Ep. 392: "The Oldest Tyler"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Oh, it's Merlin Mann.
Oh, I didn't see you there.
How's it going, John Robert?
Oh, it's going just fine.
How's it going over there?
Oh, you know, it's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fine.
I'm not going to talk about COVID today.
I'm not going to do it.
Is that right?
Today's the day that you're not doing it.
Well, I guess I already just did, so kind of broke the seal on that.
I've got some chainsaws outside.
Oh, nice.
What are they chainsawing?
Well, the people down below.
The people down below?
The people down below.
Okay.
Is that a John Carpenter movie?
They come in the night and they make the toilet seat cold.
They're called the tweeters and the woofers.
Oh, okay.
No, there's somebody's developing a piece of property down the hill from here.
And they hired these guys to come clear some of the some of the trees.
And they were out there with the chainsaws.
And they were there on what on Friday, I guess.
And then they took the weekend off.
They're there again today.
And, you know, I watched them work for a while.
And they were obviously like a slap-a-dash kind of organization.
The guy in charge has that kind of look.
Well, he has the look that Skeeter used to have, which is the look of somebody that has an all-alcohol lunch.
Just the sort of person you want being Captain Chainsaw.
Yeah, up on the top of the tree with a chainsaw.
And then the other guy's working for him.
One of them seems like a guy that also...
Also has alcohol for lunch.
You think they have it in a bowl or a mug?
Yeah.
You know.
Like a spot show?
They share one spoon.
But then there's a third guy who looks like a really brow-beaten 30-year-old that's maybe –
Was a veteran and or is a veteran and then fell out the bottom.
His wife left him or something.
He just looks like a really bedraggled 30 year old and they yell at him all the time.
And he just like keeps his eyes to the ground kind of just beaten down.
Have you given him a name?
Uh, no, there, there's, so there's Skeeter too, who's the guy in charge.
Okay.
And then the, the other guy is like, um, he's a blonde guy, like kind of light blonde hair.
He seems like the kind of fella that might've been a,
Might have thought he had a career in professional wakeboarding.
Oh.
Seems like 25 years ago, he might have felt like he had a future in professional wakeboarding.
Is he too old to be a Tyler?
No, he's exactly, he's like the oldest Tyler.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
Let's call him the oldest Tyler.
Okay.
And then the youngest guy is like a Brendan.
He sounds like a Chris.
Or he could be a Chris.
OK.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
I haven't seen the man.
But he's got that sort of that hang dog look.
You know, there's a place – I imagine this is not unique to San Francisco.
But – and I'm not trying to cast an aspersion.
But there's a cool program here in town that works with people –
who I think it's mostly folks who are recovering from one thing or another.
And they do a – they've got a moving service.
They've got a Christmas tree delivery service, right?
They've got all these things where it's kind of like a Goodwill-type model of giving people, you know, training and, you know, a job.
Do you think – let me put it this way.
If these three folks, if it was a Skeeter 2, Tyler, oldest Tyler, and young Chris –
If they were associated with an organization like that, what do you think that program would be focusing on?
Well, so I do agree with you 100% that these three fellows that I've met so far are – they do not not resemble –
The people that you're describing, but I think that these three have yet to find a safe harbor.
These three are there.
They're in the wild still.
And it's because Skeeter two runs a tight ship.
As tight a ship as can be run by a man who has a lunch of alcohol.
Sure.
If you're drinking alcohol out of a soup bowl at lunch.
Like a terrine.
And I do feel like Chris is a good name for the third guy because he looks like the kind of guy that might die in a school bus that's been parked on a lot.
Oh, that's such a Chris way to die.
It's a really Chris way to die.
Yeah, yeah.
But so I'm watching him work and I'm feeling like...
the guy up in the tree, you know, when you're doing, when you're doing a danger work, I watch, I watch guys doing danger work to see how much they, um, how much they take the time to get their ropes straight and how much,
They just say, fuck it.
Yeah.
I mean, you talk about an example of, you know, I believe it was Bob Vila or maybe Norm who said, you know, major twice, cut once.
You want to check those ropes a bunch of times, I'm guessing.
And watching this guy, he's checking his ropes.
You know, he's like he could lean out a little bit and hit that rogue branch with the chainsaw.
And there's a 92 percent chance that it would just fall where he wants it to.
But instead he puts the chainsaw down and he hikes up the ropes and he gets himself into a slightly better position.
And I was like, hmm, interesting.
Looking at him, I wouldn't think that he was Mr. Safety, but maybe that's why he's still working in the tree business.
And as far as you could tell, they appear to have –
all of the parts that would generally be vulnerable to a tree born a saw accident yes they do and also although you know there might be like one or two unsightly facial or something yeah but also they have a truck which is well i'd say it was in the you know it was definitely in the middle 50 percent of landscaper trucks um
And they have a wood chipper, which is an industrial-sized thing.
So they either have – I've never watched those TV shows about crabbing ships.
They say that's a very dangerous job.
It sounds like there's a lot of things that could go wrong with this particular occupation.
I think there are.
And crabbing ships are a great – and I think we say crab boats, although I always get confused with the ships and the boats.
But –
I believe that the guys working on this crew are also the type of people that could have been commercial fishermen and might still be commercial fishermen in the off season, what we call the off season.
You had a pal that did that.
Too many pals, too many pals that did that.
But I noticed in watching them work over the course of a day because they were chainsawing all day.
About the third time I went down there, I said, you know, the one problem here with this crew and all their stuff is their chainsaws are too small.
You know, when he was lopping branches off of an alder tree, sure, he's got a little chainsaw.
Is that a softer sort of wood?
Well, it's just he's up in the trees, he's lopping branches.
That's what I would say, lopping them.
And so he's got a chainsaw that's like a branch lopper.
Okay.
But then they're down on the ground, they're chopping down whole trees, and they're still doing them.
They're still doing this work with these little lopper chainsaws.
It seems to me, I am by no means a chainsaw expert, but it seems to me that, first of all, if you're a professional, you would need the tools that you need.
But most especially, it seems to me that your chainsaw should be longer in length than the, much longer, well, at least a good deal longer, than the tree is in diameter.
See, there you go right there.
That, I think, Merlin, is exactly right.
There's all kinds of ways that could break bad, and at least the tree could go cajump a little bit on your chainsaw, and now it's spinning around, and now you've got a real Wes Craven-type situation.
Sure, you're in a bad situation.
Bad situation.
But also, you're working a lot harder.
You're working harder, not smarter.
Sure, sure.
Because you're out there trying to cut this big log apart with this little...
I'm not going to say it's a dinky chainsaw.
It's a fine chainsaw.
Probably all the chainsaw I would ever need.
But these are professional landscapers.
They should have a big chainsaw in their repertoire.
So watching them, I'm like, hmm.
I knew there was something sketchy about these guys just from looking at them.
But it's the small chainsaws that caused me to take another look.
And then...
I wasn't watching them at the time, but I was out.
I was walking around somewhere else.
And suddenly I was like, who do I know that had a too small chainsaw?
It's a psalm.
And then I remembered a guy had come by the farm when I was getting ready to move.
And he said, hey, you want me to clean up some brush around here?
And I was like, yeah, sure.
I don't have, you know, I don't have like a ton of money, but I can pay you in cash.
And he was like, great.
And he had this team of like four or five really young people felt like it, that did feel kind of like a, um, like, uh,
sober work party or something, you know, like a group of people in, in, uh, who are in crisis.
Let's give these chainsaws.
Yeah, let's, well, but they, you know, I don't think they got the chainsaws.
The guy.
I understand.
You check them out like it would a rifle.
Right, exactly.
And they were out in the yard and I was doing something else.
I was working, uh, with some on some kind of windowsill and I came back around and they had chopped a bunch of
branches off and the, and the kids, the group of five kids also had that really brow beaten, kind of like staring at the ground.
You know, I, I talked to one, I addressed one of them and they looked all scared.
Like I was talking directly to them.
And then I remembered the guy that was running that operation and
looked like a Skeeter.
He looked like a guy that was drinking alcohol with a soup spoon.
So interesting.
And then I thought, wait a minute, that guy's chainsaw was too small.
And then it was like one of those scenes where the focus gets all hyper-focused.
Like one of those jaws, like one of those rack-focus things.
You zoom in on Roy Scheider.
Exactly.
Yeah, tunnel vision type situation.
It was a tunnel vision situation.
Yes.
And I realized, is this the same guy?
They both look like Skeeter.
They both have brow-beaten employees.
They both have chainsaws that are too small.
Is it possible that the guy that was like walking around my neighborhood soliciting tree pruning and he did a bad job.
Mm-hmm.
Is this guy who's out here in a completely different part of town with, I have to say, a much better truck this time.
And he's also, I think, doing a bad job with a too small chance.
Could it be?
Mm-hmm.
So I went down to take another look at these guys.
And they've got like a whole – they've got like three trucks.
There's a dog in the cab of one of the trucks that's like a healthy-looking dog.
Healthy-looking dog.
Okay.
So I start talking to the big guy, the chief.
Yeah.
Saying like, well, you know, up there in the tree there, you got to do the thing with the – has that got the Jim Jam on it or is that the one with the flim spanner?
And he does some of that talk with me back.
A little bit of the old, you know, the old back and forth.
Sure.
Playing the dozens with him.
And I'm looking at him and I'm like, I think this has got to be the guy.
He's in better shape.
That would be so wild.
He cut his hair maybe.
Okay.
He's got a better – he's got this gear now.
He's not – and I'm putting this whole story together.
Like did he get out of prison, get a bunch of kids to help him a year ago like –
get a yard crew together and then he put that money into buying some equipment and now – because the guy, the oldest – what did we say?
The oldest Jeremy?
What was his name?
Oh, Tyler.
The oldest Tyler.
The oldest Tyler.
The oldest Tyler looks like a competent guy, like a guy that can get things done.
Okay.
Like he – the wakeboarding thing didn't turn out.
He probably did some commercial fishing time and now he's working on this crew because –
you know, he's maybe had a little trouble, but he seems like, he seems like somebody that, that can, um, that can do a job.
He's not, he's not, uh, he's not like, uh, uh, he's not a charity case.
So I'm, uh, so I'm, I'm looking, I'm looking at this more carefully.
And the thing is, I, I felt that the guy did a bad job when he worked on my house, but
In the end, when I went to pay him, I realized that I did have cash, but it was in the form of rolled coins.
Oh no, that's so undignified for everyone.
It was terrible.
I did not have enough money, and so I paid him in probably...
I probably gave him $80 worth of rolled... You didn't want to crack into your foreign currency cigar box?
No, I don't think he would.
I think he was... Would you accept these rupees?
He definitely was mad that I was giving him rolled nickels.
I imagine his exact reaction was, oh, man.
Yeah.
It was like a shoebox full of money.
And I was like, I'm so sorry about this.
I told you I'd pay you in cash, and it turned out I didn't have the bills.
And he was like, ugh.
So I felt like although he'd done a bad job, like we had a fair exchange.
He did a bad job, and then I gave him a shoebox full of money.
Hey, all money spends the same, you know?
That's right.
That's right.
But in watching him down here with this crew, I was like, I still feel like I'm owed something.
From this from Skeeter to he did.
He did.
What ended up happening was he didn't take away the the wood that he cut.
He didn't he didn't truck the wood out.
And so I had a bunch of wood and I had to put an ad in Craigslist that said free firewood.
Oh, man.
That's like a hair operator, like sending you home with a bag of hair with a bag of hair.
That's weird.
I mean, frankly, I met a lot of interesting people that day because the people that come to get free firewood in August are some – they are some real preppers.
Okay.
I had a lady show up in like a Honda hatchback and I was like, I don't know, lady.
There's a lot of wood here and they're long pieces.
Like I didn't – they're not cut up into –
pieces that'll fit in your fireplace she was like no problem don't worry about it i can handle it it's like the wood equivalent of buying a quarter of a cow yeah you're not gonna you're not gonna get a bunch of little neatly wrapped fillets that's right this is a this is a side of beef yeah and uh and you know and my thing is it's free but i but i just want it out of here i don't want to i don't want to sit and talk to you about it it's free so
But the problem is Merlin, I did want to sit and talk to them about it.
And so I helped this lady load these giant logs into the back of her Honda.
And I was like, what are you doing with this?
And she said, are you kidding me?
You can heat your house all winter with this stuff.
And I was like, right.
And then all afternoon people came by.
Finally, all the wood was gone.
But like three more people came by after the wood was all gone.
And they were like, where's the wood?
I was like, it's just some wood.
Seriously?
Go to the forest.
There's wood.
Wood aplenty.
Anyway, watching Skeeter 2, I was like, I still feel like I'm owed for that.
Yes.
Oh, no, I just wanted to, I'm listening and this is, you know me, I like a little mystery.
I have three potential theories here.
And I also have, I'll make them quick.
I have three potential theories and I have one possible idea for how you can figure this out.
OK, number one is that this Skeeter represents some kind of a franchise.
I'm just throwing that one straight out.
I don't think it's a franchise.
It could be, but I really doubt it.
I don't know.
The one that I think is the most plausible is that Skeeter, too, is like the character Fagan in Oliver Twist and that basically he's recruiting boys to go and pick a pocket or two.
Except in this case, it's, you know, you're you're making making wood.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
The one I'm most interested in, I just sent you a tweet by one of my favorite writers, Ashley Feinberg.
Ashley Feinberg's beat is that she goes out and especially using things like social media, she does the wildest detective work to figure out what's happening with public figures.
She found James Comey's secret Twitter.
She found Sebastian Gorka's Amazon wish list.
But I think she has a special obsession with the president's son, Donald Trump Jr.
So Donald Trump Jr.
on his Instagram had posted a photograph of
Yeah.
And then she uttered a phrase that I still think about twice a week.
She said, please meet the most going through a divorce man alive.
Sometimes, John, I cannot put my finger on it.
In the same way that you knew that was a Skeeter on site, you know, you get that Malcolm Gladwell blink thing.
I can sometimes identify somebody who's definitely a going through a divorce man.
Going through a divorce man.
So I don't know if that's precisely it, but I'm intrigued by the idea, especially inspired by young Chris, who right now is my favorite character.
He's the one that I'm going to be watching.
Yes.
Is it possible?
I love your bowl of alcohol explanation.
I think that explains a lot.
But is it possible that these are all people who are going through some sort of...
of familial, probably marital tumult right now?
Because could this be not a band of brothers, a band of divorcees?
So, as you know, I have a fair amount of experience with this particular demographic of American men.
Like, if you drink alcohol from a bowl for lunch...
I can tell you apart from someone who's just having a beer.
I can tell you apart from somebody that's even got a flash.
There's 80% of the world that I can say you're probably not right now.
And now I'm going to focus on the 20% of the world that I think you are or could very well be.
And, you know, you look at a guy that's down on his luck and you go, what's the state of his teeth?
Ha ha ha ha!
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Teeth tell a story.
They do.
Especially in America, you know.
if a fella's going through a bad divorce, if he's, if he's hit the skids, it's not going to affect how he chews for a while, right?
Like, like chew strength, um, is a thing that takes a while to degrade.
And in particular, it's not going to cause him while he's sitting in his truck to just kind of be chewing his tongue, right?
Like somebody whose teeth,
are more, more or less like gone.
You're not going to immediately see discoloration and decay, uh, let alone like lots of missing ones.
Probably.
Right.
So there are a lot of, so a lot of guys that are, uh, that are, that are hitting it, hitting it pretty hard.
You can see, you can, you know, you can say like, okay, is this a guy with a lot of sun damage to his face?
Who's been working outside for many years?
Um,
Is this a salty sea dog who stared out at that wine-dark sea day in, day out, not knowing whether it's day or night, pulling those crustaceans from the bottom of the ocean?
Is this a fella that's worked on oil derricks?
What do you call somebody who does that?
You call him an oily?
What do you call him?
A derrickier?
You call him a wildcat.
Wildcat.
A wildcatter, yeah.
Is this somebody whose knuckles are swollen?
How swollen are his knuckles?
How big are his calluses?
Is he just one big callus?
Is he freshly out of jail and just hit the sauce super hard?
Or has he been...
Has he been on a maintenance regimen of Sterno for eight to ten years, right?
Does he remember?
Does this seem like a guy who is still a vintner of, say, toilet wine?
Yeah, right, right, right.
When he was married, do you think his wife was a nurse or...
Or was she somebody that worked in the bar that he went to?
A retired stripper.
Also, I don't want to be too on the nose, but I think probably tattoos and the tattoos that are covered up tell a story too.
If you've got like a Lara Jane Grey style sleeve, that's one thing where you covered up a whole arm.
But like if you've got very significant cover-ups on your neck, right?
Well, or if you've got a tattoo on your neck of a mosquito,
Tapping into the main vein, which is how Skeeter got his name.
Oh, interesting.
Okay.
Skeeter – I mean, Skeeter's real name was – not Jethro.
Was it Jethro?
I just called him Skeeter because he had – because he had – when he was at the tattoo parlor –
He went in there with an idea and he said, I want a mosquito.
So it's kind of a Trump loyal effect.
It really looks like there's a mosquito on there, huh?
Well, if the mosquito was nine inches long, I mean, it took up.
Oh, no, that's too big.
It's too big.
Oh, no.
So it's like a thrush sticker.
Like, oh, dear.
OK.
Is that the name brand, the woodpecker you put on your car for your for your boom boom noises?
It's called thrush.
Remember I'm talking about it?
Remember you used to get those things to make your car louder?
A glass pack?
Could be a glass pack.
I'm sorry I interrupted.
That's too big, John.
That's too big for a mosquito, I'm just here to say.
Right.
And Skeeter has died.
Yeah.
Sorry, RIP.
Maybe his memory would be a blessing.
And it may have been that the mosquito finally took his final toll.
Hepatitis G. This guy, you know, like I didn't get close enough to look at him to know, like, does he have tattoos from the Navy?
Probably not.
He looks like somebody that maybe –
The Navy wouldn't have taken even when he was young.
Anyway, I walk over to the oldest – Tyler.
The oldest – who?
Tyler.
I can change it to Brandon if you want.
No, no.
The thing is I just – I like Tyler.
Tyler was our notional name for our child before my wife gave birth because with much respect to all the Tylers, it is the most generic American name.
Tyler.
And the thing is, I'm having a hard time remembering it.
I knew a couple of Tylers.
Sure.
I've known some very good, high quality.
I know Tylers who do podcasts.
They're very high quality people.
Tyler at my university, a good friend of mine.
That was a good Tyler.
Toby's, though.
You got to watch out for it, Toby.
Oh, God.
What if it's a girl?
That's a cute name for a girl.
Oh, that's a great name for a girl, Toby.
That's what Syracuse I wanted to name his kid.
That's a great name.
October.
I wanted to name her October from the U2 album with Toby being the canonical nickname.
I think that's adorable.
Toby is good, although Toby could also be the name of a leader of an all-girl motorcycle gang.
Not a problem.
So I went down to the oldest, Tyler, and I said, hey, what are you going to do with those wood chips when you're all done?
Yeah.
And he, and the, and, and Skeeter two was up in a tree at this point and Skeeter two.
Oh, here's one thing I knew, I knew was wrong.
I came, I'm watching him work, you know, and Skeeter 2 up in the tree did not like me standing there watching him work.
Oh, interesting.
He was eyeballing me from the top of the tree.
Is it that he didn't – okay, so is it possible he doesn't like you being close to the work or he does not like you interrogating the oldest Tyler or both?
I think before I even talked to Tyler, he was like – he has that natural instinct of somebody that's up to no good.
Yeah, yeah.
uh that is the the uh the instinct of what are you looking at and he's wondering am i a neighbor that's got a problem am i somebody from the county that's there to see oh you might be there from the government if you got to see him eating his bowl of alcohol does he hold his spoon like a john matuzak in jail type person does he still do the scoopy thing you know what i mean
Right, right, right.
He's got two right here on you.
What do you think you're looking at, Mr. Guy?
And so he's adjusting his ropes.
He's using his two small chainsaw, but he cannot get over the fact that I'm standing there.
But he's too far up in the tree to deal with it.
And watching him work and watching the other guys around, he's not a very good – he's not very good at delegating.
He didn't say to Tyler, you know, hey, go figure out what that guy's problem is.
Yeah.
So I'm just standing there.
And the thing is, a guy up in a tree with a chainsaw eyeballing me, I'm not intimidated.
I'm not going to be like, hey, you know, I'm sorry.
You've had more of that than he's had hot meals.
Yeah.
I'm like, okay, now I'm settling in.
I'm crossing my arms and I'm going to watch you.
I'm going to evaluate your performance.
Anyway, so eventually Tyler comes and talks to me, and I said, hey, what are you going to do with all those wood chips?
Because I actually have a use for some wood chips.
Are you thinking of doing some mulching?
Doing some mulching, exactly.
That's kismet, yeah.
What I've learned over the years is that grass in your yard is not a very good use of land.
You don't want a big lawn.
That's interesting.
You think that's like a suburban kind of normie suburban move to have grass?
Yeah.
Lawns are – they use a lot of resources.
They don't give you – they don't give back.
They don't – they don't –
Like absorb heat or water.
They take and they take and they take.
I feel you.
This is one reason I love in England.
You know what they call their yard?
They call it a garden.
I always like that.
They say in the front garden or the back garden.
I really like that.
If you think of that area around your house as a garden instead of a quote-unquote yard, I mean that's like having something truly beautiful and botanical as opposed to a putting green.
You know how it is when you drive through Ohio or Florida and you see those guys out with their tractors like mowing.
Well, that was that when you talked about the chainsaw team, I immediately thought of the analog in Florida being exactly very much the same because you're not talking about roofers here.
Now, roofers are their own thing.
They're like crabbers, right?
Roofers are you do not want to mess with the roofers.
No, no.
It's 120 degrees in there.
It was called Turk's Roofing, and they were all clinically insane because they were around tar on a Florida roof all day.
I was going to say the Chainsaw Boys remind me very much, obviously, of the folks who pull up in sometimes a pickup, but often with a short trailer, and they go and they fucking go ham on your lawn for $60 American.
And you see a lot of Skeeters, too, with that.
Oh, for sure.
Oh, for sure.
It's a job.
You know, I did a fair amount of land scraping in my in that transition period between like, OK, you know, like I I like to party when I was in high school, but it's not funny anymore.
Exactly.
You already write the demo.
That's right.
And yet I haven't quite figured out if there's another path for me.
And so I worked a couple of years driving around in a truck with a bunch of lawnmowers in the back, you know, like mulching people's things and mowing their things.
And hard.
It's hard work.
You drink a lot of Slurpees.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you get real efficient.
You do it real fast.
And if I remember correctly, I did a $20 lawn job for folks in the neighborhood.
But the real art was if you were one of those teens, you would try and get three or four of those.
Even give a discount to one of the people in the middle so you could just go all the way across You could do it all and basically what half the time there would or less probably that would take to do those yards separately Well, here's what you know what what made my thing kind of interesting was that I was working for a property management company, okay, so my properties were spread all over town and also I learned pretty quickly that summer that there was a tempo of
that met the bare minimum expectation and of the other person who was uh hiring you evaluating of the foreman yeah but you know it's property management so they had 200 properties and so if i if i was like johnny on the spot hustle guy and did five lawns a day i'm not getting paid any more than if i'm
Guy who takes a who, you know, who takes a bowl of alcohol and wear yourself, wear yourself out and make everybody else look bad.
Exactly.
So, you know, I would get three yards done a day and the foreman would say at the end of the day, huh, you couldn't have made it out to the fourth one.
And I was like, oh, well, there was a thing about, you know, there was a helicopter.
And there was something, you know, and there was an argument with a rosebush.
Yeah, I had a flat Slurpee at one point.
So I, you know, I know the game.
I know that.
But I just what happened to me was at some point along the way, I said, well, I've got to.
I've got to stop drinking.
So that was the big turning point for me in not now being a 52-year-old landscaper.
But so the guy comes over.
They're for the grace of God, et cetera.
Oh, hear, hear.
Yeah.
As-salamu alaykum.
So the oldest Tyler comes over.
Yeah.
And he said – and the thing is, Skeeter too is mean.
You can just tell he's mean.
That's why everybody kind of – So this is where you look at the lines in somebody's face.
Yeah.
You can tell what the default state of their face probably is a lot of the time.
And he's probably grunting over a bowl of bar brand vodka.
ABC brand, right?
Yeah.
But he's up in the tree.
He's chewing his cheeks and he's he's looking down.
And so as soon as Tyler's talking to me now, he's really interested in what's going on.
Of course.
But Tyler has got a friendly face.
He's a wakeboarder like he's not.
He's not in charge of anybody.
He's just trying to get down the road.
Forgive me.
How old roughly is Tyler?
Tyler's about my age, and so is Skeeter.
Skeeter 2 is a little older.
That is very old for a Tyler.
That's demographically very improbable.
Although, you know, there were Tylers in my high school, so that's what I say when I say the oldest, Tyler.
You've lost a lot of them, though.
That's true.
That's true.
We've lost Tylers.
We've lost Toby's.
There's, you know, like, pour one out for them.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, RIP to a real one.
Yeah.
So Tyler's like, you know, kind of shouting at me over the sound of the chainsaws.
And I'm like, hey, you know, what are you going to do with these wood chips?
And he's like, I don't know.
You want them?
And the thing about wood chips is that some people in the game have got more wood chips than they need.
Yes.
And then over here, you got people who are looking for wood chips.
John, it's the definition of an inefficient market.
It's difficult.
There's not a good clearinghouse unless you're willing to sign up for Nextdoor.
There's not an efficient market for connecting chip havers and chip knitters.
How do you put them in contact with each other?
What do you want to do?
Like you with your wood, I would never in a million years say, hey, everybody, come to my house for something free for a day.
No thank you.
I wouldn't even have a garage sale these days.
But for wood chips, I mean, you know, what kind of people are you going to get to your house picking up wood chips?
Woof.
Sometimes you go up to these guys, because I've done it many times, and say, what are you going to do with those chips?
And they go, oh, these chips are too good for you.
These chips are earmarked for somebody.
But other guys are like, I can't get rid of these chips fast enough, because if I don't give them to you, I've got to go deal with them somewhere.
And that was the case here.
And what was crazy was, Tyler turned around, Skeeter's looking at him, and Tyler makes this series of
Like semaphore hand gestures.
You know, it's not sign language.
It's some kind of thing specific to the trade where he imitates a dump truck.
It's like a thieves can't or a hobo code.
There's something specific.
Yes.
Okay.
But Skeeter 2, Skeeter 2 is able to see even through his roomy eyes, is able to look down and recognize the classic hand signal for this fellow wants chips.
That's right.
They got chainsaws going all around.
He looks over.
He gives a series of hieroglyphics.
And Skeeter gives, from way up in the tree, a kind of shrug of like, yeah, sure, he can have the chips.
And all of a sudden, I feel like I'm getting payback.
Because if Skeeter had been on the ground with his chainsaw off, I bet you he would have said, yeah, for 50 bucks.
Do you think he recognized you, too?
I don't know.
I thought about that this morning when I woke up.
The first thought I had in my head when I woke up was like – because I heard the chainsaws again and I was like, do you think that he recognized me?
I think he does.
Because we sat and, you know, like stared at each other.
Sure.
But then, no, I don't think so.
I don't think he – I don't think he's looking at me thinking it's the guy with the shoebox full of nickels.
Because if he had, I think he would have taken the job.
Yeah, I think he would have said 50 bucks for the, you know, like you owe me.
Oh, I see.
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
This is not your job.
This is the, what are the people down the hill?
What are they?
Yeah, some, well, so what happened?
The people down below, I think you said, yeah.
The people below.
What happened was there was a kind of an abandoned house down there.
One of the nice elderly couples on the block here bought the property because they were going to have their son restore the abandoned house and move in.
And basically their backyards would connect.
Oh, that's nice.
But then the son didn't want it.
And so what they did, the nice elderly couple down the street, the man of whom –
is the guy that's always walking around circulating petitions because the Chamber of Commerce has decided they're going to put a pot dispensary in the place where the old, like, haberdashery was.
Oh, interesting.
He wants the community to rally together and keep the pot dispensary out.
Is it because you don't want that kind of element?
Well, it's going to bring a lot of traffic is the thing.
All of a sudden, you know, what are you going to do?
There's traffic.
And it's like, you know, out here you see a car every hour, but there's going to be more traffic, a car every two hours.
But it's probably not good for property values is what the man might be thinking.
That's right.
And, you know, he's a natural born activist, a classic NIMBY.
But in this case, in his actual backyard, he...
He sold the plot of land that had the abandoned house on it, but he subdivided the property and he sold the other half of it to somebody who's going to build a house there.
So now the NIMBY has actually put –
He doesn't want a pot dispensary, you know, like three miles away.
The things that he's doing literally in his backyard are not going to be great for the neighborhood.
Right.
And the house that he sold, the abandoned house, is all fixed up now, and it's nice.
But the problem is that the guy that bought it also bought a minibike.
It's like a COVID-19 boredom minibike.
And he rides the minibike.
I know those are still around.
Those definitely predated mopeds.
They're very popular among hillbillies in Ohio.
Oh, man.
You know, my mom's boyfriend, Bobby, bought one at the Midway Drive-In for me.
Oh, wow.
Which was the swap meet in Midway that used to be there before they built the Lowe's.
Yep.
And that's also where he found Barney.
Barney the dog.
He found Barney at the Midway Drive-In.
But I had one of those Honda, you know, minibikes with the fat tires that was one foot off the ground and used to ride it around my backyard.
But this isn't one of those cool minibikes.
This is something that's like a stretched out.
something i don't know what you know there's so many motor vehicles now i can't even keep them all straight did you see uh did you see um uh john lewis's hearse i mean with all due respect i'm not this is not to make fun john john lewis's hearse was so fucking badass it was the coolest hearse it still had like the performance characteristics um
of a Ghostbusters car or a Herman Munster vehicle, but it looks totally modern.
It was really, really cool.
I'm very perplexed by vehicles today.
The various combinations of different kinds of vehicles have created some eldritch horror.
I'm very confused by a lot of vehicles.
I'm also confused by them, and I saw the pictures of his procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but I did not focus.
Oh, no, this was going to take him to the Capitol today.
Oh, no, I didn't see that.
I didn't see that hearse.
So anyway, so it's like a chopper minibike?
You see, is it elongated?
Yeah, but low.
It's a low chopper minibike.
The problem is it's got this exhaust note.
That's like, and he rides around in circles in his yard.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
It's not like a motorcycle that drives by on the road that's annoying.
No, no.
It just keeps going around.
But I bet you still get a little bit of a nice Doppler effect from it.
What a shit show.
Oh, no.
Oh, I wouldn't like that at all, I don't think.
So it's the people next to him that are – somebody is going to build a house next to his.
And they're the ones that are chopping down all the trees.
Now, the people next to them are the ones that have like a full-sized swimming pool underneath what looks like an airplane hanger, like a prefab kind of hanger, but made out of plastic, like corrugated plastic rather than corrugated metal.
And they heat it with a wood-burning stove.
Well, that doesn't seem very wholesome.
So whenever you see the fire burning, whenever you smell the smell of firewood, it means they're heating their swimming pool.
Those people are right next door to this lot where Skeeter 2 is working.
That's – okay.
That's weird.
Anyway, Tyler gives these signals to Skeeter.
Skeeter shrugs.
Tyler turns back to me and goes, yeah, let's go.
I'll follow you.
Okay.
They've got a whole load of chips.
I hop in the car.
Tyler follows me across the neighborhood to my house.
We dump the chips in the front yard.
Big, big, big, huge pile of steaming chips, which is going to help me mulch, get rid of the grass, turn my front yard into a garden.
Yep.
And then Tyler was like, well, you got to drive me back to where we – I was getting my gloves on ready to work and he was like, you got to drive me back.
I don't know where I am.
I was like, oh, right.
Not everybody can find their way back, you know?
Yeah.
You know that thing where you fall – No, no, I understand.
That's me.
That's me.
You have – your bias is because you have a great sense of direction.
You probably are not entirely aware of how bad other people's –
Yeah.
I was like, see you later.
I was like that too.
She's immune to being lost, whereas I am permalost.
I'm always discovering new things that I've been to many times.
Well, in a way, that's fun.
In a way, that's a wonderful life, right?
It keeps things fresh.
Wow.
wow, I've never been to this art supply store before.
And it's like, Merlin, that's- You go here every month.
That's the art supply store.
Right there on market.
What's the name of that fellow?
Who is that gal?
You've been going to it for 25 years.
All right.
So did you give them a ride back?
So gave them a ride back.
And now they're out there working again.
Although this morning- Oh, my God.
You know what happened?
They were cutting down trees-
which was, I think, like this is what I'm trying to tell you, it's above their pay grade.
These guys are loppers.
They should not be cutting down like full-size fir tree.
They just don't have the equipment for it, and I don't think they have the mental muscle for it.
Perhaps the physics background.
Right.
To cut down a 100-foot tall tree, you've got to be –
Kind of a scientist.
Have you ever watched somebody cut down a 100-foot tall tree?
I feel like I have, but I'm going to assume I have because I mostly just forget things.
But I do know there's more to it than you think.
It isn't like a cartoon where you come up in a plaid shirt, hit it with the chainsaw and say Tim Burr.
I know there's a lot more to it.
There's a lot to like, we don't know which way this is going to go.
And like so many things in life, people think about where they're standing, not the area that will be impacted.
Yeah.
And you can get yourself into a real dilly of a pickle.
Not least because, for example, how are you going to get that thing out of there?
How are you going to get it out of there if it's all stuck between these trees?
Are you going to cut it into pieces?
Like, what are you going to do?
There's a lot to it.
A lot of moving parts.
You're saying it.
You're describing it perfectly.
And the...
The other thing is in a densely populated environment, you can't just drop a 100-foot tree.
There's houses all around.
So you've got to climb way, way up there and start cutting the top of it out.
But you can't just be hanging on to the side of a tree where the top half of it has fallen any which way.
You've got to have all kinds of ropes and pulleys.
It's technical.
And you need a bigger chainsaw.
So these guys are out there.
They're cutting down trees that are too big for what they know how to do.
And looking out the window right now, I believe that they have felled a tree.
And it has landed on the roof of the swimming pool.
The plastic corrugated roof with the wood-burning stove?
I believe that the tree has crossed the property line and is now resting.
John Morgan Roderick, did that happen as we are recording?
I believe that it happened just before we started recording.
Because looking out the window on my way to my recording bunker... Uh-huh.
I took note of this situation which seemed like the tree was a little cattywampus, not in the place that I would have put it.
And that is almost exactly when the chainsaws stopped and they have not started again.
Is there any way that you could, from your house, see and know?
Or would you need to walk to see it?
That's the problem.
I would need to.
You're killing me right now.
You're killing me.
We're living in the suburbs here and things are just far enough apart that you have to sometimes go down the alley.
Are you going to leave us hanging for a week or will you post this on your internet?
Because I need to know if that happened.
I guess I'm going to have to – after we're done here, I guess I'm going to have to walk down there and – now I'm friends with them now that we're all friends.
I mean Skeeter himself, if I show up down there and take a picture of the fact that he felled a tree and it landed on top of the –
the swimming pool the wood-fired swimming pool he's not going to be happy about that i don't think man but if i'm like hey i'm just looking for some more wood chips you know as soon as you get that tree out of that situation boy that you got yourself into a sticky wicket here didn't you i'll stand around with them all while we're all looking at the tree from seven different angles trying to figure out what happened here
Yeah, if you make a cut there, well, that's going to change the center of gravity.
Well, this really fucks up my suggestion for how I thought you could solve this.
Now it's going to be difficult for you to do this today, but I'm going to toss it out anyway.
And the idea is this.
If they are still around for a few more days, at some point you find a reason to amble over there.
And do some talking.
And if you have the opportunity to talk with Skeeter, too, I think you say to him something like, hey, listen, let me run something by you just for what it's worth.
My nephew, Rudy, you know, he just finished high school, you know, didn't even get to graduate.
And he's really good with his hands.
You know, are you ever looking for to bring in a new blade?
You know what I'm saying?
This opened potentially opens the door to find out what the fuck is going on with these guys.
So he might say, so he is not old enough to have a tureen of liquor.
And you'd say, well, no, he doesn't right now.
Wink, wink.
But like I say, he's pretty good with a blade.
The thing is, this is the most confusing part about this.
Because when, presuming it's the same guy, when he worked on my house at the farm, there was such a halfway house vibe about the crew.
But the halfway house, it wasn't clear,
what the house was halfway between, what two things it was in the middle of.
That's so astute, John.
How can you know if you're halfway if you don't know what you're between?
Right.
Where are you coming from?
Where are you going to?
I think it's very arrogant to assume we know where this has come from or where it will nominally end up.
That takes some stones.
So if you go to a lot of – if you go to a lot of like –
drug and alcohol treatment events as I have done.
Does something like AA count for that?
Yeah.
Any kind of meeting, but also there are all kinds of sober events
that people who are in the recovery movement, you know, they'll try to put on a rock concert for sober people.
Oh, that's nice.
As like, hey, you know, you don't have to stop rocking just because we're not on drugs.
Like, let's see.
Here he is, Ted Nugent.
I actually saw Ted Nugent at a sober event one time.
Did he shoot a bow?
Excuse me, shoot an arrow with a bow?
But he talked about the fact that his guitar could shoot the balls off of a buffalo.
This sounds a lot like those Christian groups that come to your school and rip a phone book in half or throw a half-court shot to show the work of the Lord.
It's really true.
It's really very much like that.
And if you're at those events, it's an incredible cross-section.
People trying to get sober always represent a cross-section.
There are people who are there because they got in trouble with the law.
There are people there who earnestly and honestly believe that they have reached their bottom and are ready to make a change.
There are people who are just in and out of recovery for decades and never can kind of quite plant their feet.
There are people that are just like wet-brained.
that have, um, that have done so much damage to themselves and somehow, I don't know, sometimes something tips you over.
Yeah.
Um, there are people who are at sober events who are temporarily sober and are there with a huge chip on their shoulder, uh, about how bullshit it is and how everybody here is bullshit.
And you know, you can just tell that they're, you know, they're part of that.
Like I'm sober for a month crew, um,
And that's true at AA meetings.
That's true anywhere in recovery you go.
And you kind of walk around a group like that and you sort of try and pick your people.
You want to find the ones that look good.
Like they're headed somewhere and not – you want to stay far away from the people that are on the edge that are like sarcastically critiquing the fashion of the other people.
I imagine it's very much – one time Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld famously said breaking up with someone is like tipping over a Coke machine.
You got to rock it a few times to get it to go.
I would have to imagine that first of all, everybody's journey can be very different.
I imagine.
But that part of that journey is you have to tip that cook machine.
It's going to, your first cut at that is probably fairly unlikely to be the one that endures forever.
I'm guessing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, and you never, when you see somebody at a meeting or in a sober event that it's very clear that this is not their last day, you know, like they've got, they've got some road to travel and
If you're if you've been sober for a while, you feel tremendous sympathy for them or rather, you know, empathy for them, because it's like, hey, I'm glad you're here.
And I hope you can get as much out of this as you can get and take it with you so that later on when you want to come back here.
you remember it well and you, you know, maybe you can, um, you got a toehold here if you ever want to come back.
Like, you know, a guy, a guy in an AA meeting when I was 19 told me like, son, you got more drinking to do.
That's the wrong take.
But you know, he was one of the old, old guard.
Um, but when you're in those, when you're in those situations, you can kind of see the ones that,
who aren't – well, you can absolutely see the ones that aren't beaten yet.
They're not –
They're not done because they're not – They're not ready to capitulate to this process.
That's right.
Or just capitulate to alcohol.
Because I mean that's – I mean step one, if you – it seems to me if you really, really, really do step one, it's on a level of deciding to become born again.
Or you know what I mean?
Of like really making an all-in commitment here –
I would have to imagine is like the day that that takes for the last time must be very profound in retrospect.
You know, what I think it is, is that is the acknowledgement that all of us, when we're trying to transition from one, we're trying to transition from a bad situation to a better one.
Mm hmm.
The problem is that we all feel like we want to bring some things with us from the bad times.
We want to be done with the abusive relationship.
We want to be done with the bankruptcy or the alcoholism.
But we definitely want our girlfriend to stay.
Come with us, you know, like I'm done with the abusive relationship, but I don't want to break up with my girlfriend or I'm done with the bankruptcy.
You know, I'm I'm declaring bankruptcy, but I don't want to get rid of my business because that's my nest egg.
So you end up sort of applying asterisks to your acceptance of this that are going to be at cross purposes with succeeding.
That's right.
That's exactly it.
Because if you're, and what happens with alcohol is you're like, I am done being an alcoholic, but I don't want to like entirely 100% never be able to have a glass of wine with dinner again.
You know, and what, what, when you finally quit, what you have to do, like you're saying, the, the, the nature of it that is like being born again is that you say, my judgment is,
I no longer have faith that I can discern which of the things is good.
You know, I cannot discern.
I have made enough bad judgment calls that what I need to do is understand.
is acknowledge that my judgment is bad.
Yes.
And so if my judgment is bad, then I'm not the one to stand here and say what things I'm going to pick and choose from the old life to bring to the new one.
You just have to make a break, a clean break.
Hey, I have to take a shit.
Can't leave an abusive relationship and still be in a relationship with the girlfriend that was abusing you, right?
You can't go, you can't get sober and still have a,
have a drink, but, but more importantly, I mean, it's the hardest thing for any of us to do, which is to say, it's not, the problem was not the booze.
The problem was not the girlfriend.
The problem was I'm making bad decisions.
I need, I need a new, uh, I need, I need a, a clean slate.
And in looking at, uh, Skeeter too, uh,
I do not see any contrition in him.
I see if he is, if he no longer is drinking a liquid lunch, it's only temporary, right?
He has not, he has not turned his life and his will over to God as he understands him.
Like he's still, he's still tilting against windmills.
And the crew that was with him before, it felt like if it was a halfway house situation, that he had gone to some youth center where incredibly vulnerable kids were just, you know, like had been –
just released from Juvenile Hall or, you know, there was some kind of really, they had a real tenuous hold on civilization.
So we're talking about, in that case, the Fagan scenario.
Exactly the Fagan scenario where he is exploiting the kids.
Kind of like when the Long Winters had the School of Rock kids be their band for the big showbox show.
And, you know, it was basically a situation where
Um, like 15 kids under the age of, of 12 learned 25 long winter songs and did a pretty darn good job with them, I have to say.
And their experience of it was that their parents were paying tuition for them to do that.
And then at the end of the night, I gave each one of them a $50 bill.
That is so cool.
But also they're motivated.
I mean, they're motivated to do a good job and they don't want to look bad.
You know, I it's the thing I was going to say a little bit ago that's not really related.
So I hadn't said it.
But like I remember at the time in college, there were a handful of – I believe they were called – not a handful.
There was a number of what I believe were called nontraditional students, which is just to say people who were like a fair amount older than the age at which people typically start college.
Not for any reason.
A lot of times they were just – they had a career or whatever and they were just ready.
And they were like to a person pretty much much better students than any of us.
And I don't think it was just because they were older.
I don't think it's just because they were quote-unquote smarter.
I think it's because they were motivated.
And I can – now in retrospect, that's not difficult for me to understand.
When I look back and – I mean I was – all of my money that I got for college for my cheap $5,000 a year state college was all –
financial aid, not merit stuff.
I was not a very good student.
But you could just look around and see all the folks of kids of privilege, really, who could just waltz into anywhere.
There were kids like, you know, my girlfriend who was like, well, if you can go to Brown or you can go to New College and get a car.
But the folks who are in their 30s and in some cases 40s were very, very focused.
They were prepared.
They had it all done.
I don't know.
I imagine it's a mixture of a lot of things, including being more grateful, being more serious, realizing you're paying for each one of those classes out of your own pocket.
You know what I mean?
But I mean the opposite can be true for young people too where young people are – it's so important knowing that they know so little, which some smart kids know how little they know.
They give it everything they've got and you kind of can't help but have affection for their enthusiasm.
Yeah.
I mean that's why –
I was such a much better student when I came back to college after years in the field.
And when I finally got my bachelor's degree at the age of 47, I really felt like I was probably one of the better undergraduates for the last 30 of those years, I think.
So I don't feel like this crew – I do think that they are – I think that Skeeter 2 is no stranger to –
to the recovery community, but I think he might be exploiting it from within.
Interesting.
Well, listen, we got a bolt, but it's so important to me.
You tell me how you want to handle this, but I, for one, am going to have trouble focusing on much else until I know what happened with the tree.
And who knows?
Maybe nothing happened with the tree.
What is your preferred way of handling this for me and for your listeners?
Is this something you will post on the Internet or is this something you want to save for the next episode of the program?
I'm going to go down and see if I can get a photograph of the situation as it lay.
I'm not sure that – I'm not sure I'm going to be able to –
Fully tell the story, maybe?
Oh, no, no.
I understand you say as much as you're comfortable with it.
Well, concern of mine, John, I don't want to end on a down note.
I got a feeling Skeeter, too, may not be fully bonded and insured.
That's exactly why I feel like there's been a stop work over there.
Because he's probably saying to somebody, look, don't call so-and-so.
I can make this right.
Right.
We don't need to get the cops involved.
Yeah.
In a situation like Skeeter's in, I think probably half the time his shoddy work, he thinks he's going to get over on people.
But then, you know, he's like, I'm just going to come in.
I'm going to run this scam.
I'm going to cut their trees down for half the regular price, but I'm going to do a shit job of it.
But then he gets paid in nickels.
Or his tree falls on a swimming pool and he ends up having to... I heard he killed a kid.
Yeah.
He ends up having to do it for half the money, right?
He's going to be dealing with the consequences.
Right.
I mean, I bet you if you were to go figure out Skeeter 2's situation, I bet you he's on a national registry or something.
That was funny.