Ep. 362: "Ghost of a Hobo"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Emma.
How's it going?
Good.
Good.
Yeah.
How are you going?
Good.
It's going good.
Good.
It's early.
Yeah.
It's really early.
What time is it?
I don't remember.
I better wait for two minutes, Emma.
Oh, no.
Alexa?
Oh, no.
No, no.
Please don't.
Please don't.
What time is it, Alexa?
Alexa, what time is it?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
It is early.
Okay.
Bye.
Hey, Emma.
Bye.
Bye.
Oh, it's Jubilee.
It's Festus.
Festivus.
That's correct.
Do you have any disruptions to your schedule there?
Me?
Well, sorry, let me rephrase.
The little person with whom you are involved in life has disrupted your Thanksgiving schedule?
Oh, no, not quite.
Not quite.
Nope.
Just the usual.
For whatever reason, the school that we're currently at in...
It's like, oh, Thanksgiving's a holiday?
You know, like, we'll give you a half day or something.
What?
Oh, no, no, no.
But, you know, school this week until Thursday.
Huh.
That's unconventional.
Yeah, well, you know, it's modern education.
They just, you know, John, they just decide things.
Like I say, I'm at a point in my life where things mostly just happen to me.
I don't have a lot of agency in things.
I find out about things sometimes.
I was talking to some people last night about how a lot of us lived our 20s that way, where I was like, I don't know, I guess.
Oh, are we dating now?
Okay, sure.
You know, like, is this where I work?
Like, not a ton of planning or feeling of agency.
And now maybe it's coming back again.
Maybe in your 50s, you're similarly like, well, I guess I'm going to the doctor.
I am – am I envious?
I'm kind of envious of people who had a plan and any of it worked.
I find it difficult to believe.
But there are people who say, oh, look at me.
I'm 13 and I'm good at biology, so I'm going to become a doctor.
And I'm like, wow.
Like –
A lot of them are doctors now.
I know.
Well, you got to do that.
You got to do that.
You can't just show up at the last minute and say, I'm a neurosurgeon, you know?
No, that's exactly right.
Oh, that's very troubling to me.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, you know, these days, am I right?
Yeah, in this economy.
You're telling me.
Mm-hmm.
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purchase of a website or domain squarespace.com slash super train offer code super train for 10% off our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick online and all the great shows it is early it is early you know I had a I uh I was at a thing last night and I was the last one to leave which I never am I
but it was, I was having a good time.
I was having good conversations, talking to this person, talking to that person.
And, you know, there were, there were a hundred people in the room and then there were 50 people in the room.
There are 20 people in the room and I'm still there chatting it up with, you know, just taking a little bit of time with everybody like, and I was talking, I was talking with, with some of the last people there.
And then,
And then someone who – like a staff person at the place joined that conversation and then the people that I knew left and then I was talking to the staff person and then the people that had come to clean –
somebody, you know, made a comment as they were, you know, as they like basically a comment, like, excuse me.
And I was like, Oh, excuse me.
You know, that's, you know, the derivation of excuse me or whatever.
And so pretty soon the guy that, you know, the last person on the staff was gone and I was sitting there talking to the people that were cleaning and I looked around and I'm in this cavernous underground room and
And the only people there are people that are like cleaning, you know, cleaning up the buffet.
Okay.
And, you know, I'm having a pleasant conversation with them.
With whoever's left.
But you're literally the anchorman.
You're holding the whole thing down.
I was holding it down.
And then I said, then I looked down at the buffet and I was like, what's going to happen to these cookies?
Yeah.
And she was like, oh, you know, take what you want.
And I was like, really?
She said, yeah, let me get you a container.
And I was like, well, shit.
So I started filling this thing with cookies, and she reached under a table, and she was like, you want these cookies?
And I had a little sausage and cheese, and I was like, wow, stay until the end.
She was like, yeah, get all this out of here.
I didn't know that was an option.
Yeah, she was like, well, just throw it away.
So I walked out of there, like, out of this party.
So anyway, I'm sitting here right now with one of these chocolate chunk macadamia nut cookies.
Oh, that's a good cookie.
Yeah, and I would never have this cookie for breakfast under normal circumstances.
But, you know, now I've got to get through all these cookies.
So interesting.
You're the one who first introduced me to the idea of, what did you call that idea that you're a blended version of an introvert and extrovert?
Do you have a name for that?
Oh, I don't know if I ever came up.
Introvert or an introvert or something.
Oh, an introvert.
Introvert.
But the idea that at a certain point you are spending more energy than you're getting from being around people, which I think I definitely have.
So sometimes you just have a good night.
Sometimes you just feel like you are the anchorman and you are there for the duration.
Do you know going into it that you will be the one who leaves with the cookies?
No, because last night,
So the event last night was the one with the harmonica, the new young night.
Okay.
I need to hear about this.
Well, and so it's, you know, a big theater and there's 50 people in the show probably or, you know, close to it.
And every, you know, all the musicians and the band and the staff, and they're all people that I know.
You know, it's an event that's put on by people I know.
The people that run the theater are people I know.
The people that run the nonprofit that the show is a benefit for are people I know.
And then all the musicians I know.
And so...
So even though this is an event, and so by definition, I dreaded it.
And for weeks, I've been like, oh, I gotta go do that thing.
Why did I say yes?
You know, all that stuff.
Oh, yeah.
It's like, oh, there's, you know, so-and-so, and there's so-and-so, and they're all wonderful.
You know, they're all lovely people, and they're all people I've worked with in every different way.
There are people that knew me before I had anything.
There are people that saw me every step of the way, you know, and here we all are, right?
And it's a...
And it's a thing that we're good at.
Mm-hmm.
It reminds me a little bit of, like, I've always avoided high school reunions.
I never go back to any of those.
But I kind of regret not going, because people always say it's so much better than you expect.
It's very low-key, you know?
And you were expecting these old beefs, these 30-year-old beefs, to still be around and nobody cares.
Like, what I'm saying is once you're there, you're glad you went, and it feels like a different thing than what you dreaded.
It's so different.
And I actually...
I went to my high school reunion and it was exactly what you're saying.
You know, you get there and you're like, oh, it's you.
And they're like, it's you.
And you broke Frank Kufel's heart.
And yet you've known him for 30 years.
Like there was a girl at the show last night.
I went out in the intermission because –
I'd left my phone somewhere and my phone had been discovered by someone I knew and they had brought it to me.
So I went out in the intermission.
I'm walking around the theater trying to find this friend.
And it was the rare event where I also felt like I knew about half the people in the 2,000-person venue.
Wow.
It was just all the people that would go to a thing like this are also people I knew or would know.
And there's a girl I went to high school with that I've only seen.
She was two years younger than me in high school.
In Anchorage or Seattle?
In Anchorage, yeah.
Oh, wow.
And she lived two doors down from me where we lived in Anchorage.
And her family, she came from a big Catholic family, and they were very conservative, and they were very established.
Anchorage had a real feeling of establishment.
There were families that were – I mean the whole feeling of it was – seems like now a thing from 1,000 years ago where there was a lot of conformity.
Even though we talk about Alaska being this Wild West, which it was, but there was a lot of conformity just like in those Wild West –
uh, movies that you see where there's like a mayor and there's a sheriff and, and there, and there are expectations.
A community would not succeed without order and without temple families that are putting in the resources to make the place that some of the buildings are named after them.
Every, every community that survives has to have that, I'm guessing.
Yeah.
And Anchorage was, Anchorage had that kind of in spades, right?
Um,
Because it was a small town.
And when I was a teenager, it was just – it had just become a big town or thought it was a big town.
Owing to the pipeline?
Yeah, the money and the pipeline and just the – like the transformation happened when I was a kid.
But it was still 250,000 people or something.
But it felt like people were cosmopolitan suddenly.
Lol.
Lol.
but so she, you know, she comes forward and she's surrounded by this group of, of women her age.
And she's like, it's me.
And I, you know, I immediately recognized her and, and,
There's so many people at this event last night that I recognized and could not tell you where I knew them from or who, what their name was.
You know, they say like John and I'd be like, Hey counselor, there he is.
Your honor.
But this girl, you know, she steps forward and I, I haven't seen her in 20 years.
And maybe 30.
And she steps forward and I was like, Mary Dietrich.
You know, like it's immediately there, right there.
And Mary, although a couple of years younger than me, was, you know, really kind of prominent in her class.
I don't know if she was class president or something, but she had that.
She was very sort of central to the good girls.
And she was kind of a law establisher.
within her gang.
And her gang was the gang that was two years younger than Mike.
If it were Planet of the Apes, she would be a Dr. Zaius.
She's out there establishing ape law.
But, I mean, she was enforcing ape law.
Oh, okay.
So she might be a gorilla.
She was monitoring ape law.
And she's extremely smart.
But, like, she was very contemptuous of me in high school.
Not contemptuous.
Suspicious.
You know, like, what are you up to, John Roderick?
Weren't you a bit of a well-known rascal?
Well, so she's got this group of women around her.
and there's some amount of surprise from them, like, wait, you know him type of thing, and there were a couple of her friends that did know that we had gone to high school together, and they all start to talk about Mary, like, oh, you know, she's the craziest one, like, she's so crazy, she's really nutty, and I was like, Mary Dietrich is like, I did not expect her to be the crazy one, and she starts to say, well, you know, like,
nobody knew what to do with John Roderick because he was like such a nut and, you know, really a nonconformist and that wasn't acceptable in Anchorage at the time to be a nonconformist.
But she was saying it in a, you know, appreciative way.
And it was like a little high school reunion because it's like all those old, like it ended up that Mary Dietrich became an iconoclast in her life, in her world.
All of her friends think she's like
just the, just the nut of the group.
And, um, and she, you know, she and I, we only had five or 10 minutes standing there talking, but it was just delightful.
And it was, it was like that throughout the night.
And the, the, but the problem with an event like that is I played one song and then was in, and then was in the finale and everybody on the show played one song.
Maybe a couple of people played two songs and
couple of people that played two songs should have played one song and a couple of people that played one song should have played two songs but we're all backstage and we're just like you you get all ramped up you walk out you do your bit you come back nobody wants to leave yeah but you've got this you've built up so much energy what are you gonna do with it you know and and there are an awful lot of
introverts at shows like that introversion yeah people people in the you know people who are like yeah well i made it and you know of course people know me because of my music and i'd rather be home but but here i am and you know and then they get there and they get that energy of performance comes into them and then they realize they know everybody too
So then afterwards, you have to do something with that energy.
Absolutely.
I mean, just just my little rinky dink band.
I mean, it'd be so hard to get to sleep.
You'd be so amped up from from all of that.
I don't know.
It's a lot of very kinetic personal energy going on.
It's hard to burn off and to have that extra thing.
Well, you know, we should tell our listeners, remind them.
So this is a Neil Young cover event.
And you had given yourself, you had gotten Heart of Gold, correct?
I got Heart of Gold.
Which is a pretty dang good song.
It's a great song.
And you had added to, you had chosen to add to this the challenge of putting on the Anakin Skywalker harmonica thing and doing the... So you were going to learn harmonica as well as singing and playing guitar.
That's right.
And so for the last, however long it's been, has it been one week, two weeks since we talked about it?
At least two weeks, yeah.
I've been walking around the neighborhood here in the middle of the night playing the harmonica.
Dogs and man alike.
Dogs hate harmonicas.
All the neighbors here are like, why is there a hobo in our neighborhood all of a sudden?
He seems to only know the one song.
And it's like the ghost of a hobo.
Like in the middle of the night, all of a sudden we hear this...
And he walks past and it's like, what?
It's not a normal sound for here.
No, there's a that the way this neighborhood is, there's a kind of there is a there.
It's not a neighborhood.
It's a town that I'm living in.
And this town, which has its own police department, its own mayor, it doesn't have a town like there's no there's a supermarket.
But there's no center of town.
There's no town square.
There's no – there's not even really – It's not a suburb.
It is a suburb.
But it incorporated itself back in the 50s in order to protect – there was a – the county was going to take – well, so when the neighborhood first was platted, it was platted right before the Great Depression.
Right.
They came out and there was, you know, whatever, a thousand acres of forest.
And they were like, we're going to make it a neighborhood.
And so they drew up this big plan.
It was going to be this suburban place in 1930.
So, I mean, it's close enough in that they were looking at it in the 20s.
And they platted it and they started selling lots and then the market crashed.
Oh, God.
And so this thousand acres of platted neighborhood...
uh just went nowhere just nobody bought any property nobody was buying building houses then and it bumbled along through the 30s and and then world war ii came and there was just nothing here it was just it was just empty but it had a map you know there was a there was a fantasy map of what it was and then right after the war uh at the beginning of the sort of you know
50s migration to the suburbs people realized oh this is a completely it's already mapped out and they started to buy these pieces of property and build their little mid-century architect dreams and so it went through a period in the 50s and 60s where if you were an architect in downtown seattle and you you were a young architect and you came up with a radical little house and you wanted a place to put it
You'd come out here and put it down and you'd sell it to a Boeing engineer because it was right by the airport.
Is this out near that diner with all the airport stuff?
That's further up.
Further down.
But the way that the neighborhood had originally been platted, it had its own beach because it's on Puget Sound.
Like the whole front of the neighborhood is this cliff that drops down to the ocean.
So a lot of the property was oceanfront.
Various, you know, some of them are 300 feet high with a big cliff and some of them are down low.
And there was a there was a there's a couple of rivers that run through it.
And there are beaches that were that were collectively owned by the by everyone in the neighborhood.
And if you had a if you bought.
It's weird to me that this place like was like Brigadoon for a while.
Yeah.
I mean, it sounds amazing.
And like, how did so the Depression came along?
It had a lot of structure in place already that would enable it to have houses.
And then there was even stuff like... When did stuff like the shared beach come along?
That was from the get-go.
Wow.
It was always... Isn't that unusual?
Super, super unusual.
And it's baked in.
So if you buy a piece of property in this area, it comes with ownership of the beach.
Wow.
And...
And also, you know, like these other, there's like these associations or whatever that you're automatically a member of.
And so in the 50s, they built like a couple of swimming pools, like public pools, like clubs, tennis court type of swimming pools.
And you had to join, but it's like nominal fee.
Anyway, sometime in the early 50s, the county...
said, hey, wait a minute.
A neighborhood can't just say that this beach belongs to them.
Let's see.
Because even though when you made this neighborhood, that was the deal, we're the county and we're going to take that back.
Oh, gross.
And the neighborhood in the 50s, it was just wild westy enough down here that the neighborhood said,
Oh, and the county was like, we're going to take the beach away and we're going to build a sewage treatment plant there.
God.
Oh, my God.
And so the neighbors all got together and they were like, we got to be a town.
Rather than fight the county, they were like, if we incorporate as a town, then we can do something else or whatever.
Yeah.
And they did.
They incorporated.
They became – and I'll reveal the town because I think people should move here.
I think it's amazing.
It's called Normandy Park.
And they incorporated.
Well, so they have a mayor.
They have a city council.
They have their own police department.
Wow.
And once they incorporated, what happened was the original lots that were part of that original plotting –
All are grandfathered in with this collective ownership of the beach.
Oh, wow.
Now, they started building other new houses around that are in Normandy Park, but they don't have that original ownership.
But still, a lot of the houses down here do have it.
And the house that I bought wasn't built until the 50s, but it was on one of the lots that were platted.
And just to be clear, it's not like you get a sliver of beach.
It's that you get access to the shared beach.
It's crazy.
They have a guy, like an old guy, who sits down at the beach on the hood of his car.
What?
And when you drive down the little road...
You come up to this guy and he looks at you and you go, I live up in 149.72.
Yeah.
207th.
Is he there all the time?
He's there all the time.
And he goes, oh, hey, you know, come on in.
He should pick up the harmonica.
He should.
And, you know, I think basically he's just down there profiling people, frankly.
You drive up and you're like, I live up on whatever McGillicuddy.
He's like, oh, sure.
And then some teenagers come with their stereos on.
He's like, hold on there, partner.
But so I'm walking around this like quiet little neighborhood of olds going.
And at Thanksgiving time.
The neighborhood – they have all – it's like a – it's a freaking weird – it's a town full of weirdos.
They build a big cage on the corner of some lot that's – it's unclear who owns it.
And they put two live turkeys in the cage.
Wow.
You know, like full-size comfort turkeys, as big as a fucking chair, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
And they put two pails out in front, big, you know, big garbage cans in front.
And one of them says, eat, and the other says, pardon.
And if you want to, if you think that they should kill the turkey...
to eat it you put a you put a can of food in the in the eat barrel okay okay you know it's a canned food drive okay huh and if you think you should save the turkey or the turkeys and it's a boy turkey and a girl turkey yeah i know the boys are a tom yeah tom was the lady like a sally yeah like a uh uh betty betty betty okay
So the turkeys become like a neighborhood attraction, right?
All the little kids in the neighborhood want to go visit the turkeys.
And the turkeys really put on a good show for everybody.
Like the Tom walks back, paces back and forth, waggling his tail feathers and getting very agitated.
You know, really, he gives you good money.
You're a good value for your money.
Yes.
And then she's much more like kind of circumspect.
And she has a very different call than he does.
Is she more dignified, would you say?
She is.
She kind of stays up on the hay bale.
She cocks her head and is paying close attention to what you're doing.
He's just like, you know, marching back and forth.
Yeah, real thirsty for a turkey.
Well, the thing is, he's an idiot.
He steps in his food bowl all the time.
Steps in it, knocks it over and stumbles.
Have you ever seen a turkey stumble?
I bet it's pretty funny.
It's ludicrous.
And he's, you know, he's, he's marching back and forth.
The food bowl is still there, buddy.
He turns around, comes back and steps in and stumbles.
She just kind of is watching the scene.
Well, they're there 24 hours a day.
So all day long, there are kids and neighbors and people putting food in the canned food in the, in the buckets and
And I think right now the vote is like 1,500 cans of food to pardon the turkeys and only –
900 cans of food to kill the turkey this could be a reverse form of voter suppression i feel that the kind of people who would vote for a turkey to be eaten or to live and for that to require a canned food donation is going to heavily affect the let it live bucket yep i think so too i think a self-selecting bias there was a while there around the 500 range where uh where eat kind of
uh, you know, overtook pardon for a little while because I think there were some, there were some dads going out there and just throwing in all the green beans.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
That's right.
And, and so, and you know, and of course I got a lot of mileage out of that with my little girl, like, yeah, we're going to kill the Turkey.
And then, you know, of course the kids all,
See, I'm imagining more of like, I remember that Shirley Jackson story, the lottery.
I'm thinking more of a reverse lottery where we let this one live so we can feel okay about all the other ones.
I think it's 100% what that is.
And also, where are these freaking turkeys going to go live out their lives?
They're going to go live on a farm?
It's like the Republicans.
They care a lot about fetuses, but they don't like babies.
You said a mouthful there.
And the thing is, are they just, they're going to go live on a farm for another year and then next year they're going to be, they're going to have to go through this again?
Or, I mean, I don't think, I mean, I think that the, under international law, that's considered torture.
Right.
Cause you're basically doing multiple.
I think you're allowed one mock execution.
It's double.
Yes.
It's funny.
It's fun and funny to do a mock execution.
I think if you do too many, that's a human rights violation.
Oh,
Well, you're going to get Greenpeace up in your shit.
Speaking of human rights violations.
Yeah.
Late at night when I'm wandering the neighborhood playing the harmonica.
How's that go again?
A little sample there.
Yeah.
John Roderick, however long it's been, you've gotten way, oh, it's still going.
Okay.
You've gotten way better.
I mean, you were not good before, but you know what you've, I don't know how you would put it in mouth words.
You've gotten better at identifying the hole you want.
Yes, that's right.
Did you know what I'm talking about?
Yes.
And you're bending.
You're bending very well.
Good bending.
Whoa, boy.
Okay.
No, that sounds good.
You nailed it, huh?
Well, so... Wait, where were we now?
We were on turkeys?
I owe some of this to the turkeys because they were a captive audience.
And I had a pretty strong feeling.
Is the old man with the car hood there?
Is he serious?
No, no, no.
This is miles away.
Miles away.
Not miles.
He's at the beach.
The turkeys are not at the beach.
They've got bastics and cages somewhere not at the beach.
At this hour, the beach is closed.
Oh, okay.
But the turkeys are never closed.
And all day long, they're dealing with I would I would describe it not as an antagonistic crowd, but certainly the crowd of kids that go by want to interact with the turkeys so that they are they're pressing their noses.
to the chicken wire and going, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.
You know, really giving that tom turkey something to do.
Across the ages, that's what children do with animals, I think.
Yeah, that's right.
They're just rattling, you know, literally rattling the cage.
But in the middle of the night, these turkeys are just, you know, they don't have very much stimulus.
I'm sure they're sleeping part of the time.
Yeah.
But I would go play the harmonica for them.
And, you know, my experience of playing music for birds...
is that birds are very curious about music.
In fact, all animals are interested if you're making sounds that are kind of in the range of sounds that are interesting to them.
And so I would sit and, you know, just practice all my little... And the turkeys would... So he would stop gobbling, but he would keep strutting.
And she really gave me the head tilt and the very attentive eye.
Now, turkeys are, in my limited experience, extremely dumb.
I think they're famously super stupid.
They're really dumb.
And over the course of the last couple of weeks, I really, really wanted...
Kind of like on my walk across Europe, I really wanted to communicate with God.
I was talking to God all the time.
And God just never, ever said a word back.
Not even a peep.
There wasn't even a smoldering bush.
These turkeys, I really, really wanted my harmonica playing to...
to change their lives a little bit?
Yes.
To animate them, perhaps some kind of a nascent intelligence or self-consciousness that is not native to the turkey.
They would require teasing out with a mouth-read instrument.
Right, like they have to be thinking, okay, we get it, we're in a cage, right?
We get it.
Cars are going by all day.
The children are taunting.
The children come, there are people up against the fence, there are these inexplicable kind of cans going into garbage pails.
And then there's quiet.
And the dark comes.
Here comes the ghost of a hobo.
And the ghost of a hobo shows up and stands there and plays.
What's that sound like when you do that?
You're talking about the sound of a ghost?
I'll do the ghost.
You do the harmonica.
Okay.
A little bit of that.
John Roderick, how does that not animate a turkey?
You hear something like that?
You're going to get an erection in your comb.
You're going to stand up.
You're going to hold yourself erect.
Both of you have some dignity.
Just be curious about the hobo man.
This is, this is what I was, this is sincerely what I was hoping that there was going to be, that I was introducing mystery into their lives.
Right.
And they could hear me coming and they could hear me going.
They knew that they knew that I would herald my arrival with the sound.
Cause you can hear a harmonica from a little ways, you know, and sometimes the nights would be foggy, you know, it's a Pacific Northwest.
So there'd be fog, you know, and, and,
Like the scene was really established.
And now I feel like, well, toward the end, as I got nearer and nearer to the show and I knew my song better and better, and now I had a relationship with these turkeys, I really was searching their little faces for some feeling that we knew one another.
I have so much aloha for this idea, and I'm not even kidding.
First of all, let's just point out, it's a little not the same.
It's a little bit like wanting to animate an orb or to introduce magic to a cube in some way, move things with your head.
But I think we all have these things.
I mean, there's a famous one in our household that involves my wife and the cat.
And it's the word that she just keeps waiting for the cat to say, for the cat to show some appreciation for the water, for the food, for the groom.
Just once she would like the cat, what does it say?
Here we go.
Wow.
She wants to look over and have the cat go, wow.
It's so close to what the cat already says all the time.
You hold out hope.
All you're really asking for is a little bit of change in stress and a meaningful glance.
I would have thought that the cat, if the cat could speak one sentence, the cat would say, please kill me.
Please kill me.
Okay.
So, Turkey.
So, you're out there and you're this close.
They're on the bales.
They're dignified.
They're cocking their heads.
Here he comes.
There he goes.
And I just could not in that key moment where I was like, it's me.
It's hello.
It's me.
The ghost of the hobo.
Yeah.
The anchorman has arrived.
I'm here.
And I never really got the feeling.
They definitely knew that I was a feature.
In their world.
Okay.
But I, because, you know, they, because they didn't, they did not, uh, warble when I, you know, she would make sounds.
He would remain quiet.
And this is, this is not characteristic of them the rest of the time.
So they knew it was usually pretty agitated, right?
Yeah.
I mean, he's just like, I don't particular.
Yeah.
He's, he's protecting his little cage.
Oh, very curiously.
One night.
Now, talk about the ghost of a hobo.
One night, I am coming along, and there's a woman.
This is in the night.
There's a woman standing there.
And I look, and the two turkeys are in the cage, and there's a third turkey.
What?
A third turkey outside of the cage.
A white turkey.
What?
A white spotted turkey outside.
standing outside of the fence.
And here's the crazy part.
The white Turkey had a, had, um, a display of plumage.
The Turkey was sized exactly between a boy Turkey and a girl Turkey so that it had the tail feathers of a, of a Tom, but smaller and less pronounced.
And the,
And the turkey's body shape was closer to the girl turkey, like leaner, sleeker.
Did you ask its pronouns?
I didn't.
I wouldn't have dared.
Right.
And I said to the woman who was standing there, because, you know, at this point, like, I kind of slipped my harmonica into my pocket because I didn't want to, like, because there was a human there.
And I was like, what's the deal with the other turkey?
Because everybody in the neighborhoods, you know, we talk about the turkey to one another.
When you meet somebody coming down the sidewalk, you're like, been to see the turkey?
Or the turkeys?
Do they have a shelter?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, is there something that keeps the elements out?
Yeah, there's several hay bales in there.
It's a fairly large enclosure.
Okay, okay.
For a turkey, right?
It's bigger than an airplane seat.
Let's call it that.
Okay.
So I say to the woman, hello, stranger.
What's the story with the third turkey?
And the third turkey is just standing there looking in the fence from outside.
Wow.
And the woman says, I don't know.
I wondered that too.
That's why I called the cops.
And I said, you called the cops?
And she said, yeah, they're on their way.
And so we stood and looked at the third turkey together.
The turkey was not going anywhere.
The turkey was curious about us, too, and all three of them seemed to be getting along.
I looked long and hard at the white turkey trying to figure out...
At first, I was like, is it even a turkey?
Is it a flamingo?
I'm a little adrift here.
In your mind, I don't know if you ask her this, if you ask Karen, did Karen have a reason?
Did she have an idea in mind about why a police officer was needed and what they should do?
I feel like...
No, I feel like what just see if it has any bench warrants or anything.
What Karen wanted, I think, is none of us in the neighborhood are completely clear on who is doing this turkey thing.
Where did the turkeys come from?
Really?
It's not a homeowner's association or the man with the hood on his car?
Nobody knows.
Oh, my goodness.
Okay.
It's not.
It's not.
It's a freelance turkey project.
Yes.
The turkeys are not located.
by the city hall, by any kind of... There's not a placard that says these canned foods go to these people through this agency?
No.
Okay.
It's a canned food drive.
Okay.
But there's no... As far as I can tell, I mean, I haven't read into the third paragraph of whatever... I don't think you need a license for that.
No, I mean, that's the thing about this.
It's its own town.
What is the county going to do?
They have to stop at the border.
Government.
So I think what she was doing was she said she was saying, I don't want to just start ringing doorbells because it's the middle of the night.
What is there to be done, though?
It's just a turkey hanging out with his pals.
The thing is, where does a turkey come from?
There's no turkeys around.
So I think she was thinking that the Normandy Park police would come and then she could hand it off to them.
She didn't want to have to.
She didn't want this on her.
Now, if I had come along and the turkey had been there and it was just us, just us three, you know I also would have gotten involved.
Now, I'm not sure whether I would have taken the turkey.
I don't think so.
I think my turkey nabbing days are over.
And I wouldn't have nabbed it.
It's not like I wanted it.
But I think...
There was a time in my life when I would have taken the turkey and then in the morning... You've stolen birds.
And I've stolen big birds.
You've stolen big birds.
You've seen a man kiss a parrot.
You've had a lot of exposure to winged wildlife.
I feel like if I could have gotten... And I feel like I could have gotten my hands around this turkey.
I could have cradled the turkey...
made it feel secure, and then walked to, you know, the nearest whatever, you know, they say never go to a second location with a turkey, but I would take the turkey and whatever, like keep the turkey from harm.
Yeah.
I mean, like I could see it.
To me, it makes more sense to go to a Denny's and buy the turkey some coffee.
I'm just not understanding.
Like one time we called county extension because I had a corn snake in my room.
La la la.
Because we didn't know what to do to get a corn snake out of my room.
At the time, I didn't know it was a corn snake.
I just knew it was a snake and I was scared.
It's a big snake.
Well, it's big enough.
It's just any kind of snake in the room.
La la la.
Anyway, so our action item there was, hey, it'd be nice if some big strong man would come here and get the corn snake from behind my bed.
Because that's just a Freudian nightmare right there.
Is a corn snake poisonous?
No, no, no.
I've been going along and I left the door open and it came in.
I was like 15 at the time.
But in this case, Karen, I'm just trying to understand.
Did you guys feel that the turkey posed a danger to itself or others?
Did you want to do a Baker Act, a 5150?
I think it is a suburban thing where people really in the suburbs want...
to have as little responsibility for things as they can get away with.
And yet to have it taken care of.
That's right.
Let me hand this problem over to the Normandy Park Police.
And I bet if you'd asked her a couple of questions, she would have said, that's what my tax dollars.
Oh, sure.
Okay.
Now, if it had been me, I don't think I would have called the Normandy Park Police.
I was surprised to hear that
But having – but I did not want to intrude in her narrative arc.
She was there.
The cops were on their way.
And although I think a lot of the time in life I would have stayed –
Just because I would have wanted to see what the cops and the I want to I really wanted to see a cop try and put a turkey.
Yeah, you buy a ticket for that play.
You don't leave at the end of act one.
But I had somewhere to be.
I had something going on and I was like, well, it seems like everything's under control here.
And I kind of the white turkey and I kind of eyeballed each other for a minute.
Um, I don't, you know, and now I regret not staying to see the end of that vignette, but the white turkey never reappeared.
I thought the next day, I thought the white turkey had gotten out or something.
Maybe the white turkey's a Brigadoon too.
Well, sure.
Maybe it's a shibboleth.
It's tough.
It could be a golem or a ghoul.
I thought day following that we were going to have three turkeys and that the white turkey would be explained.
White turkey never reappeared.
I have no idea.
White turkey never reappeared.
I have no idea where white turkey is.
I don't want to be down on Karen, but I hope speaking to the manager did not lead to a problem for this gender-fluid turkey.
I don't think so, right?
I mean, because the Normandy Park Police... They could just slip back into the night, huh?
I found a wallet on the street one time here that was... And it was just lying in the middle of the road.
And I opened the wallet, and it was full of money, and it had this guy's ID and everything.
And...
And it was clear from the business cards and the stuff, the receipts and stuff in the wallet that the owner of this wallet was like an owner of a landscaping company that was in this neighborhood to care for the yards because there's a lot of that.
Again, so you get somebody to take care of it.
That's right.
There are a lot of hedges that are very carefully trimmed.
They're always trucks full of people with hedge trimming stuff, driving around, taking care of stuff.
So here's this wallet.
It belongs to this man.
But I go online.
I try and find the phone number of the company.
It turns out the company is an LLC that's under an umbrella company that's maybe owned by his sister.
It gets more and more complicated.
They live in Tacoma.
And I just couldn't ever find... I found a phone number.
I called it.
It was out of service.
I found another phone number.
I called it.
Oh, my gosh.
You're really working the shoe leather journalism here to really, really try and bring this wallet home.
Well, that's the thing.
And you know that feeling.
You know, because you've had things in your life that went away.
And then they spoke to you from a distance, from a trunk, you eventually learned.
They did.
And also, I've had people find a thing and get it back to me.
Like last night.
The best.
Absolutely the best.
Isn't that beautiful?
Yeah, it's so great.
Yes.
Last night at the show, one of the stagehands came to me and he was like, I found this iPad.
You know, he actually said, like, you seem to know everybody.
How do I find the owner of this iPad?
And I looked at it and it was a first gen iPad.
It was an iPad that was like the size.
Oh, it's got the big bezels.
Yeah, you remember them, right?
Big bezels, yeah, sure.
Paperback.
It was thick and kind of curvy on the back.
Curvy on the back.
And I said, I can't believe that this thing still works.
They must never have upgraded the OS.
You know what I'm saying?
Am I right up here?
But I looked at it.
It had some identifying marks on it.
And then I got really involved with this stagehand in finding the owner of the iPad.
My first thought was that it was Chris Ballew, a longtime listener to our program, because there was a kid iPad.
Well, there was a backstage pass on it from a from a long ago show that said Prez.
And so it was for the USA.
That's right.
It was from a president's show.
Well, we went to to Chris and his wife, Katie.
Well, it wasn't theirs.
They thought it might be Craig Montgomery.
who was the longtime sound man for Nirvana, who then became the sound man, the house sound man at the triple door, because Craig would be somebody that would have an iPad like that that was set up as part of his system, because he was running sound.
We went to Craig, but it wasn't Craig's.
Anyway, you know, you'll want to solve a mystery like that.
We found the owner.
It was nobody that we would have expected.
But I found this wallet in the street.
And so I – this is one of those like you live in the suburbs now thing.
I put the wallet in my car and I said, I'm going to drive around until I find a Normandy Park police person.
I'm not going to call them.
I'm going to see how long it takes.
It's an experiment.
I'm going to get in the car.
I'm going to drive around.
I get it.
Just because you move somewhere doesn't mean that the explorations and the experiments continue.
They must continue.
As many experiments as you can get into one vial.
Oh, I feel you.
I totally agree.
People scoff.
I think it's so important to keep experimenting.
I really do.
Try a different route.
You know what I'm saying?
Every time, never take the same route.
For a variety of reasons.
I totally agree with you.
So the exercise is, so in this case, the goal, you know, Karen, the goal is we'd love to get this back to the fella that it belongs to, but...
Along the way, we're going to learn a little bit about how things work around here.
That's right.
Where are the police for the popo?
And what I want to know is I want to see some police power in action.
I cannot, using my limited skills, hack the encryption on phone games.
We've got to run the plates, yeah.
But I want to see this cop, yeah, right, like get into his LexisNexis and put this wallet in the person's hands.
So I start driving around aimlessly.
Drive around.
I'll take a right here.
Put her up here.
Go up.
Oh, look, there's a Normandy Park policeman.
Right there.
Driving along in their car.
I'm behind them.
And he's not speeding and I'm not speeding.
But I come up behind him and he's turning left.
And so I get behind him and I'm now turning left.
But I don't want to signal him because we're in the middle of executing a maneuver.
He's going to turn left.
This is not the time to honk.
So he turns left.
I always worry about spooking the police.
Police seem easily spooked.
I worry about, you know, causing an outsized reaction.
They do, but on the other hand, you know, part of my exercise of my privilege is to always assume that the police are happy to see me.
Ha ha ha!
and so there's steaming john yeah so he turns i turn and then i get up behind him and i'm like beep beep you know beep beep beep well he pulls over i pull over he gets out of the car and oh this so this is you know part of like deal with police etiquette i don't like leap out of the car or whatever he gets out i let him kind of establish the ownership of the space and
And then I get out of the car.
And, you know, he's got that cop thing.
Like, what?
Or, you know, like, may I help you, citizen?
And I say, I've got this wallet.
I found this wallet.
And I've tried to find the guy.
And I don't.
And I'm unsuccessful.
And he's a younger cop.
And he stands there and actually, like, scratches his head.
And then he says, well, you know, one thing you could try is
And I said, and he could see me go, huh?
And I, and I, you know, and I did, it's not like I said, let me, I'm going to let you finish.
But, you know, I said, well, I was thinking that you would do.
Find the owner.
Not that you would give me a suggestion.
Everybody's got a lot of ideas for what everybody else should be doing.
Right?
Isn't that becoming a theme here?
Well, I mean, I had no idea.
He doesn't want to have to fill out a bunch of paperwork.
Yeah, I was like, what?
I've got a wallet with like 500 bucks in it.
You're going to tell me that I need to go find the guy?
Like, I've been working on this project already.
You've got a computer in your truck.
So he goes...
His shoulders slump a little bit and he goes, okay, I'll take the wallet.
And he opens up the trunk of his truck and he puts it in some evidence bucket.
I'll take it to City Hall, he says.
And I'm like, couldn't you just type in this person's, he's got a driver's license.
You just type it in and you could find him right now.
If you got him on the phone, I would take it to him.
And he's like, no, now it's, you know, now it's got to go into.
Something doesn't add up here.
This is not adding up.
It's got to go into evidence now or something.
And so, you know, and he had sunglasses up on top of his head.
Like, there was a whole... Oh, they love their sunglasses, don't they?
Yeah.
He was strong, very strong.
So that's the one Normandy Park policeman I know now by name.
We parted on friendly terms.
Well, good.
Do you feel that he took care of that?
This is what I don't know.
I didn't get a case number.
Did you ask me to pop the trunk and just, anything in here that's going to poke me?
I, as I was putting on rubber gloves, I wanted some, I wanted to follow up and I wanted to, I wanted to call city hall.
Fun twist.
Small town, small town, suburban police department.
Now they're the ones that are getting stopped.
That'd be fun.
Yeah.
Well, or just like getting, you know, call down there every day.
Like, did you ever find the, did you ever find the guy that on the wall?
How fast you're going, sir?
Sir, I'm going to ask you to put your hands on the wheel.
It's a small city hall.
And I went down there already.
Uh-huh.
And and and I was like, can I talk to there was one behind.
So the city hall is in an old elementary school that they decommissioned because it was too full of asbestos.
But they put their city hall there instead.
And I went down and there was a woman at the counter and I said, I'd like to talk some to somebody about land use.
I own a property here now, and I would like to make some modifications to it.
This is unrelated to the wallet?
This is unrelated.
I've already been to City Hall.
It's part of the reason I don't want to agitate it.
I said there's a wetland component to the property, and I don't want to get in Dutch with you guys.
A wetland like an estuary kind of thing?
Like a salt to fresh kind of area?
No, there's a stream.
There's a stream that runs across my property, and it is a stream that plays a role in the hydrology of the region.
So you definitely don't want to get in Dutch.
I don't.
Oh, you might need to talk to three or four different offices for this.
Well, this is right.
And the woman that's at the counter kind of steps back, and another woman comes around the corner.
Here's this conversation.
She's a young, 35-year-old blonde lady, and she says...
She says to her co-worker, she's looking at me.
She's not looking at the co-worker.
She's looking at me.
She kind of puts her hand over and says, I'll take it from here.
Whoa, okay.
And the other co-worker steps away and she steps forward and she says, give me the address of the property.
Ooh, ooh.
And I actually, you know, I just just, I was just stopping by.
I just wanted to see if there was some form.
See, now, once again, now you're getting in and out the whole thing.
That's right.
And I said to her, like a fool, I said, well, hey, I don't want to get all into that yet.
Mm-hmm.
We're just talking here.
We're just talking.
We're just talking, yeah.
I don't want to get you guys up there already.
I'm just, you know, I haven't even really, I haven't even got a shovel out yet.
Mm-hmm.
And she very calmly said, well, the first thing –
when someone asks a question like that, that we want to know is, what's the address?
And then we're in a situation.
Because I can't back out now.
I can't tiptoe out.
That's an odd thing to say, John.
Doesn't that seem oddly invasive?
Well, this is government.
Shouldn't you be able to ask a question about something without having to commit to action?
That's the basis of academia.
What I discovered was that this woman is the brand new city manager of the city of Normandy Park.
Is that right?
And she may be looking to get some notches on her belt, huh?
Well, her predecessor was ousted for embezzlement.
Oh, that's not good.
And graft.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
And so she's the new, she's the reformer.
There's a new sheriff in town.
And she's here.
She's got some college degrees.
Uh-huh.
She wants some scalps.
She knows a thing or two about the hydrology.
She wants some addresses.
Give me the address.
She does.
And so I'm standing there and I'm just, oh, and also I took my little girl with me.
So she's standing there watching this interaction.
Well, I don't want to be, now I'm caught between a rock and a hard place because, you know, my daughter is very law abiding.
Yes.
Yes.
And so she's, like, kicking my ankle, like, give her your address, Dad.
Yeah.
What's the problem?
Don't make me do this.
And I'm like, what's the problem?
Yeah.
You know, I don't need the feds swarming my property looking for salamanders.
I'll find your buried gold.
I know.
What?
and so i like your decoy gold i reluctantly like but i can't but i can't negotiate john can't you say something like well i'll give you a plat area no too late too late because because because now you're dealing with the sheriff yeah she's like oh you've got some you've got some wetland questions well let's find out about that shall we
Because there's a little bit of my property that seems kind of unmapped or the city doesn't really have a grasp.
There are some streams in the town that are very important streams because they're streams that have salmons in them.
Okay.
And the salmons come back and they swim upstream and they make baby salmons.
When you hurt a salmon, you're not just or their estuary.
You're not hurting one salmon.
You are probably, as with a butterfly's wings, unintentionally hurting all the salmons.
Exactly.
This drain...
drains to the sound.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, understood.
Do you have those in San Francisco where they spray paint on the sewer drains like this drains to the sound?
Oh, well, yeah, similarly.
Yeah, no, we papered over a lot of the streams and stuff here.
Sure, sure.
But, you know, to make all the dot coms.
But no, no, for sure it says on there, hey, don't do that.
You're going to hurt a salmon if you put something in here.
Yeah, don't put any paint down this drain.
My kid has to pee.
I got to take her home.
What's the resolution?
What's the resolution?
What happened?
Did you work things out with this sheriff or are you still in Dutch?
Well, so she... So I was like, okay, here's my address.
You know, I want to be friends.
And so then I have to walk... Then I have to...
I have to make her think I'm nice.
I don't want to do anything.
I want to get the right permits.
I hate this state of affairs.
It's so unnecessary.
There's so much weird personal hostility that we take on.
Why can't we all just...
Yeah.
Get along.
Get along.
But also, like, why do you got to be like that?
Why does everybody in authority have to act like they're in authority all the time?
It doesn't make you weak to be helpful.
I gave her I gave her my address and I said, look, I know that you have your real address.
Yeah.
OK.
I said, I know because what I didn't want to do is come back in a month with my real address.
And she's like, oh, you.
Because I really do feel like the permitting or the approval or whatever it is that I'm looking for is down to whether or not this individual person likes me.
Oh, 100%.
100%.
You live or die by what this person thinks of you.
And so I said to her, look, I know you're the city and you can't recommend anything.
But I'm looking for the right...
hydrologist i want the right engineer that's not the one that you guys don't like if you know what i'm saying and she looked at me with those sheriff eyes and then she said i can't recommend anybody but i could show you the public records um
to see which of this kind of project got approved the fastest.
But this is not Watergate.
Why does this have to be so cloak and dagger?
Because it's wetlands in Washington.
And nobody wants their fingerprints on anything having to do with it.
No, because of the salmon.
And the thing is, because the state and the county and every jurisdiction, there are 40 different water...
jurisdictions, because what if a duck met a sailman coming through the rye?
That's right.
It's got to be a pristine environment.
They can't see any 50-gallon drums from where they're interacting.
Do they know that you're the harmonica hobo ghost?
I don't think they... Well, the thing is, maybe they talk to the white turkey.
She handed me a note partway through and it says, is this what every episode is like?
No, really?
Did you tell her yes?
I said yes, of course.
Ew.
Okay.