Ep. 426: "My Little Cowboy" - Roderick on the Line

00:03:13 John: Here in this house, the house that I am living in now that was built by a Boeing defense engineer in the 1950s who was also an amateur woodworker and who built all the closets himself.

00:03:29 John: And as time has gone on, I've realized- That's his own closets, you say?

00:03:32 John: A lot of the work in the house was done by amateur woodworker dad.

00:03:37 John: And if you look at the original blueprints, you can see that the architect-

00:03:43 John: The architect was a young man when he designed this house.

00:03:46 John: The architect went on.

00:03:47 John: Oh, he hadn't been beaten down by life yet.

00:03:49 John: He hadn't been beaten down.

00:03:51 John: But he also had greater success.

00:03:52 John: He designed the hydroelectric pavilion at the 1962 World's Fair.

00:03:57 John: Shut your mouth.

00:03:58 John: So he went on to great things.

00:04:00 John: He must have been a real get at the time.

00:04:02 John: Well, but this house was built in 55.

00:04:05 John: That was in 62.

00:04:06 John: He's a young guy.

00:04:08 John: And you can see – it's weird when you read the drawings.

00:04:13 John: And I read them with friend of show Ben King, the architect, who was kind of looking over my shoulder.

00:04:19 John: But there was a palpable sense –

00:04:23 John: That the architect had designed the house and then, uh, homework, home woodworking, uh, Boeing engineer, electrical, uh, dad.

00:04:34 Merlin: uh was like ah i think we could cut corners on a couple of things so he's young enough guy he hasn't done the uh the big exposition yet and he's going to be the implementor and the decider and he's saying let's let's take a little bit off the sides here i don't i don't need you i don't i don't need you a young man to be designing my closets so so on the blueprints there are little notes like

00:04:59 John: closets owner will install oh you know like just little and they're not it's you know there's not actually like little drawn drips of condense uh condescension uh or condensation uh but you know john jacusa says that the humidity is the homeowner's uh greatest enemy moisture moisture writ large

00:05:22 John: I think that that is probably true.

00:05:24 John: You know, we have a lot of moisture.

00:05:25 Merlin: You always die because you don't get enough air.

00:05:27 Merlin: Like, yeah, your heart died, but it's because you didn't get enough air.

00:05:30 Merlin: In this case, every problem basically goes back to moisture.

00:05:33 John: Moisture.

00:05:34 John: Yeah.

00:05:34 John: And I know a lot.

00:05:35 John: I don't know how you feel about it, but I have someone in my life close to me who cannot stand that word.

00:05:41 Merlin: It's one of those words.

00:05:42 Merlin: It's a word like succulent.

00:05:45 Merlin: Succulent moisture.

00:05:48 John: Neither of those words bother me that much.

00:05:50 Merlin: Good for you, man.

00:05:51 John: There's so many words that bother me.

00:05:52 John: I'm writing it down.

00:05:54 John: Words that bother John.

00:05:56 Merlin: But those don't.

00:05:58 Merlin: All right.

00:05:59 Merlin: I have a whole – I'm sorry.

00:06:00 Merlin: I'm getting you so far off your topic.

00:06:01 Merlin: I just had coffee.

00:06:03 Merlin: I have a whole list of words that I would prefer people not use and I'll share it with you later.

00:06:07 John: Oh yeah, send that to me in a Google Doc.

00:06:09 Merlin: Well, I thought we could talk about it on the program because we always need content.

00:06:12 John: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that's good.

00:06:13 Merlin: So he goes in and he's... We need content.

00:06:18 Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Headspace.

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00:08:25 Merlin: Here's the thing.

00:08:25 Merlin: Part of the thing is you think about, I don't want to say redlining, that has a meaning, but when you're going through a contract and you say, no, this is out, this is in, and that might be partly a little bit, they probably didn't say ass at the time, but a little bit of CYA for young architects says, hey, don't yell at me because there's no closet.

00:08:44 Merlin: This is going to be, I'm going to put a circle around this and make a note because this genius has decided he wants to make his own room holes.

00:08:52 John: Yeah.

00:08:53 John: Well, and, you know, they built onto the house in 60 or 62, whatever.

00:08:59 John: I mean, right about the time that the guy was hitting his peak over there at the World's Fair, he came back and amended his architectural rendering of this house or his plan for the house and built on

00:09:12 John: you know, a room for mom and dad as they kept having more babies.

00:09:19 John: Sponsored by Eastern Airlines.

00:09:21 John: And that's when the whole bomb shelter thing got in.

00:09:24 John: But what happens in the house is that he, working at Boeing as an electrical engineer, making B-52s or whatever they were doing at the time, he kept bringing home salvage switches from work and installing them

00:09:41 John: in locations where, I mean, you remember the scene in Dr. Strangelove when they're in the B-52 and they're running down there.

00:09:53 John: I love that scene.

00:09:55 Merlin: Supposedly, it's very authentic.

00:09:57 Merlin: And James Earl Jones and team, and I believe it's the actor Slim Pickens, they're flipping a lot of knobs.

00:10:03 Merlin: You got to turn on the CRM, get it to the right, and then it's flicka, flicka, flicka.

00:10:06 Merlin: And oh boy, that is a horny scene for me.

00:10:09 Merlin: I'm so into those.

00:10:11 Merlin: All those clicky switches.

00:10:12 John: Yeah.

00:10:13 John: And there are so many of those clicky switches in this house.

00:10:15 John: But you're saying you take those, but they're salvaged.

00:10:18 John: Well, yeah.

00:10:18 John: Well, or they weren't even salvaged.

00:10:20 John: They were like off the assembly line.

00:10:21 John: He's like, give me five of those.

00:10:23 John: You know, it's like you have to lift up the metal, the red metal switch cover to get to the switch.

00:10:32 Merlin: Yeah, it's a real important one.

00:10:33 Merlin: Like if you're going to go on, you're going to write a bomb down.

00:10:37 Merlin: You want to make sure it's like an Apollo 13 type situation.

00:10:40 Merlin: Whatever you do, don't hit this knob.

00:10:41 Merlin: You flick that up.

00:10:42 Merlin: You say, flipping it on, boss.

00:10:44 Merlin: He goes.

00:10:45 John: Flipping it on, boss.

00:10:48 Merlin: That would be a funny movie.

00:10:49 John: There was some noise down in the ravine the other day, some power tool noise.

00:10:58 John: And so I went down.

00:10:59 John: It started early in the morning, of course.

00:11:01 John: And so I get my bathrobe on and I strap my sword on and I walk down with my beer stein full of coffee.

00:11:09 John: And there's a bunch of guys with hard hats standing around.

00:11:11 John: And I was like, hey, guys, what's going on down here?

00:11:15 John: And they were like, oh, the water main broke and we got a jackhammer of the road and all this stuff.

00:11:22 John: And I said, say, which one of you is the foreman?

00:11:25 John: And one of them was like, I'm the foreman here.

00:11:26 John: And I said, why don't you tell me all about the sewer and water around here?

00:11:34 John: Oh, you capitalized on a moment.

00:11:36 John: I did.

00:11:36 John: He was standing around.

00:11:38 John: Time to lean.

00:11:38 John: You know he's going to want to talk about that.

00:11:41 Oh, yeah.

00:11:41 John: And I know that in his, in the cab of his, in the cab over Pete with the reefer on that he's driving around, he's gonna have some, he's gonna have some data.

00:11:51 John: So he's like, well, come on back to the truck.

00:11:53 John: And we go back to the truck now, you know.

00:11:56 John: This is a, I am making some assumptions and going back to the truck, but I'm not making all the assumptions to the extent that I'm going to climb in his truck and I've got my mask and he's got his.

00:12:06 John: So we're just like, it's, we're all good.

00:12:09 John: But he pulls up on his in cab computer, the original like as built for all the sewers and all the water mains and all the fire hydrants in the whole little neighborhood around here.

00:12:26 John: And I got to sit with the, you know, with the Highline water guy looking at the plans and going, all right, now what's this and what?

00:12:35 John: And he's like, well, this got put in in 62 and this one over here and they, none of these were here and.

00:12:40 John: And I really got a, you know, none of them even noticed I was in my bathrobe because I was, because they were so fixated on why I was drinking beer.

00:12:50 Merlin: I learned a long time ago from you, John, you got to walk in like you own the place.

00:12:54 Merlin: Well, sure.

00:12:55 Merlin: Drive it like you stole it, like they say in that movie.

00:12:57 Merlin: You come in there and you got a robe, you got a stein, you got a sword.

00:13:00 Merlin: You're a fully equipped like Knight Templar of the ravine.

00:13:05 John: Well, and they're jackhammering the street and they know, I know they know that I don't own the street.

00:13:10 John: So they've got a certain amount of, you know, like we own the street energy and I'm like, you guys own the street.

00:13:18 John: There's no question.

00:13:19 John: I'm not here to, I'm not here to contest who owns the street.

00:13:23 John: I'm just an, I'm just a regular guy who wants to look at the plans for the supers.

00:13:28 John: And I got a couple of questions.

00:13:30 John: What about this?

00:13:31 John: Well, how does this?

00:13:32 John: At what point does it go from here to there?

00:13:36 John: Yeah.

00:13:36 John: And they're like, oh, well, you know, what happens is you might not know it.

00:13:40 John: It goes this way.

00:13:41 Merlin: In passing, well, it just strikes me that you're the sort of person who would want to know how the sewer is wired up.

00:13:48 Merlin: But was there anything that you were hoping to hear, a fact you were hoping to learn about?

00:13:53 Merlin: Was there anything where you went in?

00:13:54 Merlin: You're not going to say this because you're going to let it's his street.

00:13:57 Merlin: But did you go, did you go into it thinking, boy, there's this, I've had this kind of niggling feeling for a while.

00:14:02 Merlin: I'd love to put to rest.

00:14:03 Merlin: Did you have something you wanted to learn about?

00:14:05 John: I did Merlin.

00:14:06 John: You're absolutely right.

00:14:07 John: And that is that the Highline water, uh, people, this foreman and his higher ups and ultimately the citizens of, of the region, ultimately the people, uh, have an easement across the back of my property where this line, uh,

00:14:26 John: of, uh, water, not sewer, but water, uh, goes across the back of my property.

00:14:33 John: And it was an easement that they, uh, eminent domain that

00:14:38 John: in 1964.

00:14:40 Merlin: And an easement is where it's like an imminent domain type situation where some kind of a governing body says there's this area that's currently considered private property and we need to be able to do civic stuff in this area without getting hassled so you can't yell at us that we're behind your fence because the fence is on the easement.

00:15:00 Merlin: We used to have these in Florida.

00:15:02 Merlin: Back behind the house, there's an easement, a sidewalk-sized piece that would then cause even more bickering and stuff like that.

00:15:08 Merlin: But they just said, we're going to eminent domain your area so that we can do stuff.

00:15:13 John: Yeah, and this happened back in the 60s when it was, I swear to you, wild country out here.

00:15:18 John: There were wild horses roaming, and there were burial mounds.

00:15:24 John: I hope they aren't getting into your seed corn.

00:15:27 John: Well, by the time I got here, the seed corn had all been covered with blackberries.

00:15:33 John: But what they did was they actually cut a road through the back 40 here and they laid down a big water main.

00:15:42 John: Help yourself, guys.

00:15:43 John: Well, that's the thing.

00:15:44 John: They were like easement.

00:15:45 John: Yep.

00:15:46 John: And I think at the time it's like, what are you going to say?

00:15:48 John: Easement?

00:15:49 John: No.

00:15:49 John: Go, go get after it.

00:15:51 John: Can't fight city hall or Highline.

00:15:53 John: Cause they were going to, they were going to build houses down on the other side and they were like, well, we could run the water up over the trees, but that's not going to work.

00:15:59 John: We're going to put it across your back of your property.

00:16:02 John: And so in the middle of the, in the middle of the forest out there,

00:16:07 John: When I first started hacking through the laurel and the holly with my machete, I came upon... Machete and a sword.

00:16:20 John: Well, yeah, the machetes, you know, it's like... Froggy goes according.

00:16:24 John: He's got a machete and a sword by his side.

00:16:28 John: The machete is strapped to my back like Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone.

00:16:32 John: Yeah.

00:16:34 John: But I, but I found out in the, out in the woods, a Ivy covered little hillock, which when I excavated it, I found a manhole cover in the middle of what appeared to be, you know, all around it are a hundred year old cedar trees.

00:16:53 John: And here's this manhole covered.

00:16:54 John: So I was like, Hmm.

00:16:57 John: And I did, I did my research and,

00:17:00 John: as best I could and discovered the easement and figured out where the, where the water was going and saw the hydrant that it led to.

00:17:07 John: And, but ever since then, I've been like,

00:17:10 John: Okay, easement.

00:17:12 John: What does easement mean to you?

00:17:14 John: Me?

00:17:14 John: Highline Water District.

00:17:15 John: Oh, I see.

00:17:17 Merlin: Oh, I see.

00:17:18 Merlin: Has there been any sort of imminent domain creep?

00:17:22 Merlin: Because it could just mean I'm allowed to walk here in a hard hat.

00:17:25 Merlin: But like, what is the extent?

00:17:27 Merlin: Does this reach beyond, you know, the tip of my nose?

00:17:29 Merlin: What can you do on what I thought I bought?

00:17:31 John: Exactly.

00:17:32 John: Like, am I going to wake up one day and there's a backhoe out there?

00:17:35 John: And they're like, yep, sorry, easement.

00:17:38 Merlin: Well, you could probably put a cell phone tower or something, you know?

00:17:41 Merlin: Yeah, right?

00:17:42 Merlin: Well, they hadn't thought about it back then, but it's very forward-thinking in the sense that all we know, you learn stuff from an exposition, you learn that there's going to be ways to order kitchen supplies on your phone and stuff like that.

00:17:54 Merlin: And who knows what they're going to do, let alone in the future, our future.

00:18:00 John: Well, and that's one of the questions I asked the guy.

00:18:02 John: I said, so let's say that up here in the middle of the forest,

00:18:07 John: I want to build a seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams.

00:18:11 John: And I put it over the easement in some way, shape, or form.

00:18:16 Merlin: Okay.

00:18:18 John: And he said, well, it happens all the time.

00:18:23 John: In fact, over here.

00:18:24 Merlin: Especially if you don't know it's an easement, right?

00:18:27 John: Yeah, but it's going to be there.

00:18:28 John: I mean, it's going to be on your papers.

00:18:32 John: It's going to make some reference to it.

00:18:33 John: The thing is, people don't read the papers.

00:18:35 Mm-mm.

00:18:35 John: And it's a couple of line items down in your title that are like, oh, BTW.

00:18:42 John: It's the same way like property lines.

00:18:44 John: Property lines are never where you think they are.

00:18:46 John: Because when they draw the property lines, they're like, well, but we're going to need to.

00:18:50 Merlin: Just because the fence, I mean, I learned this from Daniel Plainview.

00:18:53 Merlin: You go out there and you got your tripod and you're making some cool arm gestures because you want to find out exactly where you can drink the milkshake.

00:19:00 Merlin: And just because there's a fence there, don't make that the line.

00:19:03 Merlin: Oh, that's right.

00:19:03 Merlin: Our technology has come a long way and it's malfeasant to just say fence equals property.

00:19:11 Merlin: But an easement.

00:19:14 John: An easement.

00:19:14 John: But the thing is, your house, which was built 100 years ago.

00:19:18 Merlin: Yeah, literally 100 years ago.

00:19:20 John: When they draw the lines, they draw the lines differently than they do out here in the Wild West.

00:19:26 John: When they put in the roads here, they were like, well, we only have the money to put in a two-lane dirt road.

00:19:32 John: But why don't we make the lines, because it's already 1950.

00:19:36 John: Yeah.

00:19:37 John: Why don't we make the lines in case we wanted to build a four-lane Cadillac delivery system?

00:19:44 John: And so they put the, you know, you look at it on a map, and it seems like these are the widest.

00:19:48 John: You could turn a horse car.

00:19:50 Merlin: That's so interesting.

00:19:50 Merlin: I remember learning in driver's ed that roads used to be more narrow, and that back in the day, big cars, small lanes, and that one way they tried to improve safety was to make wider lanes better.

00:20:02 Merlin: But this is also just again in passing, but I've heard you mentioned several times that like, forgive me, I forgot the word, but there's a term that you were using for like the original, like not plat, but like there were like a layout of lands where you are and there's the old one and there's the new one.

00:20:20 Merlin: Is this related to that?

00:20:22 Merlin: Like somebody draws a bunch of stuff on a map.

00:20:24 Merlin: You hope you get it right.

00:20:25 Merlin: I mean, is everybody talking to each other about how these lines intersect?

00:20:29 Merlin: God, you want to hope so, but often no.

00:20:31 Merlin: I'm guessing not.

00:20:32 Merlin: They just go, look, we need a road.

00:20:34 John: This is where road needs to be.

00:20:36 John: Somebody has, there have got to be

00:20:41 John: This is the wonderful thing about meeting people that work in the trades.

00:20:45 John: Because they know so much.

00:20:48 John: And they are oftentimes... They've got to deal with so much.

00:20:51 Merlin: You do that for five years, you're going to run into a lot of weird shit.

00:20:54 Merlin: And when it starts showing up more than once, you start inferring some patterns.

00:20:58 John: Some of them are like people, like anybody, like people in the computer world who aren't curious and are just there to do their jobs.

00:21:06 John: But some of them are genuinely informed and curious.

00:21:09 John: Like one of the things I noticed about...

00:21:11 John: The foreman that I was talking to is that he did not have a complete spatial sense of what he was looking at on the map.

00:21:22 John: Like he's talking about the map and he's pointing to the map.

00:21:26 John: Okay.

00:21:26 John: And I'm looking at him, talk about the map and point to the map.

00:21:28 John: And I realized he is not completely oriented.

00:21:31 Okay.

00:21:32 John: That must be a real liability in that line of work.

00:21:36 John: Well, that's what I'm wondering, right?

00:21:37 John: Because the map's not the territory, John.

00:21:39 John: Thank you.

00:21:40 John: Thank you.

00:21:41 John: So he's looking at the map and he's pointing at things and then he's pointing at things in the real world.

00:21:45 John: And I'm thinking to myself, well, you, sir, are five degrees off.

00:21:52 John: He's not completely disoriented.

00:21:54 John: He's not pointing north and calling south.

00:21:56 John: Five degrees of compass?

00:21:58 Merlin: Five compass degrees off of what you think you're pointing at.

00:22:01 Merlin: Oh, boy.

00:22:02 Merlin: You get a couple feet away from that.

00:22:03 Merlin: This is the way angles work.

00:22:05 Merlin: That's going to end up being a lot for somebody.

00:22:07 John: Well, if you're looking at a water main.

00:22:09 Merlin: Oh, sister.

00:22:11 Merlin: You need to know where that is.

00:22:12 John: You do.

00:22:13 John: And I know there's somebody on his team that knows exactly where they are because you're not going to start digging a hole in a road without knowing where you are.

00:22:20 John: Maybe he's somebody's brother-in-law.

00:22:21 John: Well, you got to wonder, but he does look at the plans and know what plans are.

00:22:27 John: And maybe the fact that he thinks this is there and that is over there doesn't matter because nobody's consulting him because he's sitting in the truck talking to a guy in his bathrobe.

00:22:39 John: But yes, this road that they are digging up did not exist until 1968, but it was on the original 1929 plans and

00:22:49 John: Because it was headed down to what was going to be the town square.

00:22:56 John: When they platted it, what is now a forest that's preserved as a nature preserve was supposed to be the town square.

00:23:06 John: And if you look at the original plat, it's got apartments and a fountain and a city hall and a fire station.

00:23:16 John: That sounds adorable.

00:23:17 John: Well, it was super adorable.

00:23:19 John: And all of it right now is living in an alternate ghost universe because what happened was the 1929 crash put all that on the back burner.

00:23:29 Merlin: Sure.

00:23:29 John: And by the time they started building here in the 50s, they were like, yeah, fire station.

00:23:35 John: Yeah, like do we really need it?

00:23:37 John: Well, and the whole idea of what land use looked like.

00:23:41 John: So they did build all that stuff.

00:23:44 John: They just built it –

00:23:46 John: like flat roof style up by the highway rather than... Because that's taking up valuable spots they could be selling to people.

00:23:54 John: Yeah, right.

00:23:55 John: But at the time, you know, land was cheap and labor was cheap.

00:24:00 John: All right.

00:24:01 John: Yeah.

00:24:01 John: But so down in the valley up here, there is the memory of a little town.

00:24:07 John: And until 1968, they hadn't even... It was just... I talked to a guy who grew up over here who said, it used to be

00:24:17 John: That from right here where we're standing, you could get all the way up to the QFC and never see a house.

00:24:24 John: It was all forest and you could follow the crick.

00:24:27 John: And I was like, follow the crick.

00:24:28 Merlin: Follow the crick to the QFC.

00:24:29 Merlin: That's a grocery store, right?

00:24:30 Merlin: Yeah.

00:24:31 Merlin: I went there with you and your mom once.

00:24:33 Merlin: Yeah, it used to be a better grocery than it is now.

00:24:36 Merlin: Yeah, they're all like that.

00:24:37 Merlin: That's so interesting.

00:24:38 Merlin: So there was, you see this in so many places.

00:24:41 Merlin: I saw this in Tallahassee like three different times.

00:24:43 Merlin: You've got the area that you consider town.

00:24:45 Merlin: You drive north-south or whatever.

00:24:46 Merlin: You drive a little bit, and then there's like somebody's doing a development.

00:24:49 Merlin: Right?

00:24:50 Merlin: And then the development gets a traffic light.

00:24:52 Merlin: Eventually, they get a Publix.

00:24:53 Merlin: And then nobody's happy.

00:24:54 Merlin: Oh, Killarne isn't far enough away from downtown.

00:24:57 Merlin: So then you start building further up.

00:24:58 Merlin: Everybody throws the rock a couple times and says, OK, this is where we're going to be away from all the snorks.

00:25:04 Merlin: But there's areas in between where the horses can get into somebody else's seed corn.

00:25:09 Merlin: Right?

00:25:10 Merlin: You like the idea of that frontier.

00:25:11 Merlin: It's a basic American urge until you hit the Sargasso Sea or whatever.

00:25:16 John: From my front porch up until 1997,

00:25:20 John: There were horses close enough to here that I could have hit one with a Frisbee.

00:25:24 John: No?

00:25:25 John: Could you hear them?

00:25:26 John: Well, I wasn't here in 1997.

00:25:28 John: That's true.

00:25:28 John: But they were right across the street going.

00:25:30 Merlin: That's a shame.

00:25:31 John: You like horses.

00:25:32 John: Well, sure.

00:25:33 John: I wish there were horses all around.

00:25:34 John: There's a horse pasture right over here that's still there that they haven't converted into.

00:25:38 Merlin: A lot of people get deer in their neighborhood.

00:25:39 Merlin: You get that in Santa Cruz.

00:25:41 Merlin: You get that in Atlanta where you see deer.

00:25:44 Merlin: I would be much more into like horses, especially small horses.

00:25:47 Merlin: I would love that.

00:25:48 Merlin: This isn't deer country here.

00:25:50 John: Okay.

00:25:52 John: Or the deer that would be around in western Washington are some kind of the mighty elk.

00:26:01 John: But but they're not around here.

00:26:03 John: I do get I do get coyotes.

00:26:06 Merlin: I haven't seen those two.

00:26:07 Merlin: We get those two.

00:26:08 Merlin: What I'm getting from this, though, is that, you know, best laid plans of mice and men type situation where you make a plan.

00:26:16 Merlin: Time passes.

00:26:17 Merlin: Things change.

00:26:18 Merlin: Yeah.

00:26:19 Merlin: You know, there are things that need to be done.

00:26:21 Merlin: And that must cause a real spaghetti from an infrastructure standpoint.

00:26:25 John: Well, yes.

00:26:26 Merlin: Especially if you're five degrees off, let's be honest.

00:26:28 John: And what the foreman was saying was right over here, there are houses built on the easement.

00:26:34 John: And they're going to be really sad.

00:26:37 Merlin: Oh, my God.

00:26:38 Merlin: Has anybody told them?

00:26:39 Merlin: Well, that's the thing.

00:26:40 Merlin: He's like, I mean.

00:26:41 Merlin: He probably doesn't know.

00:26:42 John: You know, we show up one day with our trucks and all of a sudden they built a house on it.

00:26:46 John: And it's like, I hope we don't.

00:26:48 Merlin: I hope you don't have a problem.

00:26:49 Merlin: Oh, my God.

00:26:50 Merlin: Ma'am, ma'am, this is not, you know what I mean?

00:26:52 Merlin: It's like complaining to the guy at Ikea.

00:26:54 Merlin: You say, you know, you're never going to shop there again.

00:26:56 Merlin: Like, dude, this is not my job.

00:26:57 Merlin: It's not my job.

00:26:58 Merlin: It's not my circus, not my monkeys.

00:27:01 Merlin: You built on an easement.

00:27:02 Merlin: That's not my problem.

00:27:04 John: And they're not going to come through with a bulldozer and take off your family room, but if there's a problem, right?

00:27:09 John: If there's a problem.

00:27:10 Merlin: You know, I keep thinking of, John, you ever seen that thing where, you know, they always say it's a, well, they don't always say, they do say, but you know, it's very important not to park in where the red curb is.

00:27:18 Merlin: Don't, don't park by a fire hydrant because now that's where a fire truck needs to go.

00:27:23 Merlin: Have you ever seen those photos where there's like a, let's be honest, they're usually a black BMW parked in one of those spots.

00:27:29 Merlin: And do you know what they, what they do when there's a black BMW parked in the red curb spot?

00:27:33 John: Do they just push it out of the way with their big truck?

00:27:35 Merlin: No way better.

00:27:37 Merlin: I'll see if I can find one of these.

00:27:39 Merlin: You smash both sides of the front seat windows, and you put a hose through the window.

00:27:47 Merlin: Oh, that's so lovely.

00:27:49 Merlin: Now, listen.

00:27:49 Merlin: Listen.

00:27:50 Merlin: You know me.

00:27:50 Merlin: You know Merlin 2021.

00:27:52 Merlin: I don't harbor these kinds of feelings.

00:27:54 Merlin: But if you have a black BMW and you're parked on the red curb, you deserve two broken windows at least.

00:27:59 John: Well, you know, within the car community, I think that, you know, it was widely understood that BMW drivers were the biggest assholes.

00:28:08 Merlin: Oh, I don't even, I don't know fuck all about cars.

00:28:12 Merlin: And I know that every time I'm almost killed, it's a black BMW.

00:28:15 Yeah.

00:28:15 John: But I think in the car community, that has rotated slightly, and now the consensus seems to be that it's Audi drivers.

00:28:23 John: Really?

00:28:24 John: The devil you say?

00:28:25 John: And I think there are way more Audis than there ever were.

00:28:28 John: You mean like a nice Audi?

00:28:30 Merlin: Yeah, that's like an Audi A7 or whatever.

00:28:32 Merlin: Not like a public radio listener Audi.

00:28:34 Merlin: Like an old Audi or a Volvo.

00:28:36 Merlin: Audi's a German car, right?

00:28:37 Merlin: That's right.

00:28:38 Merlin: Huh.

00:28:38 Merlin: And they own VW, right?

00:28:40 John: They used to?

00:28:41 John: Yeah, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche.

00:28:44 John: And Audi stands for auto union because it was originally a combination of a bunch of little German car makers that were making, I don't know what they were making, little Volkswagens, little people's cars.

00:28:57 Whew.

00:28:58 Merlin: If I was going to roll up with my computer-enabled Bobcat, I would really want to know if I'm about to talk to somebody who's built on an easement.

00:29:06 Merlin: I bet that's a very difficult conversation.

00:29:09 Merlin: Well, part of this— Even if it's your sun porch or whatever, they're going to be blown.

00:29:12 Merlin: Yeah, that's right.

00:29:14 John: Because if the water main cracks, that's the only time they're going to care.

00:29:18 John: But none of this was completely academic to me because for the last year and a half,

00:29:24 John: I've been trying to get somebody to come build a fence between me and the daycare so that she stops throwing her freaking coffee cups over the fence.

00:29:34 Merlin: The daycare, hmm.

00:29:36 Merlin: Is it one of those like mom and pop, a Russian couple runs it kind of things?

00:29:40 John: But it's not the Russian couple.

00:29:41 John: This is the lady whose family has been just throwing their garbage over the fence for the last 35 years.

00:29:47 John: That's no good.

00:29:48 John: Well, it's no good.

00:29:49 John: That's no way to live.

00:29:50 John: Well, it's not at all.

00:29:52 John: I would have words with these people.

00:29:54 John: What had happened was the old people that lived here had let the ravine go to seed.

00:29:59 John: And when I moved in, you know, it only borders a couple of neighbors.

00:30:02 John: And when I moved in,

00:30:03 John: and and started macheting my way through the back 40 i found that both of my neighbors had been using it as a dumping ground oh man one of them was just using it as a place to put her eggshells and and banana peels but she'd been doing it for 30 years she thinks the fence creates it's like you know like uh like judge wabner used to say when you park your car does not create a bailment in this case does the fence create a compost bin

00:30:29 Merlin: Well, there wasn't a fence.

00:30:30 Merlin: You're going to have horses cheek to jowl out there looking for seed corn eating up the eggshells.

00:30:34 Merlin: She had built a trail.

00:30:36 Merlin: What a fucking mess.

00:30:36 John: She built a trail all the way to the edge of the ravine and she'd been dumping her yard waste and her food scraps.

00:30:44 John: Oh, my God.

00:30:44 John: And when I confronted her about it, and it wasn't a hostile confrontation at first, I was like, hey, hi, neighbor.

00:30:51 John: I've been noticing in excavating this crazy part of my lawn that you've kind of really built up a little thing here.

00:30:58 John: And she said, oh, yes, well, we've been building up the hillside.

00:31:01 John: And I was like, I see.

00:31:03 John: Well, the thing is that a hillside made out of eggshells and banana peels isn't really a stable structure.

00:31:09 John: And I'm planning on restoring the ravine to its native state using all natural, all native plants.

00:31:17 John: And she was like, oh, and as she's talking to me, you know, she's peeling an egg and throwing the stuff over the edge.

00:31:23 John: And I'm like, okay.

00:31:24 Merlin: And it became confrontational at a point.

00:31:27 Merlin: What was her comportment?

00:31:29 Merlin: Was she hostile?

00:31:30 Merlin: Was she passive-aggressive?

00:31:32 Merlin: If I was throwing stuff over somebody's fence or had done it, I would feel really bad that I got caught.

00:31:38 Merlin: It's like when you get caught not picking up your dog's poop.

00:31:41 Merlin: What was the comportment of this neighbor?

00:31:42 John: Well, that's the thing.

00:31:43 John: She was a former Alaska Airlines air hostess.

00:31:48 John: Air hostess.

00:31:48 John: Back when they wore elbow-length white gloves because she's a much older lady now.

00:31:55 John: Does she still have them?

00:31:58 John: Oh, I haven't asked.

00:32:00 John: Okay.

00:32:00 John: But she clearly was used to, in this world, being cute.

00:32:05 John: and getting her way being cute and getting her way and she was very cute with me very flirtatious very charming but continued to throw her waist into my yard after i asked her not to several times and eventually and a couple of times i was up there in my overalls

00:32:26 Merlin: doing stuff and she would say hi neighbor and dump a wheelbarrow full of stuff like in my yard and i think that was was that her trying to say look i know this isn't a big deal you know this isn't a big deal there's nothing for me to feel bad about i'm not being a dick this is just a thing people do it's a thing people have always done do you think that's or do you think she knows she's being a little bit of a stinker

00:32:50 John: Well, she's being a stinker, but what she's doing is asserting that like, well, this is all the way over by my house.

00:32:57 John: It's nowhere close to your house.

00:32:59 John: And I mean, technically sure you might, your property line might be like halfway through my lawn, but, uh, but it's always been this way and it always will.

00:33:08 John: And also her contention was it's all natural.

00:33:12 John: I'm just, it's eggshells.

00:33:13 Merlin: It's just natural.

00:33:13 Merlin: Oh, I see.

00:33:14 Merlin: I see.

00:33:15 Merlin: It's like, you know, hair's like grass, man.

00:33:16 Merlin: It just grows back.

00:33:17 Merlin: It just grows back, right?

00:33:18 Merlin: That kind of vibe.

00:33:19 Merlin: I did not make the rat.

00:33:20 John: God made the rat.

00:33:21 John: Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

00:33:23 John: So I eventually say, I would like you entirely to stop throwing anything.

00:33:30 John: And I mean anything.

00:33:32 Merlin: Did you really say this?

00:33:33 John: I did.

00:33:33 John: I said, even if you have a wheelbarrow full of wonderful dirt, soil,

00:33:39 John: I would like you to just keep the soil on your side of the property because if it's so wonderful, why don't you want it?

00:33:48 Merlin: You know, you did it.

00:33:48 Merlin: You just won with logic.

00:33:50 Merlin: If this is really not such a big deal, why don't you just put it somewhere that's not somewhere else?

00:33:55 Merlin: Sure, if these eggshells are natural and they're wonderful.

00:33:57 John: If you love these eggshells, why don't you marry them?

00:33:59 John: Just make, that's right, make a little pile in your own yard and those things will be nice.

00:34:04 John: Over on my side, I'm trying to plant ferns and all this stuff and they don't want eggshells on top of themselves.

00:34:10 Merlin: Eggshells are not a native fauna.

00:34:12 John: And she at that point got very hostile.

00:34:15 John: Ooh.

00:34:15 John: She said, and I quote, enjoy your lonely life.

00:34:23 Merlin: Hmm.

00:34:24 Merlin: Okay.

00:34:25 Merlin: That's a little bit of a non sequitur when we're talking about a wheelbarrow full of compost.

00:34:31 Merlin: Enjoy.

00:34:32 Merlin: And do it like she did.

00:34:33 Merlin: Say it like she said it.

00:34:35 Merlin: Enjoy your lonely life.

00:34:37 John: Stomp, stomp, stomp.

00:34:38 John: And she stomped on it.

00:34:40 John: Now, I don't have a lonely life.

00:34:43 Merlin: Not at all.

00:34:44 John: You wish.

00:34:45 John: My life is very full of people.

00:34:47 John: I wish I had a lonely life.

00:34:47 John: And so I didn't.

00:34:49 John: I had no return.

00:34:50 John: I dream of the days when I had a lonely life.

00:34:53 Merlin: I know.

00:34:54 Merlin: I've been working on it, lady.

00:34:55 Merlin: I just want to fix my smart home devices for nine hours and watch Adam Neely videos on YouTube.

00:35:00 Merlin: I just want to not have to talk to anyone or ask what I should eat.

00:35:04 John: Why do you think I'm over by your property pulling up ivy?

00:35:07 Merlin: I could be back in the house getting yelled at for something I didn't do.

00:35:11 John: Right.

00:35:11 John: I could be downtown trying to get onto the fucking radio.

00:35:14 John: I'd rather get yelled at by you all day.

00:35:17 John: So she stomped off, and after that, we didn't talk for a while.

00:35:20 John: But the cost-benefit analysis of me getting into any kind of disagreement with her is zero.

00:35:24 John: I got no – it really cost me nothing, but it also benefits me.

00:35:28 Merlin: Don't shit where you eat is what they say.

00:35:30 Merlin: Be careful about a lot of things.

00:35:32 Merlin: Be careful before you have a one-night stand with somebody who always goes to the same bar you do, right?

00:35:37 Merlin: Mm-hmm.

00:35:37 Merlin: Now, a lot of people disagree.

00:35:38 Merlin: A lot of people disagree.

00:35:39 Merlin: A lot of people say that's a perfect person.

00:35:41 Merlin: But in this instance, for you to go and – well, it's not your fault, but as my friend Marker likes to say, it's not your fault, but it is your problem.

00:35:50 Merlin: And if you unintentionally set this woman ablaze with anger about her eggshells, well, now you've got a problematic neighbor, and that's no fun.

00:35:57 John: Well, so that brings us to the other neighbor.

00:36:00 John: Oh, boy.

00:36:00 John: Who she and her three sons –

00:36:05 John: Not my three sons.

00:36:08 John: Sorry.

00:36:09 John: They were.

00:36:10 John: I'm 55.

00:36:13 John: When I moved into the house, they were so delightful.

00:36:17 John: She came over and brought me an orchid, which is a kind of, it feels to me like a kind of Romanian curse.

00:36:25 Merlin: It absolutely does.

00:36:26 Merlin: It's like sending somebody a fish in a bulletproof vest.

00:36:28 Merlin: La la la.

00:36:30 Merlin: Doesn't that kind of feel like the kind of thing that says your days are numbered.

00:36:32 Merlin: Enjoy the orchid.

00:36:33 Merlin: Well, like, it's basically a challenge.

00:36:36 Merlin: Like, here's an orchid.

00:36:37 Merlin: Keep it alive.

00:36:38 Merlin: Oh, shit.

00:36:38 Merlin: Now this is your problem.

00:36:39 John: Keep an orchid alive?

00:36:40 John: How the fuck?

00:36:41 Merlin: I don't know how to keep an orchid alive.

00:36:43 Merlin: Do I look like somebody who can tend an orchid?

00:36:45 Merlin: What am I, Susan Orlean?

00:36:46 Merlin: But, you know, very nice gesture, right?

00:36:48 Merlin: Like, here's a plan to welcome to the neighborhoods.

00:36:50 Merlin: Very thoughtful.

00:36:52 Merlin: And it's not the kind of thing like greeting cards where you can just buy 50 and give them to people.

00:36:55 Merlin: No.

00:36:56 Merlin: You can buy 50 sympathy cards because every death is the same.

00:36:59 Merlin: But orchids are the kind of thing where she'd have to probably go to what's called the QVC.

00:37:03 Merlin: She'd have to probably go to the mart and pick up an orchid for John.

00:37:07 Merlin: Okay.

00:37:07 John: All right.

00:37:08 John: So it starts out fine.

00:37:09 John: It starts out fine.

00:37:10 John: And her yard is beautifully manicured.

00:37:12 John: And she introduces herself by saying, my father was a master gardener.

00:37:16 John: And so the orchid is like an, it's like an express, an expression of like, Oh, it's a branded greeting.

00:37:23 John: Yeah.

00:37:23 John: Master gardener hood.

00:37:26 John: But, and, and if you went up to the property line between our two houses, it was such a bramble.

00:37:34 John: You couldn't see through it.

00:37:35 John: There were trees that were covered with blackberries so that you couldn't identify the species of tree.

00:37:41 Merlin: Blackberries, A, I think of them coming from a bush.

00:37:44 Merlin: I could be wrong.

00:37:45 Merlin: And B, I think of them being thorny.

00:37:47 Merlin: They're extremely thorny.

00:37:50 John: They're awful.

00:37:51 John: In fact, they are human being shredders.

00:37:53 John: And these particular blackberries are imported from the Himalayas.

00:37:56 Merlin: That sounds like an exotic.

00:37:58 Merlin: I was going to say it sounds like an invasive.

00:37:59 Merlin: It sounds like exactly the kind of shit like people doing.

00:38:01 Merlin: Oh, eucalyptus trees will be nice.

00:38:03 Merlin: Yeah.

00:38:04 Merlin: Yeah.

00:38:04 Merlin: Until it rains once and their shallow root system makes it fall on my kid.

00:38:08 Merlin: Blackberries.

00:38:09 Merlin: What a bunch of bullshit.

00:38:10 John: Well, all this stuff in my yard, it all comes from Inglang or from Asia.

00:38:15 Merlin: It's like, I want every bird that's in Shakespeare.

00:38:17 Merlin: Welcome to Seattle.

00:38:18 Merlin: Fuck that.

00:38:19 John: I just planted a tiny sprig of bamboo and now it has destroyed everything.

00:38:23 John: Or kudzu or whatever.

00:38:25 Merlin: You think that cover of Murmur?

00:38:28 Merlin: You think that was an accident?

00:38:29 Merlin: That's no accident.

00:38:30 John: No, that's no accident.

00:38:31 Merlin: No, no, no.

00:38:32 Merlin: That was revenge.

00:38:33 Merlin: In Georgia, it flows like water, the kudzu.

00:38:36 Merlin: Woof.

00:38:37 John: But the blackberries here are vines or they're like an invasive.

00:38:41 John: They're not even a vine.

00:38:42 Merlin: They're like a monster.

00:38:45 Merlin: No, no, no, no.

00:38:46 Merlin: I see what you're saying.

00:38:46 Merlin: It's like not a kaiju, but it goes out and it's seeking out.

00:38:50 Merlin: It's like a runner.

00:38:51 Merlin: It's like, you know, at Harvard, you get vines on the walls.

00:38:54 Merlin: And in this case, you get these little guys going out like little aliens and they're colonizing, colonizing.

00:38:59 John: Oh, they're murderers and they have enough internal structure that one can come out of the ground and go 30 feet in the air.

00:39:07 Merlin: I bet they help each other.

00:39:09 Merlin: I bet those trees that hold each other up, I bet it's the kind of thing where it's like E.O.

00:39:13 Merlin: Wilson's ants, you know, where we're all working toward a certain thing and it's not good for homeowners.

00:39:18 Merlin: Okay, so you were given an orchid.

00:39:22 John: So anyway, I'm over there.

00:39:23 John: I'm at the property line.

00:39:25 John: You can't even get through there.

00:39:26 John: And I'm hacking, hacking, hacking, hacking, hacking.

00:39:28 John: And I come to the fence, and there they are on the other side in their manicured garden, and they have a daycare center where she sees little kids.

00:39:40 John: She holds your little kid for the day while you go out in your Audi and go to work or whatever.

00:39:44 Merlin: And they buy like three pieces of playground equipment and some juice boxes, and Bob's your uncle.

00:39:50 Merlin: Now it's officially a quote-unquote daycare.

00:39:52 Merlin: Well, except it has to be licensed.

00:39:54 Merlin: Well, I don't know, man.

00:39:56 Merlin: I mean, we got a lot of those.

00:39:57 Merlin: We got a lot of those around here.

00:39:59 Merlin: I mean, like, honestly, seriously, you know where my office is.

00:40:01 Merlin: Time was three doors down.

00:40:03 Merlin: There's a totally residential house and it had some kind of a real basic sign.

00:40:08 Merlin: And there are always names like, you know, sailor school or, you know, primary fun or whatever.

00:40:13 Merlin: And like, it's just a bunch of bullshit.

00:40:15 Merlin: Where they get to come to the cafe, get a latte.

00:40:18 Merlin: Anyway, so that's what it is here.

00:40:19 Merlin: Her father was a master gardener and I did not know that was a thing.

00:40:23 John: Yep, yep.

00:40:24 Merlin: And now, if I could ask, I don't want to be normative, does she have a partner?

00:40:28 Merlin: Because it strikes me, as with real estate, a lot of these phony baloney child care things, it's usually like a couple.

00:40:34 John: Well, so in this case, the house is one of the older houses.

00:40:39 John: The house is fairly old.

00:40:41 John: It's older than mine.

00:40:42 John: Okay.

00:40:42 John: And it was owned by her husband's parents.

00:40:45 John: Her husband's parents.

00:40:47 John: And her husband grew up in the house because her husband's parents lived there their whole lives.

00:40:51 John: But then in the divorce, somehow she kept the house.

00:40:56 Merlin: She's divorced.

00:40:57 Merlin: She got to keep the house.

00:40:58 Merlin: Maybe he was maybe he was catting around or something.

00:41:00 John: Who knows?

00:41:01 Merlin: He's gone.

00:41:02 John: He's gone from the picture.

00:41:03 John: Maybe he died in a tragic.

00:41:06 Merlin: She used to travel a lot for work.

00:41:08 Merlin: And I wonder nothing, nothing against women in the workforce.

00:41:10 Merlin: My God, we've lost so many women in the workforce.

00:41:12 Merlin: But I wonder, do you know what he did for work?

00:41:14 Merlin: No idea.

00:41:16 John: Okay.

00:41:17 John: But they do give the sense, and this is a thing, you know, we're talking a lot about class in America.

00:41:24 John: We talk about it here on the show.

00:41:25 John: Yes.

00:41:26 John: This neighborhood, because it was settled by Boeing-adjacent people, it has that quality of –

00:41:36 John: It's like an affluent working class neighborhood.

00:41:40 John: Yeah.

00:41:41 Merlin: That used to totally be a thing.

00:41:42 John: Yeah, totally a thing, right?

00:41:43 John: You have made it.

00:41:44 John: Detroit.

00:41:45 John: Think about Detroit, like in the 50s, 60s.

00:41:47 John: Exactly.

00:41:47 John: You got all these auto engineers and they're building big houses.

00:41:51 John: Here, you know, if you go up by the college, you've got a neighborhood where everybody in the neighborhood is a college professor.

00:41:57 John: Sure.

00:41:57 John: And so there are plenty of classes.

00:41:59 John: If you want to put your kid in a potting pottery class, you know, or a ceramicist class, there's going to be somebody there that will teach you ceramics.

00:42:08 John: Okay.

00:42:08 John: Out here, I think you'd have to go back to Seattle to find anybody that was working in ceramics as an art form.

00:42:14 John: Right.

00:42:14 John: But there are a lot of people.

00:42:17 John: Who support the local sports teams here.

00:42:19 Merlin: But it also sounds like the kind of neighborhood where there's a lot of like pride in your home.

00:42:25 Merlin: And I don't mean as in like Florida, like that's reflected in how you edge and then yell at other people about how they edge.

00:42:31 Merlin: But like you've got your own.

00:42:32 Merlin: Those houses have been there a long time.

00:42:34 Merlin: The people who get them probably got them for a reason.

00:42:37 Merlin: And now they've got their own little like a compound where they do their thing.

00:42:41 John: Yeah, you've got rhododendrons out here that are as big as a bathysphere.

00:42:46 John: Is that right?

00:42:47 John: You've got big rhododendrons.

00:42:50 John: But the thing about her is she gives one the impression of an affluent working class woman who has a nice house but who's running a daycare in order to keep the lights on.

00:43:04 John: But I get out there and I say, Hey, here we are.

00:43:06 John: You're like, we met with the orchid, but now I'm, now we're meeting in the back area.

00:43:11 John: And you know, of course I'm on my side of the fence and you haven't seen anyone on this side of the fence in decades because these sticker bushes are very tall and very awful.

00:43:24 John: And, um, so I'm standing here now and the fence between us is three feet high and chain link.

00:43:31 John: It is not a substantial fence.

00:43:34 Merlin: Like that De La Soul song.

00:43:38 Merlin: And just to bring me up to speed, this is the – I won't say the person, but this is the property from which disposable coffee cups appear to be hurled?

00:43:48 John: Well, so as I started to work back there – and we're all very – we're very friendly at this point.

00:43:55 John: Sure, sure, sure, sure.

00:43:55 John: I start trying to dig up these blackberries because, you know, fucking blackberries.

00:44:00 John: It's very hard because once you start digging, you realize that their root structure is like a brain.

00:44:06 Merlin: It's like hippies.

00:44:08 Merlin: You got to go all the way.

00:44:10 Merlin: You don't leave any part of it.

00:44:12 Merlin: You've got to get it completely out.

00:44:14 John: And somehow down there, you often find as you dig this woody mass of roots that hates you and you hate it and you are locked in an eternal struggle.

00:44:25 John: And so I'm down there and they're looking at me over the fence because the three-foot-high chain link fence is just to keep the kids out of the sticker bushes, right?

00:44:34 John: And they're realizing like, oh, we have somebody now who's going to be right here on the other side working.

00:44:40 John: That changes things.

00:44:42 John: And as I pull up the sticker bushes, every six inches, there is a piece of garbage.

00:44:51 Right.

00:44:52 John: And I mean – Concealed previously by the deep-rooted sticker bush.

00:44:57 John: And I mean true garbage.

00:44:59 Merlin: I mean like – We're not talking about the occasional butt from an old Salem.

00:45:04 John: No, no, no.

00:45:05 John: I mean like a 16-ounce plastic Coke bottle.

00:45:12 John: With 40 cigarette butts in it and then someone pissed in it put the cap on it and you mean some fucking garbage garbage black plastic 50 gallon bags or whatever full of red solo cups and And just like the the garbage from a kegger, okay, but also I

00:45:35 John: Broken crockery and Christmas ornaments that they didn't want anymore.

00:45:41 Merlin: People make fun of Michael Stipe, but when he said, you remember what he said?

00:45:46 Merlin: He said, when you throw something away, where is a way?

00:45:50 Merlin: And in this case, it's on the other side of the fence.

00:45:52 John: Where is a way?

00:45:53 John: That's so true.

00:45:55 John: And for them, over the fence and far away had been a way.

00:46:00 John: Right.

00:46:01 Merlin: I mean, yeah.

00:46:02 John: Yeah.

00:46:02 John: It's not here anymore.

00:46:03 John: Yeah.

00:46:03 John: It's not here anymore.

00:46:04 John: It's right over there somewhere gone forever.

00:46:06 John: And as I dug deeper and filled up 10, 15, 20 bags of garbage and still finding more and stacking this garbage against the chain link fence.

00:46:21 Jesus.

00:46:22 John: I started to really hate them.

00:46:25 John: Not just resent them, but this woman and her family are the descendants of master gardeners.

00:46:31 Merlin: I know what you're talking about.

00:46:33 Merlin: It goes from a kind of, not benign, but there's a certain kind of just an annoyance that doesn't have a valence into a sort of, like, you did this.

00:46:43 Merlin: You know you did this.

00:46:45 Merlin: You should have known the consequences.

00:46:46 Merlin: You're a grown-ass adult, and now I'm out here with these bags with my dick in my hand.

00:46:52 Merlin: Right.

00:46:52 John: And I'm trying to be nice the whole time because I'm like, look, I don't want trouble with with you or my neighborhood.

00:46:57 John: But at one point I said, you know, a lot of garbage over here.

00:47:04 John: And she said, oh, they're you know, they used to they used to party back there.

00:47:09 John: And I was like, yeah.

00:47:10 Merlin: One of those broken crockery parties you hear about.

00:47:12 John: Yeah.

00:47:13 John: Well, and interesting that they only partied like 15 feet from your fence and they partied the entire length of your fence.

00:47:21 John: Yeah.

00:47:21 John: But only 15 feet from there.

00:47:23 John: And they brought Christmas ornaments and they and it's weird because if you were going to pee.

00:47:27 John: On this side of the fence, you would just kind of pee on the ground.

00:47:30 John: You wouldn't pee in a bottle.

00:47:32 Merlin: And in the amount of time you were out there with a bag dealing with the with the brambles, like you must have been able to do some basic forensics like you're going to see.

00:47:40 Merlin: Like, for example, that park, the park with the Confederate ghost by our house until fairly recently, we would find pop tops.

00:47:46 Merlin: old school, 70s, 80s pop tops from where obviously kids would go from the high school and go drink beer in the woods or whatever at the park, right?

00:47:53 Merlin: That kind of thing where you go, ah, ha, ha, but this is a Starbucks cup design that did not happen until 2009 or whatever, right?

00:48:00 Merlin: You'd be able to say, well, this is a vape pen.

00:48:02 Merlin: They didn't have those back in the day.

00:48:03 John: Well, and, but also there's some shit from back in the day.

00:48:07 John: Like you guys have been throwing stuff over the fence for 30 years.

00:48:10 John: No, I'm digging eight inches down and finding stuff buried in the dirt.

00:48:14 John: Jesus Christ, John.

00:48:16 John: And also there are clearly one of her sons is a crazy person because there are things that indicate that when he was in the backyard and finished a cup of coffee, he threw the mug over, completely intact, just threw the mug over the fence into the bushes.

00:48:31 John: Jim and Nick.

00:48:32 John: And so I went, ended up having a confrontation with her son, her adult son, because I was down in the ravine and they're up in their yard and they, they were digging up some big bush that they wanted out of their property.

00:48:46 John: And when they were done, they just, he and his brother just hucked it as far as they could into my ravine.

00:48:51 John: And at that point I had said to her, Hey, I've noticed that, you know, that you have a history of throwing stuff over here.

00:48:59 John: And she was like, Oh, a lot of parties down there.

00:49:01 John: And I was like, great, great.

00:49:02 John: But anyway, please don't ever throw anything over the fence again because I'm over here restoring the land.

00:49:09 John: And so they threw this thing over and I walked up and said, hey, I live here now.

00:49:13 John: Please don't throw your stuff over the over the thing.

00:49:16 John: And the guy freaks out.

00:49:18 John: We've been throwing stuff over there for 30 years and you got no right.

00:49:22 John: And so I climbed out of the ravine.

00:49:24 Merlin: It's not like you're asking him not to honor the Sabbath.

00:49:27 Merlin: Well.

00:49:28 Merlin: I mean, he makes it sound like some kind of like, well, this is in the Old Testament.

00:49:31 Merlin: This is where we throw the crockery and whatnot.

00:49:35 Merlin: How old is he?

00:49:37 John: He says he's an adult.

00:49:38 John: Yeah, 35.

00:49:40 John: But as I approach him, I see the unmistakable signs.

00:49:45 John: of a drug abuser.

00:49:48 John: Ooh.

00:49:49 John: And so he is a problematic.

00:49:52 John: And then I've talked to many of the other neighbors and they're like, oh yeah, well she's got one kid that's fucking nuts.

00:49:58 Merlin: But it's probably not needle drugs or you'd be finding hypodermic needles.

00:50:01 John: Well, I have found hypodermic.

00:50:03 John: Oh, shit, John.

00:50:05 John: And he is a needle drug user in addition to a meth user, and he's just a user.

00:50:13 John: Oh, he's a polymath.

00:50:15 John: He is losing his shit on me.

00:50:17 John: Does he live at home?

00:50:18 John: Uh, no, because she runs a daycare.

00:50:21 John: Oh, of course.

00:50:24 John: It gets more and more complicated.

00:50:26 John: Oh, John.

00:50:28 John: But he's over there that day and, you know, and he's a motor mouth, but he's just in my face all of a sudden.

00:50:34 John: And you know, getting like right in my face is a super bad strategy.

00:50:40 Merlin: You've been, you've been so nice at this point.

00:50:43 Merlin: You haven't asked anything that is not a normal thing to ask and you've asked it in a nice way.

00:50:49 Merlin: Am I right?

00:50:49 John: Thank you.

00:50:49 John: That's his honor.

00:50:50 John: I've tried a hundred percent to only ask for the basic consideration of don't throw your garbage over.

00:50:56 John: And he's escalating it.

00:50:58 John: Well, yeah, he's, he's into this whole, he's getting into the whole thing and he's physically threatening.

00:51:04 John: And that is a that's a that's the wrong move.

00:51:08 John: He didn't see your sidearm.

00:51:09 John: Well, he didn't.

00:51:10 John: But he also, you know, like doesn't he has no sense in that moment because he's a drug addict.

00:51:16 John: Yeah.

00:51:17 John: Of like, OK, there are people that you get close to them and they take a step back.

00:51:25 John: And there are people that when you get close to them, they take a step forward.

00:51:29 Merlin: He's probably used to encountering a lot of people where he can change the barometric pressure by going like, I'm crazy.

00:51:35 John: You don't want to mess with me.

00:51:36 John: Exactly right.

00:51:37 John: The crazy eyes and the like, I'm going to fuck you up.

00:51:40 John: But it's really, it's not.

00:51:42 John: And so, not eventually.

00:51:45 John: Very quickly, he understands his error.

00:51:50 John: But he's committed.

00:51:51 John: He's committed to the crazy eyes.

00:51:53 Yeah.

00:51:53 John: And, um, so I walk him back up his driveway, um, to his, to near his front door and his mom comes out and she's trying to control him and she's like, get back in the house.

00:52:06 John: And he's like, ah, and he realizes that he's in a, he's in a sticky wicket.

00:52:11 John: And so I turned to his mom and say, hey, I don't want any trouble.

00:52:15 John: I definitely don't want to be on the wrong side of your family.

00:52:19 John: I just have said it a few times.

00:52:21 John: Please don't throw anything over the fence.

00:52:23 John: And please tell everyone in your house not to.

00:52:27 John: And she's like, oh, well, you know, my son is very protective of me.

00:52:30 John: And I was like, right, that has nothing to do with this because I'm not – there's no thing to protect you from.

00:52:36 John: I'm not throwing stuff over your fence.

00:52:40 John: And so he, she sends it back into the house and you can hear him screaming every profanity he's ever heard.

00:52:46 John: And at some point I made an intimation that I understood what drugs looked like on a person.

00:52:55 John: And so he's in the house going, he thinks I'm a junkie.

00:52:58 John: He's calling me a junkie.

00:53:00 John: And I was like, Hey man.

00:53:02 John: Didn't call you a junkie.

00:53:03 John: Just gave you the look that you give a junkie.

00:53:06 Merlin: Right, right.

00:53:06 Merlin: And do you imagine for a minute that his mom doesn't in her heart now?

00:53:10 Merlin: Oh, she knows he's a junkie.

00:53:11 Merlin: He's probably had some run-ins.

00:53:12 Merlin: Everybody's had run-ins.

00:53:13 John: Everybody in the neighborhood.

00:53:13 John: That's the thing.

00:53:14 John: And what I didn't say was, you're running a daycare and you got a junkie son who's probably got a record.

00:53:20 John: But there's the implication.

00:53:21 John: But I'm not saying it.

00:53:22 John: I'm not even implying it.

00:53:23 Merlin: Doesn't need to be said.

00:53:24 John: I'm just standing there like, don't throw your shit over the fence.

00:53:25 Merlin: You don't even need to put it down and she's picking it up whether she likes it or not.

00:53:29 John: But at that point...

00:53:31 John: You know, and I spent a couple of nervous days where I'm like, this is exactly the type of kid that is going to continue to be a problem.

00:53:37 John: But he wasn't.

00:53:38 John: He got the fuck out.

00:53:39 John: And I think his mom was like, you're done.

00:53:43 John: But at that point, I said, you know what we really need here is a much larger fence.

00:53:49 John: And I began to try to find a fence contractor.

00:53:55 John: Oh.

00:53:56 John: So if I could ask, how did she respond to that?

00:53:59 John: Oh, she was like, oh, I agree.

00:54:01 John: We should have a fence.

00:54:03 John: And I was like, great.

00:54:05 John: And I'm sure that what that means is that you agree that I should pay for a fence.

00:54:10 John: But that's fine because –

00:54:12 John: Nobody wants a fence more than me.

00:54:14 John: And you know what?

00:54:15 John: It's going to save you thousands of dollars in coffee cups.

00:54:19 John: Um, and so, but I've spent a year trying to get a fence contractor to commit to building a fence.

00:54:29 Um,

00:54:29 John: And I have never met a flakier group of tradespeople than fencemen.

00:54:36 John: Really?

00:54:37 John: They come out and they're like, well, a lot of them will make an appointment with me.

00:54:42 John: And 20 minutes after they were supposed to be here, when I call them and say, were you supposed to be here?

00:54:47 John: They tell me, oh, there was another thing.

00:54:51 John: And, you know, I saw a hot air balloon or, you know, my I couldn't get my radio.

00:54:55 Merlin: Oh, it's never their problem.

00:54:56 John: Never.

00:54:57 John: Yeah.

00:54:58 John: Like I'm trying to get the metal station and I couldn't.

00:55:00 John: And so I had to die.

00:55:02 John: And the few guys I've come out had come out here, you know, walk the line and they're like, we can totally do this.

00:55:07 John: We can you know, this is this is easy.

00:55:09 John: And they give me like a respectable quote on it.

00:55:12 John: And then I never hear from them.

00:55:13 John: I never see them again.

00:55:15 Hmm.

00:55:16 John: It doesn't seem like a way to run a business.

00:55:18 John: Well, it's not.

00:55:18 John: But, you know, these are days where tradespeople are in high demand.

00:55:22 John: And I'm sure that they can build fences all day for contractors.

00:55:26 John: And they don't have to come out and build a fence between me and garbage daycare.

00:55:32 Merlin: Oh, you think they maybe get bigger jobs and they spackle in suckers and maybe you just, you didn't reach the bar of suckerdom.

00:55:40 Merlin: They just don't give a good goddamn.

00:55:41 John: I mean, I met, I found an electrician not very long ago who's like very responsive and does good work.

00:55:47 John: And I was like, what kind of unicorn are you?

00:55:49 Merlin: I know.

00:55:50 Merlin: It feels like a jam up.

00:55:51 Merlin: I feel the same way when I meet a tradesman who, like there was one, I told you this, but there was one time where after years of Comcast people coming to our house because the cable wasn't working right,

00:56:01 Merlin: We finally got, it was this woman who was a veteran, because we talked for a while.

00:56:07 Merlin: Of a Thousand Psychic Wars?

00:56:11 Merlin: Mm-hmm.

00:56:11 Merlin: She was some kind of Blue Oyster Cult song.

00:56:14 Merlin: But she, so she did her thing, because our internet had gotten really, this is just real quick.

00:56:19 Merlin: So basically she goes, okay, I'm done here, come on down.

00:56:22 Merlin: And there was this pile, this virtual rat king of coaxes.

00:56:27 Merlin: She said, this is all the coax I took out.

00:56:30 Merlin: Because basically every time somebody comes here to quote unquote fix something, I guess this has to do with the nature of how contractors are brought in.

00:56:38 Merlin: You know, it's usually magnet sign workers.

00:56:39 Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?

00:56:40 Merlin: Yeah, right, right, right.

00:56:43 Merlin: And she goes, yeah.

00:56:44 Merlin: It just ran another line.

00:56:45 Merlin: Yeah, I did a test and it's way better now.

00:56:48 Merlin: And so anytime anybody had come out for years to fix it, it always involved adding extra coax, which by the end of the line into our house had degraded the signal so badly that internet couldn't get to the house anymore.

00:57:04 Merlin: But you know what I'm talking about?

00:57:05 Merlin: You encounter like one person... Look, I'm going to be honest.

00:57:08 Merlin: One out of six people who comes to your house, if you're fortunate, is somebody who goes...

00:57:13 Merlin: Yeah, I did the thing you wanted.

00:57:15 Merlin: And I also fixed a ton of shit you would have no way of knowing.

00:57:18 Merlin: Like busted your junk this entire time because all these other people suck.

00:57:22 Merlin: And I was like, what angel are you?

00:57:24 Merlin: Thank you.

00:57:25 Merlin: Literally, thank you for your service.

00:57:26 John: Yeah, so beautiful.

00:57:27 John: You know, the farm had so much coax on the outside of it that it looked like it was being attacked by Cthulhu.

00:57:35 John: Maybe they get paid by the foot.

00:57:37 John: Because at a certain point, there were enough people living in the house.

00:57:40 John: Unspeakable eldritch amounts of coax.

00:57:44 John: There were so many people living in that house at some point, and every one of them wanted cable TV in their room.

00:57:49 Merlin: Yeah.

00:57:50 Merlin: Oh, okay.

00:57:50 John: So there was coax going outside the house into every room of the house.

00:57:54 John: Coax all the way down.

00:57:55 John: And it's like, look, you know where I don't need internet?

00:57:57 John: In the pantry.

00:57:58 John: I also don't need internet in the bathroom.

00:58:00 Merlin: Oh, my goodness.

00:58:01 John: Can we get some of this off of here?

00:58:02 John: Or a homemade closet.

00:58:04 John: So anyway, the other day I'm sitting here, I've been calling fence contractors all these years, which is to say one year.

00:58:14 Merlin: But as we all know, that last year has really felt like three years.

00:58:17 Merlin: Well, it's a lot of years, right?

00:58:18 Merlin: A lot of years, yes.

00:58:19 John: I mean, this year is going to make last year look like five years ago.

00:58:22 John: Hands ready.

00:58:25 John: In this case, I get a kid on the horn.

00:58:28 John: Yep, yep, yep.

00:58:29 John: As we used to say.

00:58:30 John: Sure.

00:58:31 John: He comes out.

00:58:32 John: We go walk the property.

00:58:34 John: He's about 24 years old.

00:58:37 John: And I say, you know, guy, I need a fence.

00:58:39 John: It just needs to go from here to there.

00:58:40 John: It doesn't have to be fancy.

00:58:42 John: It's just a thing to keep to keep the bottles of cigarette piss on their side.

00:58:48 John: I mean, they can still throw it over.

00:58:53 John: You're going to need an arm, though, you know?

00:58:55 John: Yeah, but you got it.

00:58:56 John: At that point, you can't just do it absentmindedly.

00:58:58 John: Yeah.

00:59:00 John: And the kid says, well, yeah, I can build this fence.

00:59:02 John: And I say, well, OK, I've heard that before.

00:59:05 John: And we go out to the street and we're sitting and talking.

00:59:07 John: We come down to the driveway, sitting and talking.

00:59:09 John: And I said, well, you know, you got any kind of timeline?

00:59:14 John: And he said, well, you know, my big season for my other job starts not very long.

00:59:20 John: So I'm just doing this work in, you know, in the lead up.

00:59:25 John: I do this work during my downtime.

00:59:27 John: And I said, what's your other job?

00:59:30 John: And he said, well, I'm from Enumclaw, Washington, which is, you know, which is country here, or used to be.

00:59:37 John: And I said, uh-huh.

00:59:40 John: And he said, and I'm a rodeo rider.

00:59:45 John: And I said, a rodeo rider?

00:59:48 John: This is a side hustle.

00:59:50 John: The fencing is a side hustle.

00:59:51 Merlin: He said later.

00:59:52 John: He's usually trying to work out eight seconds on a bull.

00:59:55 John: Well, and he said, I grew up.

00:59:57 John: putting up fence because that's what cowboys do when they're not.

01:00:00 Merlin: Oh, you're out mending fences.

01:00:02 Merlin: You're out there.

01:00:02 Merlin: That's practically like a, like a Cole Porter song.

01:00:05 Merlin: Okay.

01:00:05 Merlin: That's right.

01:00:06 Merlin: You're out mending fence.

01:00:08 Merlin: Okay.

01:00:09 John: From candle can't.

01:00:10 John: He's, he's been putting up fence his whole life.

01:00:12 John: He said, you know, first fence I ever put up, it was, I was six years old.

01:00:15 John: You never forget your first,

01:00:16 John: fence.

01:00:17 John: That's right.

01:00:17 John: He gave me a hatchet and a pistol and a thousand feet of barbed wire.

01:00:22 John: And he said, go put it up.

01:00:23 John: Come back when it's, when it's fence.

01:00:25 John: So I said, well, what kind of rodeo rider?

01:00:29 John: And he said, well, I got a scholarship to central Washington university.

01:00:35 John: And it was a calf roping scholarship.

01:00:38 Merlin: Okay.

01:00:39 Merlin: Is that the kind of thing you think you get that from like an industry group, like a cattleman's group?

01:00:42 Merlin: That's not the kind of thing a Kiwanis would do usually.

01:00:44 John: Right.

01:00:44 John: It's got to be the Black Angus roping scholarship.

01:00:49 John: And I said, I didn't know any of these things were true.

01:00:51 John: I'm so glad you asked.

01:00:53 John: And he said, what, you want to see some videos?

01:00:55 John: And he shows me some videos.

01:00:57 Merlin: Shut up.

01:00:58 John: They let the calf out.

01:01:00 John: And he goes chasing after it with his horse.

01:01:02 John: With a lasso over his head.

01:01:04 John: grabs the grabs a calf yanks it back jumps down ties it up puts his hands up in the air six seconds stop the clock yeah nine seconds or whatever damn and he's like so all season and he's a personable guy and he's a chatty guy and i'm throwing questions at him and he's like

01:01:22 John: Oh, yeah.

01:01:22 John: Well, during the season, travel all across the country, going from county fair to county fair, roping calves.

01:01:30 John: And it's my profession.

01:01:32 John: Like, I won the 2019 calf roping juniors.

01:01:37 John: And he's talking about, like, you know, out here in Washington, sure, we got five or six county fairs.

01:01:43 John: But, you know, like back in Laramie at the calf roping world championships.

01:01:48 Merlin: Well, you know, you don't move to Iowa to get into movies.

01:01:52 Merlin: Right.

01:01:52 Merlin: I mean, you got to go where the roping is.

01:01:55 Merlin: Or as Wayne Gretzky said, you go where the roping is going to be.

01:01:59 Merlin: So he is talking to me about roping.

01:02:02 John: Okay.

01:02:02 John: And what I'm hearing is that this kind of level of cowboy, they're traveling the country like an indie rock band.

01:02:12 John: He and his buddy get in a car and

01:02:15 John: They go out, they're borrowing horses from other guys.

01:02:18 John: Sometimes they bring horses.

01:02:20 John: They must get more tail than Sinatra.

01:02:22 John: Well, hope to shout.

01:02:26 John: So he, so I'm like talking to him for about 15 minutes and I was like, you know what?

01:02:32 John: You know what, Hunter?

01:02:34 John: Because his freaking name is Hunter.

01:02:36 John: That's a cool name.

01:02:37 John: And his buddy's name is Pistol or something.

01:02:40 John: And I said to him, you guys got fucking hilariously two perfect cowboy names.

01:02:46 John: And he said, oh, you wouldn't believe the names that some cowboys have.

01:02:50 John: You know, they're all called like Saddle and fucking whatever.

01:02:54 Merlin: Crispos.

01:02:55 John: Ropey.

01:02:56 John: Ropey.

01:02:57 John: So I said, you know what?

01:03:00 John: You got to stop.

01:03:01 John: Because I'm going to have you on my podcast, and I'm talking about the Patreon podcast.

01:03:06 John: The special Patreon podcast.

01:03:08 John: I'm going to talk to you about Rodeo Roping.

01:03:10 John: Patreon.com slash John Roderick.

01:03:12 John: On the podcast.

01:03:13 John: Mm-hmm.

01:03:13 John: And so he's like, podcast?

01:03:16 Mm-hmm.

01:03:17 John: And then his eyes get wide and he's like, I've been wanting to know all about podcasts.

01:03:26 John: Oh my God, it's a match made in Laramie.

01:03:28 John: Yeah, because some of the rodeo riders, the way they keep their minds right as they're driving across America is they're listening to podcasts.

01:03:35 John: And I don't know anything about them.

01:03:36 John: I'm really curious.

01:03:36 John: Probably Joe Rogan, yeah.

01:03:38 John: And so I'm like, well, you're going to find out about podcasts because you met the right guy.

01:03:43 John: So now he's all excited and you get the sense that he's not going to just ride off into the sunset and not build my fence.

01:03:50 John: So he calls me a week later and I've got all these guys.

01:03:54 John: In the meantime, I was going to interview a couple other fencemen and they both call me and are like, oh, I couldn't come because I put in a bag of microwave popcorn and it only half popped.

01:04:05 John: And I'm like, you know what?

01:04:07 John: Fuck you guys.

01:04:07 John: Cause Hunter is coming.

01:04:09 John: Cause I know he's coming cause he's into pod or he wants to know about podcasts.

01:04:13 Merlin: And I told him I was going to get like a reverse gift to the magic thing going on here.

01:04:17 Merlin: You can really help each other in this situation.

01:04:19 Merlin: Exactly.

01:04:20 John: So he calls me on Friday and he's like, how's Monday?

01:04:24 John: Oh, now this is, this is a year and a half of trying to get a fenceman.

01:04:28 John: And now my little cowboy is like, he and trigger are coming out here on Monday.

01:04:34 Oh,

01:04:34 John: And I'm like, what the fuck?

01:04:36 John: Yes.

01:04:37 John: Right.

01:04:37 John: Oh, and his fence quote is, is real low.

01:04:41 John: It's like, you know, and he's like, I guarantee all my work.

01:04:43 John: He's got that cowboy, like, you know, integrity.

01:04:47 John: Yeah.

01:04:48 John: My fence never falls.

01:04:49 John: Oh,

01:04:50 John: He told me a story about he was in a, he was in an elevator in Las Vegas and a guy gets in and sees his rope case, which is a thing apparently.

01:04:57 John: Cause he's like, your rope is a rope case.

01:04:59 Merlin: The same way that a salesman would have fuller brushes.

01:05:01 Merlin: He's got a case for rope.

01:05:03 John: Yeah.

01:05:04 John: He's carrying his rope case.

01:05:06 Merlin: Okay.

01:05:06 John: Guy gets on the elevator.

01:05:07 John: He's, you know, Hunter's looking down at, at the ground.

01:05:11 John: And, uh, and the guy says, you're open today.

01:05:14 John: Okay.

01:05:15 John: And he looks up and it's George Strait.

01:05:17 John: George Strait from country music.

01:05:19 John: And to hear him tell the story, it was like Eddie Van Halen got into your taxi and said, do you want a line of blow?

01:05:27 John: Pulls out a little guitar.

01:05:29 Merlin: And George Strait asked him about his rope case.

01:05:32 Merlin: That's so cool.

01:05:34 Merlin: That's a nice thing.

01:05:36 John: That's nice.

01:05:36 John: And he's a nice kid.

01:05:38 John: So I'll tell you what.

01:05:39 John: He showed up this morning.

01:05:41 John: Hunter?

01:05:43 John: And right across the ravine at this moment, Hunter is putting in posts in between me.

01:05:48 John: Shut your goddamn mouth.

01:05:49 John: Are you going to record later?

01:05:50 John: The trash take care.

01:05:51 John: So he said, the fence is going to take two days.

01:05:54 John: Oh, my God.

01:05:55 John: And I said, all right, Hunter, you put in your post today.

01:05:57 John: You come out and you put up the boards tomorrow.

01:05:59 John: And then you're coming in and we're having a podcast.

01:06:02 John: Yeah.

01:06:03 John: And he said, well, my buddy Trigger wants to come on it, too, because he's got a lot of stories, too.

01:06:08 John: Oh, my God.

01:06:09 John: And so it's possible.

01:06:11 John: And I met Trigger this morning, and he's got a baseball hat that talks about feedlots or something.

01:06:17 John: You know, like his baseball hat is telling the whole story.

01:06:21 Merlin: Oh, it doesn't say like Von Dutch or something.

01:06:24 Merlin: No.

01:06:25 Merlin: It's got a sack of grain on it, the kind of horse would really want to get into.

01:06:28 John: It says, sacks of grain are us while they're in Wyoming.

01:06:32 John: I get it.

01:06:33 John: And so – but more than even the excitement of having two cowboys on a podcast, la la la, is –

01:06:41 John: The fact that I've got a freaking fence going up between me and our lady.

01:06:46 Merlin: It's a Christmas miracle.

01:06:47 John: And you got Trigger.

01:06:48 John: Trigger's coming in, bringing his hat.

01:06:50 John: Sure, and I can just dance around naked, like two feet from her fist.

01:06:53 Merlin: Oh, I bet they've seen some shit.

01:06:55 Merlin: I wouldn't worry.

01:06:56 Merlin: Oh, Jesus, they've seen some shit.

01:06:58 Merlin: Can you imagine being at a Holiday Inn with Trigger?

01:07:01 Merlin: The kind of shit that goes down ice fights, probably.

01:07:03 Merlin: Like standing up late watching TV.

01:07:05 John: That's what I want to hear about.

01:07:06 John: I want to hear about what they talk about.

01:07:08 John: I'm a little bit afraid...

01:07:10 John: to ask them about their politics, but I really want to.

01:07:13 Merlin: No, no.

01:07:14 Merlin: I mean politics.

01:07:15 Merlin: Do we really?

01:07:15 Merlin: I mean, it's like talking about, it's like asking people about their pancreas.

01:07:18 Merlin: Like, do we really need to do that all the time?

01:07:20 Merlin: The thing is, I don't want to hear about their politics.

01:07:23 John: I want to hear what they think about their politics.

01:07:25 John: I want to hear about his ethos.

01:07:27 John: Wow.

01:07:27 John: Well, yeah, that's right.

01:07:28 John: Like, here you are.

01:07:29 John: You're a good old fella.

01:07:31 John: Is there a code of the road for ropers?

01:07:33 John: You're a young fella.

01:07:34 John: You're obviously a smart fella.

01:07:35 John: And you're over here on this side of the mountains, which is – well, Enumclaw is not too far, but it's like cow country.

01:07:43 John: But you're down here on the flats where we, you know, dance naked on the solstice.

01:07:50 Merlin: What's your – Different culture, you're saying.

01:07:52 John: Yeah, that's right.

01:07:53 John: What's your idea about what we need to do?

01:07:56 John: Because I know that you think there's something that we need to do as a people, as a nation.

01:08:02 John: What do we need to do?

01:08:03 John: And I bet you what you're going to say is not that we need to bring a Christian theocracy to government.

01:08:09 John: I think you've got more nuanced ideas.

01:08:11 John: But I don't want to hear about it.

01:08:13 Merlin: I bet they're also down to earth.

01:08:15 Merlin: I would love to hear earthy.

01:08:16 Merlin: And see, now I'm getting over my skis on this.

01:08:18 Merlin: I would love to hear some earthiness, and I would love to hear some overdue ideas for common sense in the polity.

01:08:25 John: Well, but first of all.

01:08:26 Merlin: What can we learn from the ropers?

01:08:28 John: Like I said, I asked him a couple of questions.

01:08:31 John: I said, what's the hierarchy of rodeo cowboys?

01:08:34 John: And he said, well, you know, the guys that ride bunking broncos are freaking crazy.

01:08:40 Merlin: I was like, save it.

01:08:40 Merlin: I totally believe that.

01:08:41 Merlin: Yeah, save it for the show.

01:08:42 Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:43 John: He's like, you know, if you're riding a crazy horse, like you're, he said, riding a bull is not that hard.

01:08:50 John: A bull's a big thing.

01:08:51 John: But a crazy horse, a horse that doesn't want you on it,

01:08:54 John: He's like, that's bananas.

01:08:56 John: So I was like, save it.

01:08:57 John: And then I said, how much, if you're roping a calf, how much does the horse have to know?

01:09:06 John: About the whole situation?

01:09:07 John: Yeah.

01:09:08 John: How much does the horse know about what's going on?

01:09:11 John: The horse you're riding, not the horse that's crazy.

01:09:14 John: No, no, but he's roping a calf.

01:09:15 John: Are you talking about a roping horse?

01:09:17 John: A roping horse.

01:09:18 John: Okay.

01:09:18 John: And he gets serious and he's like,

01:09:20 John: The horse is everything.

01:09:22 John: The horse, a good cowboy.

01:09:24 John: I totally believe that.

01:09:25 John: I totally believe that.

01:09:26 John: He said a good cowboy on a bad horse is worth a lot less than a bad cowboy on a good horse.

01:09:34 Merlin: Oh, it's like you've got to have every band.

01:09:36 Merlin: You can't have a great band without a good drummer.

01:09:39 John: Yeah.

01:09:40 Merlin: Right.

01:09:41 Merlin: And in this case, you're saying like you just you don't you don't want to fuck around and find out.

01:09:45 Merlin: Like if you get on like if you get on old paint, you know, and he's not so great and you're not so great.

01:09:49 Merlin: Ain't nothing going to get roped.

01:09:51 Merlin: Yeah.

01:09:52 John: So he's like, you want to say so wise?

01:09:54 John: He's like, let me watch walk you through this.

01:09:56 John: And so he pulls up another video and he says, look what the horse is doing.

01:10:01 John: And the horse, they pull out and he's roping and the horse is going this way.

01:10:06 John: And then as soon as he gets the rope around the calf's neck, the horse puts on all four brakes and starts pulling the calf.

01:10:15 John: back but he pulls the calf just enough till the rope is taught and then the horse stops and holds oh my god just nose intuitive with horse intuition trained or nose he's the horse is like you and me buddy and so hunters down roping the horse or roping the calf but the horse is the one controlling the calf

01:10:36 John: And Hunter says, if the horse wasn't doing this exactly right, that calf would be flipping and flopping like a halibut.

01:10:44 Merlin: And I'm like, oh.

01:10:46 Merlin: Oh, man.

01:10:46 Merlin: They're like a centaur.

01:10:48 Merlin: Like, they're working together.

01:10:49 Merlin: Could you do me a favor?

01:10:50 Merlin: I mean, I don't want to be a dick about it, but if you can, could you ask him, like, some of his favorite horses?

01:10:55 Merlin: Like, I especially like to hear names of horses.

01:10:57 Merlin: If it comes up.

01:10:58 Merlin: If it comes up.

01:10:59 Merlin: Like, is he riding an old paint?

01:11:01 Merlin: Or is it, you know, Gypsy Danger or whatever?

01:11:03 Merlin: Like, if you could find out some horse names, it would be really interesting.

01:11:06 Merlin: And anything else.

01:11:07 Merlin: I mean, anything you want to share here, this is obviously for your other program.

01:11:10 Merlin: I'm glad you're growing the network.

01:11:11 Merlin: But if you want to bring some horse riding wisdom and rodeo wisdom back to you, I would be way open to it, especially if there's horse names.

01:11:18 John: Well, and it might surprise you that I managed to ask him this many questions in what should have been a very short conversation between a fenceman and a guy.

01:11:25 John: A lot of cowboys are pretty taciturn.

01:11:27 John: Well, he's not.

01:11:28 John: He loves to tell stories.

01:11:29 John: And so I say to him, you're out riding around in a Caprice classic going from rodeo to rodeo and you're claiming to borrow horses.

01:11:37 John: How the heck are you communicating with a borrowed horse?

01:11:40 John: That's a great question.

01:11:41 John: And he's like, well, the thing is cowboys loan their horses to each other.

01:11:47 John: My horse is over here being ridden by Trigger while I'm riding, you know, old paint, which belongs to that's Trigger's horse.

01:11:55 John: It ends up being like a back line.

01:11:57 John: It's like a backline.

01:11:58 Merlin: It's a backline of horse where you use Jawbreaker's equipment or whatever, and they're like, okay, Hakuna Matata, if you break a string, change it.

01:12:06 Merlin: But you're using their PVs, their Shurs, all that stuff.

01:12:10 Merlin: In this case, it's a lent horse of a known quantity.

01:12:14 John: It's like when Pearl Jam goes out on tour, they got two whole separate caravans, and when they're playing at Red Rocks, their second unit is already setting up

01:12:27 John: down at the, you know, down at, uh, whatever the Denver Denver.

01:12:33 John: Yeah.

01:12:33 John: Quest field or whatever somewhere.

01:12:36 John: Okay.

01:12:36 John: And so they're just, and the band just flies from show to show and they've got these guys leapfrogging all the way across the country.

01:12:43 John: Well, apparently rodeo riders are also like, look, I got a rodeo tomorrow up in West Texas, down in West Texas.

01:12:50 John: And you're over in eastern Kansas.

01:12:52 John: Like I'll use your horse.

01:12:53 John: You use mine.

01:12:54 Merlin: It's so much like indie rock.

01:12:55 Merlin: I mean, this is again, this is like the SST bands, you know, blazing that path.

01:13:00 Merlin: In this case, the ropers are talking to each other.

01:13:03 John: And you've got to be competing with your buddy who's driving around with you.

01:13:06 John: But at the end of the day, you're back in the car together.

01:13:09 Merlin: It's like pro wrestling.

01:13:10 Merlin: Oh, my God.

01:13:12 Merlin: Have you scheduled a time for this?

01:13:14 John: Well, no, because I'm looking out the window here.

01:13:15 John: Now, of course, I can't see the neighbors because that's one of the wonderful things about the ravine.

01:13:19 John: It's just like all trees.

01:13:22 John: But I know right on the other side of this stand of trees, those two little cowboys are putting in the fence that I've been dreaming about since day one.

01:13:32 John: And they're not going to charge me that much.

01:13:35 John: And then I think tomorrow afternoon they're going to come in all with their – Dusting off their chaps?

01:13:41 John: Yeah, with their Wranglers all wet from – Oh, from ravine work.

01:13:44 John: From building that house from ravine work.

01:13:47 John: I'm going to have a fence over there that I'm going to put some guard towers up on.

01:13:51 John: Yep.

01:13:52 Merlin: Like a turret?

01:13:54 Merlin: A minaret?

01:13:55 Merlin: What do you call that?

01:13:57 Merlin: You know what, though?

01:13:57 Merlin: You might want to bring him some lemonade and just make sure that the neighbors aren't talking to them and trying to turn them against you because that seems like a very daycare thing to do.

01:14:04 Merlin: The thing is I've told him all about her, so he knows what's going on.

01:14:08 John: I bet he'll still be really civil.

01:14:09 Merlin: He'll represent you well, I bet.

01:14:11 John: Well, I said, because she was writing me like, well, you know, they can't be in my backyard.

01:14:15 John: And I was like, well, they're going to be in your backyard.

01:14:17 John: And she said, well, that's happening.

01:14:19 John: I can't do this.

01:14:19 John: And then he writes me and says, I'm going to have to use power from her house.

01:14:23 John: I'm going to need an extension.

01:14:24 John: Oh, shit, dog.

01:14:25 John: And I said to him, you know what?

01:14:27 John: You're going to have to use that million dollar smile.

01:14:31 John: And he's like.

01:14:32 John: And this morning, he gave me the smile.

01:14:36 Merlin: Did he touch one index finger to his cowboy hat?

01:14:38 John: He did, and he gave me the smile.

01:14:41 John: That Hunter smile.

01:14:42 John: I said, tell you what, Hunter, that smile, I mean, if you were looking for an extension cord from me, I'd give it to you.