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Welcome to Cowboys, Not Eggheads. Home of the brave, not home of the fearful. The world needs more cowboys and fewer eggheads. We're everywhere podcasts are found. So tell your fellow cowboys and let's keep the conversation alive on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Remember to subscribe, rate, review, and share. And now, Cowboys, Not Eggheads with Sam Fisher.
Sam Fischer (00:33.102)
On April 5th, 2014, my dad passed away. So it's been a decade that we've been without my father, JB Fisher. I've talked about him some on the podcast, but I recently came across a document that I had on my computer and it's called, shit my dad says. And basically I had some kind of intuitive feeling.
a gut feeling, if you will. It wasn't from my heart, it was from my gut. In about May of 2013, to begin writing down some of the things that my dad used to say. For those who knew him, they will all nod their head in the fact that he said a lot of things that were perhaps witty, wise, and definitely, I wouldn't say off -color, but I would say out -of -the -box type thinking that...
that made you stop and, and, you know, a lot of people just laugh at him, but then you stop and think about, well, what did you say? I've been thinking about that, obviously him being gone 10 years. And so today I'm going to fly solo and just kind of go through these things and, um, that, that he said, and, and, um, in no particular order. I'm, and I, I am very grateful that I did do this, that I wrote these down because like I said, may at 13 is when I started doing it. And then, and.
August the 13th, he had a, he had difficult breathing one night, couldn't get his air and he went to the doctor and they determined that he had, as he described it, a lump in his heart. I'll never forget him leaving a message on my machine saying, you know, it's your dad. I've got a lump in my heart.
And so we're going to go to Lincoln and we're going to go get the lump in my heart and then get it out. And then that'll be the end of that. And that was truly his attitude. The lump in his heart. First of all, to have a tumor inside your heart is extremely rare. And then for that tumor to actually be cancerous is even more rare. And what he had was called a Leo, I believe it's probably pronouncing it wrong. Lyo myosarcoma.
Sam Fischer (02:49.23)
or a Leo myosarcoma. Um, and if you Google that, that is a cancerous tumor inside the heart. And so he did get it out in August of 13 and then, uh, they, they tested it and it was, he was actually, they let him basically recover from surgery and, uh, he was cancer free. But then in January of 14, um, the cancer had returned and we lost him in April of 14. But during that time,
from May of 13 until his death really, I wrote down some of the things that I thought were interesting. And I will, if there's a story behind what he says, I'll mention it. And if there isn't, we'll just keep going. So this is an absolutely, I guess it might be in chronological order, but I'm not sure. But it's really not in any particular order. So here we go. The first one was.
I'm going to live so long that I'm going to piss everyone off. Now that was actually before he had cancer. And I kind of have the same attitude to be honest with you. Another thing he said was most of the shit we have, we could get along without it. During, this was about the time that Bo Pelini, we didn't know if he was going to fire it or not. And you know, everything was up in the air and he said, whatever happens to Bo Pelini won't affect the
cattle market. Dad always clearly when you're a cowboy, when you're a rancher, don't care about anything other than the cattle market. We were watching a football game one time and somebody, it was back when players really started wearing their hair long and you could see it coming from outside their helmet. So anything different like that, Dad is gonna say something about it. So he said, tell those people to wear their
hair like that and no one would. So in other words, if you told them to freaking do that, they probably wouldn't. I think he's right. One of my favorites was patience and peace of mind are hard to come by and you can't buy them from Walmart. Back at that time, if you recall, there was an incident where Richie Incognito, former Nebraska player, was accused of
Sam Fischer (05:13.262)
bullying another offensive lineman in the Miami Dolphin locker room and he said, you know, it was a tough, rough atmosphere, et cetera. And dad's comment on it was, Mike Tyson wasn't at the opera house when he bit that ear off. We were watching coverage of a hurricane and he was fascinated by all the plywood and he said, people don't throw snow shovels out after a blizzard.
Why did they throw out plywood after Hurricane?
Here's another just total random one. I don't even know what context this was in, but he said, they do not call it sodium Lake City. This is also during the era when Obamacare just got passed and there was a news story or something. You always watch the news regarding how much money had been spent on Obamacare so far. And he said they are spending money on a dead horse trying to get him to stand up. The next one, I actually do have a reference for the context for it.
Um, he had been in the hospital in Lincoln and then in rehab at Madonna, uh, in Lincoln. And he was, he was antsy, the at home, you know, when I knew my dad, he was a habitual guy and, um, he, uh, he just wanted to get back into the routine of things. And so he was thinking about what dad thought about when he was returning home was his answering machine. Um, and we got home and there were, there were 13 messages on his answer machine and.
dad's thought was I bet I have about that many bills. You know just funny the way the guy thought. Again random quotes. They were less than six -pack people. If man made it then a man can break it. The power of a stamped envelope is more powerful than an email or a phone call. Here's this one's a bit colorful so just hold yourself here.
Sam Fischer (07:14.638)
Sometimes I feel dumber than a sheep and sometimes I feel more powerful than Hitler. Um, this one I think I've shared on this podcast before, but I'm not, I'll repeat it. Everyone questions the Bible, but why doesn't anyone question Google? And here's, you know, here's just a random one at, uh, at, uh, I think we were at the breakfast table. Chasing the last two Cheerios in a bowl is like chasing the last two minnows in a fish tank. It's not worth it.
One of my favorite quotes from dad that I've used myself is, if you want to start a 30 minute conversation, say goodbye. Um, when he was told that he had a heart valve that came from a pig, he asked if a ham can't, if a ham sandwich came with it and also who ate the pig. Um, if you turn tune into a episode early on, I think it's just called JB with Charlie and, uh,
Andrew Ward, we talk about the story of dad coming off of the ICU. Uh, and when he found out that he had a pig valve, he was, he was, uh, very curious about that. So he just wanted to know what happened with the pig. When he was in the hospital, they asked him to describe his bowel movements, which is very typical in the hospital. And, uh, his response was it wasn't a cowboy steak and potatoes poop.
He also would say things like, I happen to know that I'm from Nensel. It only takes a woman nine months to grow a 10 pound baby, but I can't grow a damn toenail in a year. That and then going back, here's another one about the pig. Did someone eat the pig? Did the pig have a bandaid? An earlier episode, I didn't hear him say this one, but my brother Will told me about this one. The context was that,
my brother and dad were discussing something and they had a disagreement about something. I don't even think Will necessarily remembers what it was about, but Will at one point said, well, how do you know? Like, how do you know that that's the truth? You know, obviously we talk about the truth here a lot. You know, what is the truth? And so again, the question was, how do you know? And he's like, I don't have to own a hardware store to know I don't want one. Okay, there you go.
Sam Fischer (09:41.166)
Now this one is actually kind of relates to me. Um, cause I like dad, I kind of took an early retirement and, um, it bothered him when people wanted to know what he was doing all day there. You know, it's obviously a human curiosity thing. Like, what do you do? Like what are you retired? So what do you do? What do you do all day? You know, and he just, he was kind of disgusted by it because he, anybody that knew dad knew that he was busy all the time. He had stuff going all the time. He had project lists or whatever.
But he didn't, he didn't during his retirement, he didn't sit at home and watch the young and the restless. He was out and about doing stuff. So they asked people would ask him, what are you doing? I know what you're doing, Chibi. And he'd say, I just, I just, I just say, I go to the post office and wait for cocktail hour. Cause no one else would believe me if I said anything different. There's no horse that can't be ridden and no cowboy who can't be thrown. Great life lesson, great cowboys, not eggheads saying.
There's no horse that can't be ridden and no cowboy who can't be thrown. I'm 70 and I still don't know what I'm going to do. And, uh, as I get older, I relate to that as well. We, Heather and I would stay there frequently, particularly in, in when he was sick, but you know, when you travel or stay somewhere, you're never, it's inevitable. You're going to leave something behind and you know,
We did leave things behind once or twice and he just, dad didn't like extra clutter. He didn't want to see any of it. So he said, if you leave anything here, it will either go in the dumpster or on eBay. He was serious by the way. One day we came back from playing golf and it was a really hot day and it was miserable. And so we came back and
We were having a couple beers at Dad's house afterwards and his comment was playing golf for seven hours is as dumb as riding a Brahma Bull. He talked about being 70, not knowing what he was going to do. And towards the end he said, if I live to be 80, I'm going to be a cranky son of a bitch. And honestly, I understand that.
Sam Fischer (11:57.998)
In Mexico, life is a cheap commodity. He had made a retaining wall, which we discussed in, and it's a gorgeous retaining wall. It's still there. It took a lot of work, railroad ties, a lot of dirt moving, et cetera. And, you know, he was proud of it. And Dad always wanted to show things off. So he showed me his retaining wall and...
I said, well, you know, I don't know what I said. That's, you know, that's a hell of a nice, nice word. That's a hell of a projector, you know, nice work. And he's like, well, it's not a baby grand piano. It's retaining wall. Uh, again, towards the end of his life, he would, people would ask him, what are you doing or are you spending your time or whatever? And he said, I'm tying up loose ends, self mentoring, tuning up, self preserving and answering the phone.
Another thing I heard him say once was, I don't remember what I just said, but I kind of liked it. And then he reflected on his, one time he was reflecting on his own father, Bill Fisher. We had a podcast about Bill Fisher. It was called, um, the egghead who was mentored by a cowboy with Jack McHenry, but he was commenting about the life of his own father. And, um, he said, my father works so he would have something to do. I worked so I wouldn't have anything to do. Kind of profound.
Lawyers and money can make it happen, he said. Everyone is temporary. The phone would ring at the house. It was a landline phone. And dad would say, Oh God, somebody wants money or somebody wants me to do something. Another one that he told my brother, Will, was shit happens. It happens to some people more than others. One of my favorite dad's stories was he was a
obsessive watcher of the Weather Channel, which most ranchers and cowboys are because weather is everything in that business. And so clearly he was always interested in what was going on in Omaha where I lived. And this is back, I mean, this is back, this is actually before 2013. This would have been, I lived in my first house, which, you know, I don't know, probably about 1999 or
Sam Fischer (14:20.654)
2000 in that area era and he said He called me and this was an actual message on my machine and he said Sam There's a red spot over Omaha. I Think that red means to get a hold of your ass If you survive the tornado call me back Rest in peace dad. We miss you