker 2:Made and it got dark in the winter and we closed the road off, made a detour, we had a hedge in front of the house. No, you don't need to tell that one either.
Speaker 1:We'd get Mama's pocketbook, tie a string to it, throw it out the middle of the road and hide behind that hedge. People come to a screaming halt, get out, right over there. When they bent over, we'd snatch that purse back.
Speaker 2:They got throwing rocks at cars Bling, bling. What do you mean? They, you and I? I was a little bitty guy. I picked up a brick through it and hit a guy's trunk in a convertible. He stopped and got out and chased us.
Speaker 3:Just all in good clean fun yeah all in good, clean, fun, fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of them caught us one night. He jumped over at hedge and grabbed three of us at one time.
Speaker 3:All in unison we said she ain't home well then I remember, uh, fishing was a big thing. I mean not not even I would go back further than down at uh in waverly and turn greek. But uh, you know granddaddy fished a lot, and so y'all both bought bass boats in the 80s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we weren't too successful at fishing until Johnny grew up, where he wouldn't eat the worm.
Speaker 3:So he'd eat the bait. Well, I remember I threw a whole cricket cage full of crickets in the water Minus one cricket Minus one cricket Minus one cricket Wow.
Speaker 1:We found that cricket cage years later when we drained that lake. That's right.
Speaker 3:So somebody out there is raising kids right now. What advice would you give them?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Nowadays it's different than when we grew up. When we grew up, you know cell phones, videos, video games and you want to say, take those away from them. But how would you do that Without creating a monster? How would you do that? Because, without creating a monster, how would you do that? Because you're taking a cell phone away from a kid or denying video games, when that's how the world is now? You know, we got to realize that we're living in your generation and Castle's generation. We've outlived our generation. I guess that's how would you look at it if Castle got on his bicycle and pedaled down to the Cumberland River and stole the boat?
Speaker 3:I'm in agreement. You know it's a constant battle.
Speaker 1:We didn't really steal it. We knew where it was all the time.
Speaker 2:We didn't carry it back either Until we sold it. You sold it.
Speaker 1:But you see what I'm talking about. I do. Everybody has to live in their own age and society determines your activity. I guess yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I think nowadays a lot of people don't set their children up. They set them up for failure when you're growing up. When we got so old, we was going to leave the nest, make our own living, make our own way and depend on ourselves. That's instilled in you when you're small.
Speaker 1:We never planned on not working. Yeah Right, you know, you always knew you were going to work. The girls knew they were going to marry. You know that was your. That's as far as you could see. When you went to work, that was your future. When you got married, that was your future. Now, not so much because when you, when you, when you, there's too much welfare, too much living off the system, too much, give me it's that entitlement. Yeah Too much.
Speaker 2:Marriage is not forever. Well, it's hard, though, when you realize the things that happen to a child. I failed the first grade and had to go to summer school. I had a teacher. I couldn't say my phonics right, so I had to go to summer school. And then the second grade. I had a late teacher it wasn't a nun and they got at school and mom was highly and she messed with us a lot. And when I went to first grade I could do my ABCs and cursive writing. So I go to school and they're having me print my ABCs.
Speaker 2:And in the second grade we started cursive writing and this lay teacher came by with this big triangle ruler a foot long, and she almost broke my hand. She hit me with it and said you're not going to write with your left hand. I was left-handed and I could write pretty good. I could do some words, and every time I picked my pencil up she'd hit me with that and I'd go home and of course I'd tell Mom and Mom, like with the Catholics, you didn't cross the Catholic nuns, I mean they were God, okay, and close to it and I got to the point where I know I'm going to school, I'm going to get hit with this ruler. So I'm just sitting there not doing a thing. Yeah, I'm daydreaming.
Speaker 2:And of course then she put me in a coat room which all the way across the back of the classroom had two doors, and turn out the light. She'd move my desk in the coat room and I kind of liked that, because everybody that went to school but me had a good lunch. I had a bread sandwich or one piece of uh, uh bread with butter on it, you know, roll over and uh. So I'd go in a coat room and I'd find me some cookies and find me something to drink and find me a couple of sandwiches. If somebody had two sandwiches, I got one. If they had four cookies, I got two. So, man, and I'd hear it coming I'd turn the light back out, and so through the fifth grade I made D's and F's is all I made. So, and that was the reason, and a lot of people can set their children back just with something simple and not realize it. And you see, people go to beat the fire of their kids and abuse them and that makes me sick and that's a lot of problems today.
Speaker 3:But they can set their kids up for failure real easy when you don't really know what the downstream effects are and at the same time, you also can't dwell on that because then you'll never do anything Right. And so you're trying to balance it, you know, between and you know, I mean, luckily I had a great childhood and that, um, you know, grew up riding dirt bikes and and all those things. Uh did have a, a, a teacher very similar to your teacher, uh, along the way, and uh, but then had some great teachers that really helped me out. But you know, I do think it's with kids these days, you're you're trying to trying to look at what is going on around you and trying to shore up against the things that you think are going to be the biggest challenges in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got to try to give them the tools to survive nowadays. I think nowadays they have to fight to survive a lot of it.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of competition, well, but one of the things I see, I spoke at the high school just two weeks ago and they're all just as lazy. I mean, there were a couple that had a little bit of fire and I think they'll dominate. They will and they deserve it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly If you've got a little bit of fight If you've got a little bit of fight. Yeah, that grows. Yeah yeah, if you're lazy, that grows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely If you're lazy, that grows, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you got to get up, and a lot of these people that don't have the reason for it, when they get 20, 25 years, they're going to have to look around them and say, hey, there's more to this life than what I'm doing. I got to stand up and do something, and that's up to them, not everybody. I see people every day that didn't have a chance at anything, that have their own businesses, that are wealthy, that are happy and that comes from inside you.
Speaker 3:Well, I think you two are absolutely you know. Prove that, yeah, we're more or less successful?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean in your own. I consider myself successful Well, in your fields. I consider myself successful Well in your fields. I mean, let's think about it. So if we're talking about metal, or if we're talking about, I mean even the things you do at Marathon.
Speaker 2:It's not something other people can do.
Speaker 3:It's a very skilled craft. Yes, yes, it is. And then, dad, you know at least not around here Right, and it's not like anybody showed you, it's not like anybody. It's not like you had an advantage over anybody. You had to decide to do it for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that. Yeah, but a lot of people don't have that in them and it's not their fault. So I don't look and point my finger at people. I try to help who I can and, uh, you know, but uh, I try not to find fault in people.
Speaker 3:Cause you never know yeah, you never know what they've been through. You never know what, what, what, what kind of walls they've hit. You know exactly what kind of walls they've hit Exactly. Phil Lane so Phil's nephew or no grandson plays basketball with Castle Right. And so Carson, his dad and I coached their basketball team. This was probably three years ago. Right and Carson had a temper that would just explode to the point where there was one game where I had to go chase after Carson. I told Brian, I was like you can't handle this, you need to stay back out here on the floor. And then I got back there in April. So Carson's mom I had to get through her first because she was so mad Right and I told him. I said here's the thing you can't teach a kid to have that fire, to want to win. They either have it or they don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he's young.
Speaker 3:So teach him to control it, teach him to get ahold of his emotions and and that'll be more powerful Don't don't try to, don't try to not not that they were beating him or anything, but don't don't try to beat the fire out of him. And that kid now I mean light years, I mean these days he gets called for a foul or something. He just laughs it off because he's got a hold of it, but he's got that fire, he wants that ball, and I think there's just so many kids these days that either their parents have given it to them or there's been no expectation for them to go get it, that that they don't have the fire. Yeah, that's right. What do you think, dad?
Speaker 1:I think, a lot to do with our success. I'm talking about all four of us, the Seabloods If we were sort of left alone to decide what we wanted to do, right, you might call it self-made Mm-hmm. You know we weren't micromanaged. When we got up in the morning, if we felt like it, we ate breakfast usually a bowl of cereal and we left out of the house. Yeah, we were expected to be home at dark when Dad got home. Other than that, we picked and chose and decided what our day was going to be like, pursued our dreams and did what we wanted to, right. I can't say that we ever hurt anybody.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 1:Except for the guy you shot in the butt with a BB gun.
Speaker 2:That hurt him for a little while.
Speaker 1:Meter readers shouldn't be treated like that.
Speaker 2:Well, a meter reader that's obese shouldn't be leaning over the water meter when I'm up in the top of a maple tree with a BB gun.
Speaker 1:Well, it should have been a hickory tree or something like that.
Speaker 2:It should have been a different tree and it wouldn't have happened, right?
Speaker 1:But anyway, I'm not going to say we weren't mischievous but we never hurt anybody. You never heard of somebody pulling the knife, or I guess the worst thing I ever come across was we were all. We were having head-to-head fights and Floyd's lighter was out and he was filling up his Zippo and this old boy was standing there cussing him and he'd lunge at him every once in a while and Floyd would take that lighter fluid can and go and squirt him with it. Well, the old boy just kept it up. When Floyd got the lighter where it striked, he just threw it at him. The old boy went whew. It took six of us pissing to put him out.
Speaker 3:Well.
Speaker 1:But nobody really got hurt. Yeah, we had a lot of competition. Now, if we hadn't had to pee, things might have been different.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:We didn't have a lot of friends two or three friends each, probably growing up.
Speaker 1:But the thing about that is, when we left there, everybody left as friends yeah.
Speaker 2:But we had a lot of competition between each other, not friends, not peers, not the law or anybody, not the law or anybody. You know if he done something, if he threw a baseball and threw a basketball hoop two times in a row, I want to do it three times. I do it three times, he does it five times. And you know, if he got a bicycle I wanted a bicycle Built him out of junk parts. He put a steering wheel on his bicycle and radio on it one time. So I was looking for me a steering wheel the whole time it was going, even when we got grown. If he got a four-wheel drive truck, I wanted a four-wheel drive truck, but we got it by hard work, by working two jobs day and night. We strive to do better and have something, and we did have something eventually. Yeah, Took a long time.
Speaker 3:But nobody gave it to you. It was false.
Speaker 2:No, we didn't grow up with anybody giving us anything. Yeah, yeah, it was all work for hard work.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I'm just, I'm thankful because I know you both and you know I know no matter what I could possibly ever want or need, I could pick up the phone and if it was in your ability, you'd be there to help me try to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what's next? What's?
Speaker 1:next, I'm going to continue to help veterans. To continue to help veterans. I gave a speech yesterday the day before yesterday in an elementary school Mm-hmm and I noticed over the years two things. You never could hear the speaker, mm-hmm. So I wanted to be heard. I made sure that when I got up there I grabbed that microphone, took it out of its holder and I held it close like it should be held, mm-hmm, and I asked if anybody in that building could not hear me, then please raise their hand.
Speaker 1:And I never know what I'm going to speak on. I don't write anything down, I don't try to remember anything, it just comes. If I ever get to that point where it don't just flow, then I guess I'll have to quit speaking. But that speech was nine minutes and something long. I had from 10 to 15 minutes. I didn't want to wear out my welcome. I took a sixth of a time that was allotted for the program.
Speaker 1:But all the while I'm making the speech I'm thinking there's a master sergeant sitting right there. He's superior to me, or was at one time, and I still give him his respect. There are teachers there, there are students this big and there are students this big. I wanted to have something for everybody. So I said you know there's a time for peace and there's a time for war, and you got to recognize when it's time to fight. Don't be late, be vigilant, recognize when it's time to fight. And when it's time to fight, I'm talking about fight, like you were the third monkey to arrive at Noah's Ark and the gangplank's going away and it's beginning to rain.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:You got to do something. All the monkey generations from you on down are looking at you. You got to do something. You've got to make a move. You've got to get in there and start swinging, and that's the kind of fighting I'm talking about. So, all of these students, man, that woke them up, and then what I wanted to leave them with, the moral of the whole nine-minute speech, was be somebody worth dying for, because so many have died. Yeah.
Speaker 3:To give you this opportunity to do whatever you're going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, I've lost some of my body parts, my feelings in my hands, in my feet, my kidneys, my heart. And now I'm standing here looking at you and how you thrived, you know. Is it worth it? Well, sure it is. How did I get such a good deal, you know, and I'll continue to do that so long as I live. Yeah, you know, I love the United States of America, I love my opportunities, I love my freedom, I love your freedom Absolutely. So I'll continue to do what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, john, I'm just going to continue today to do what I'm doing. Yeah, I'm happy I enjoy life. I'm helping bring history back to Nashville and it's what I enjoy doing. So, what's the latest project there at Marathon? Well, we're restoring the building around back, the biggest part of the building. We put up a lot of new columns and iron fence and several projects going on.
Speaker 3:And correct me if I'm wrong. That showroom is as close to the way it was when those cars were new as y'all could reasonably put it back.
Speaker 2:Well, as far as I know is all I can tell you there, I've never seen any pictures of the original.
Speaker 3:I think so. And then, how many cars has he been able to get back?
Speaker 2:Like six out of nine yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then he owns the original factory in Jackson too, right? Yes?
Speaker 2:Yes, the original Marathon factory started in Jackson Tennessee. Yeah, sure did. That's good. Long history to all of that. A lot of it, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, john Dad, thanks so much for coming in, thanks for storytelling with me today. It's been fun, it's been, it's been an amazing. You know I'm whatever, 46 years old and you know my earliest memories of y'all telling stories like I said before, probably the earliest ones are the 396 Chevelle when it came out, and then y'all both talking about your car that had the steering wheel that would lock, going around in circles in the parking lot while y'all were inside. So it's been fun and looking forward to more stories and looking forward to looking forward to more stories and look forward to, uh, just all the things that we do as a, as a family. So Appreciate you having us Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Well, I just like to add to you know, talking about marathon, uh, I'm about this big in marathon and Barry Walker, the man that brought it all back, he's, he, he's 100% of the credit for everything at marathon. Yeah, I just try to follow a little bit in his footsteps.
Speaker 3:His mission, but at the same time, you know a lot of things that have happened. He couldn't do without you. Yeah, so well, and again, both of you and Barry too, and several of the other ones we've talked about Harry and Robert, Everybody they picked their line and they stuck to it and they did good things, and we're all better for having known them. No man to know them, that's right. And so, to everybody that couldn't be here and those that we've outlived, I hope you enjoy the stories and and so continue to tune in for other amazing guests and other stories as we, as we walk through those again. Until next time. This is the Charge 4 podcast. Take care, thank you.