Running Naked - with Special Guest Colby Coash

In this engaging interview, former Nebraska state senator and author Colby Coash shares his journey from small-town roots in Bassett, Nebraska, to political leadership and authorship. Discover insights on family legacy, rural life, leadership, and the transformative power of storytelling and travel.

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:05.486)
you

speaker-1 (00:10.13)
yeah, good lighting. We're good? Yeah.

bearings here. I'm just getting back into production. It's weird. You to kind of get into it a little bit. Yeah. I'm all right.

You

speaker-1 (00:28.974)
Hey Siri, turn on do not disturb. I'll just hope the thing will be off. Okay.

speaker-1 (00:37.442)
Oh, first I'm going turn your mic. That'd be good. You're on two. did you just say? Yep. Good volume. You're good to go.

Yeah, how we doing?

speaker-1 (00:51.276)
You can take the boy out of Bassett, but you can't take the Bassett out of the boy. My guest today, Kobe Coache is kind of like Sam. Only I went, I'm from Ballantyne, Nebraska. Kobe's just down the road in Bassett, Nebraska, go Rock County. County plates, 66 for me. But today on Cowboys Night at Egg is I'm honored.

to welcome Kobe Coash, former Nebraska state senator, rural Nebraska kid, like I said, from Nebraska, actor turned author. Yeah, that's right. Who has a book that came out what last year, one year running naked, surviving the legacy of family in rural Nebraska, which lays

Yeah.

speaker-0 (01:29.646)
Open up just one year.

speaker-1 (01:37.698)
bear the tensions of small town roots, family legacy, and the pursuit of purpose. Is that right? That's all. Yeah, you got it right. So I did not, I know Kobe and I did not know that you had this book and obviously having this podcast and Cowboys Not Eggheads, which

That's right.

speaker-1 (02:00.206)
It's basically kind of the story of my life with friends is what I like to say. But it's interesting. Your book is kind of based on what this sort of what this podcast. I mean, there's some parallels there. I think that this podcast for me has been a journey, Kobe, of discovery. I joke that it's my therapy, but I don't think it's a joke. It is my therapy. And so obviously there's different ways to express

You know, you can go to therapy or you can write a book or you can have a podcast.

Yeah, I'm telling you writing this book in a lot of ways was very therapeutic for me. I wrote it late nights, early mornings. I wrote it when I was in a good mood. I wrote when I was bad mood and getting some of these things out was good for me. But they were they were things on my heart. I wanted to put on paper. To be honest, though, I didn't know if I'd ever publish it. At one point, I thought, look, I'll do this just for myself.

Then later on, thought, you know what, maybe I'll let my dad read it. He's kind of the hero of the story, so to speak. then thought, well, maybe I'll let my son read it. Cause it's kind of a father son narrative. My son is only 16. Okay. So, I.

How old is your son? Well, that would be interesting though, because it's kind of from that viewpoint almost, there's a lot of that.

speaker-0 (03:21.42)
He is the same age now that I was in a lot of these stories that I wrote about when I was growing up in Basset.

So was it good to take a little courage to share with your dad?

yeah, it did. I was I was nervous about it because you talk to memoir writers, which is what this is. And, you know, it's from my perspective. And the and I knew it was my truth. But, you know, my dad was in the same scene that I was writing about. He might write a different story from the same scene. You know, his perspective was was different. And I was worried about how not only he would see that.

some of those stories that I wrote but frankly some of the people in the community where I would see those stories because I

Yeah. I haven't read the book listeners. just gave me a copy, but I've read synopsis of it. Does it name certain people or? It does. Oh, it does. So you go straight to the...

speaker-0 (04:17.486)
It does, of course. mean, if I say my grandfather, everybody's going to know.

Right, right, but mean like specific people within the town.

There are specific people, some of them are gone. But honestly, the town that I grew up in, not unlike Valentine, the town was its own character.

Hell, die, sod.

speaker-0 (04:35.63)
in my memoir. How the town collectively, at least in my 13 year old viewpoint, treated me, how I responded to the town, how I responded to kind of this expectation that was laid on me as a young person in a small town, how I felt about that. The town really became its own character. And so I was kind of nervous about how that would be received.

because I didn't hold back. mean, I kind of, wrote my truth from the perspective, but it was from the perspective of a 40 something year old guy now looking back on how he was raised, how the community impacted him. And so it was really a small town narrative that kind of drove me through it. But I did make the decision, obviously to publish it. And I'm very happy to say I just won the Nebraska book.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (05:34.476)
Well, congratulations, that's awesome.

So for that category, so I'm excited that that's actually very timely. A week from today, I'll be accepting the.

so we're, we're just listeners. you go to amazon.com and get this book, right? Yep. Yep. So again, the book is called running naked, surviving the legacy of family and rural Nebraska. So, great. Well, let's get into it. I mean, so you grew up in Masset, Nebraska. How did, how do you think that shaped your earliest identity?

Film.

speaker-0 (05:53.262)
That's right.

speaker-0 (06:02.336)
Well, a lot of it did. what I learned early and I wrote about in the book was people that I grew up around tended to do what their families did. Right. So if you grew up in a farm family, you probably became a farmer. If you grew up in a ranching family, many times you became a rancher or you might marry somebody who did what you did. And so there was always

this reminds me of the blackberry boat smoke song one horse town i don't know if you've ever heard i know what you're talking about yeah yeah

Yeah, it was it was this kind of ingrained in you what you did My family's roots not unlike yours go real deep in that community They go so deep that sometimes people couldn't tell me from my dad or my dad from my grandfather We're all just kind of the same family same person. And so there was this What I wrote about was this expectation that you know

you're here, you're born here, you'll work here, you'll die here kind of mentality that didn't sit well with me as a young person.

But did anyone ever tell you that in your family? anyone say you were going to stay here and run the business?

speaker-0 (07:14.582)
No, not one person ever said that.

But there was there's a expectation that was implied.

felt ancestral and everybody I looked around everybody I saw around my my world all did that so it wasn't like they had to say it it's just kind of what happened but my mother decided on a different path and I wrote about that where she kind of said I'm out and kind of abandoned my sister and I and were I was 13 she was 12 so right between my grade school and high school

change.

speaker-1 (07:47.886)
I've talked about that on this podcast how that is probably the toughest time of your life when you're 12 or 13

it's brutal because you're just fighting with everything. You're fighting with your own body. You're fighting with...

Don't know who the hell you are let alone anybody else. Yeah

So it was a real turning point and there were a lot of funny moments. This was not a deep dark unveiling. Part of the story and so I just had this idea of where I wanted to be and I had this ancestral kind of pole on the other side. But as I don't want to give away any Easter eggs on egg heads here, but.

That's part of the story.

speaker-0 (08:25.268)
know, at the end of the day, you know, it kind of, it did kind of come full circle and I kind of understood the value that that small town instilled in me. So, you know, it's hard work, right? Hard work is probably sustained me more than anything, maybe to my detriment in some cases. That's something that I got from that town, right? Was, was a work ethic. So, I wrote about that and that

That was important to me. The importance of fatherhood was important to me because it was kind of all I was left with at one point in growing up and just kind of this village raising a child and finding your village. And I really did. had some, I didn't seem like it at the time, but I had some real angels in my life growing up that kind of kept me from going off the deep end. So one of them, her name was Karen.

Who are they?

And Karen was the owner of the local drive-in. Drive-in is kind like an ice cream shop, we call it that, right? at one point you'd pull up and car hops would come out, you know, and serve you ice cream. was kind of, but it was just kind of the local cafe.

Kind of from the Sturzvary-American graffiti that's kind of... In Valentine for years they had to frosty freeze and it's gone now.

speaker-0 (09:40.621)
that.

speaker-0 (09:45.582)
This will be the King Cone. You had the Frosty Freeze, I had the King Cone, it was in cone of ice cream. And even though I wasn't supposed to, I was working there quite a bit as like a 14, 15 year old washing dishes. And you know, I kind of found out later that Karen had put me in a position to do that because I didn't have anybody that was really paying attention to what I was doing. She was keeping me out of trouble, frankly, is what she was doing. And

She stepped in and kind of this mother role and I didn't have one. You know, she kind of vetted girlfriends that I wanted. you know, when I was needed to sign up for classes as a freshman, I took her instead of because I didn't have a parent that could go. So, you know, she was really kind of an angel for me. so she was kind of one those bright spots when I had lost so much. So many other people in my family that kind of abandoned.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (10:29.282)
Right.

speaker-1 (10:33.088)
See you.

speaker-0 (10:43.98)
me as a kid, she was she was kind of stable figure there. And she did that because she loved me and she loved what she's loved me. And so she was the one I wrote extensively about in the book. And as I move through the move through my life, other people kind of stepped up, but you wouldn't have got that growing up maybe in an urban area. That was something very unique to small town Nebraska for sure. Small town, USA.

Yes. Folks look out for their own. The subtitle of the book mentions surviving the legacy. What were you surviving?

Well, I did everything I could to kind of run and that's where the title running naked comes from. did everything I could to run from the legacy. And when I talk about legacy, it's what is kind of laid out before you, right? So my family was in agriculture, a business that was started by my

grandfather was being passed down and I kind of looked at this like is this yours to go and run from? But that business killed not literally but killed my grandfather and the story that wrote about in the book was in the mid 80s you were there farm crisis happens in Nebraska.

but it was monumental to a lot of people.

speaker-0 (12:08.254)
It was monumental. to kind of set the stage, right? So we have the ag economy, is Nebraska's all in on and interest rates are high. Debt is high with all the producers. They borrowed a lot of money.

And then then you have commodity prices where it's corn or beef go the other direction and it was when I was growing up in the 80s, it was not uncommon for a family that I maybe had a classmate with, know, like a kid in my class would just disappear. You know, be in school on Friday, not be there on Monday because the bank had foreclosed on their farm. Right. So they would just disappear. Right. And they'd go live with relatives somewhere. So

The mid eighties was a time of real turmoil in small town Nebraska, but I'm 10. don't, I don't, all I see is the stress that's on my family, on my dad. could see the stress that was putting on my parents' marriage, um, with this farm crisis. So the backdrop of my early years is this real farm agriculture crisis, right? That you hear about.

But I wrote about it through the eyes of a 10 year old. And through 10 year old's old eyes, was, this is stressing my parents out, right? And they did their best to protect me. But my grandfather, who had started a fertilizer business, which is ironic, he was in his mid 50s, he'd run it for over 20 years. It finally caught up to his health and he had an aneurysm and he died. And so I'm 10, my dad's 30.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (13:48.088)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (13:52.942)
31. My dad's not, I mean, and he was a young dad. My dad takes over a business that all of sudden, the backdrop is hundreds of his customers couldn't pay their bills, which means he couldn't pay his employees, which means he couldn't buy more product. Like it was chaos and everybody was under, right? The farmers couldn't pay.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (14:13.696)
economic ripple effect.

speaker-1 (14:18.72)
Absolutely.

They couldn't pay the fertilizer bill, couldn't pay their taxes, you name it. And so my dad was like left with this mountain of debt, mountain of problems, a business.

that was trying its best to do right by the people they employed and the people, their customers. And I watched how it affected my dad. And I said, I don't know if this is my path. So when I wrote the word surviving, I was like, I don't know if I can survive this next iteration. So I started to think differently and took a different approach.

And the thing that's different in small town that some of my listeners may not realize is that your customers are your neighbors. They're your friends. your, I mean, you see them all the time. You know, your kids go to high school together. You go to the, see them at ball games. You know, it's a very close knit community. And so it's, it's

It's hard enough as it is, but when you add that factor, it's just, it's, you know, the advantage of living in small town are that you have the Karens who took you up. know, the disadvantage of a small town is everybody's in everybody's business. And when something like that happens, it affects everybody. And it is extremely stressing.

speaker-1 (15:48.64)
It's funny, I remember, I'm getting off tangent here a little bit, I, my personal, I was in high school at that time and I actually went to an egghead school. went to Mount Michael, so I didn't go to Valentine High.

And so I was away, but I knew what was going on. And I remember there were friends of mine in the seventies. I always wondered, it's just an economic lesson really, but like, Hey, how come, how come so-and-so has six pickups? How come so-and-so has four snowmobiles? How come so-and-so has, you know, five motorcycles, you know, cause the fishers, we had one pickup. wasn't, it was an unheard of back then to have one pickup on a ranch. You know, we had one pickup later.

We did have these snowmobiles. We had one motorcycle, two couple motorcycles. And so people were borrowing and it was just a lesson to me in economics of maybe particularly agriculture, you've got to, know, like beef prices right now are way too high. Well, wait a minute, are they? I mean, I mean, they've been pretty, you know,

Thank

It's been a break even business and ranching business for a long time. Just busting your butt to break even. so, agriculture is all about saving and being thrifty and not getting too high or not getting too low. It's about riding away. But if you get out of, it's like any business, if you get out of whack or out of sink, it will sink you literally.

speaker-0 (17:21.582)
Yeah, I mean, it's a domino effect, right? Yes. You know, the farm can't pay the bills, the vendors can't pay their employees, the employees quit. can't. mean, became a vicious cycle.

You know, don't know what the Main Street looks like. don't know there were like five businesses on Main Street or something, but five became two.

There was.

And one of them was my other grandfather's if you look at mine I had the Ben Franklin store. Ah, you remember those right? So he had one of last men Franklin's in the state

Only on the bar?

speaker-1 (17:55.254)
For one to be in Bassett, that's a big deal. In the layout for listeners again, the population of Bassett is what? It's less than Valentine.

Well, it is today when I, and this is on the back of my books, on the back, I have a picture of me or a picture of the sign. So in Nebraska, you know, they always put the name of the town and the population. When I was a kid, it was 1,010, 1010. And I, relatively speaking, I come from a smaller family, right? I had parents, a sister, grandparents on both sides were from Bassett.

and two aunts. So I counted my family as 10. So I always thought, wow, that's really interesting. If my family up and left, they'd be an even thousand. But growing up, it was a thousand. And when I went back for my, you know, 10 year high school reunion, was 800 something. When I back to my 20 years reunion, it was 600 something. We're lucky to be north of 500 now.

Yeah, half of what it was. Half. I mean, so we're talking again, it's a small place. is. Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

small community and everybody knows in your business.

speaker-1 (19:06.862)
How did you negotiate the poll between loyalty, which is a cowboy coat, which I'm sure you felt. mean, obviously, how did you negotiate the poll between loyalty and the desire to leave?

It was hard. So again, everybody around me all stayed. Most people did. Even my classmates, many of them that would go to college, they'd come back, right? Run the family business, the farm, whatever it was. I thought I would be the most opposite thing I could think of from agriculture, right? So thought I'm going to go into performance, acting. I'm going to...

I'm going to be on stage, be in front of the camera, whatever it was, I thought that would be the way for me to differentiate myself. And I knew that, you know, that's the career vocation you choose. You're not going to do it in a small town, Nebraska. There's no jobs for that. But then I had this pull from kind of this, I always call this ancestral pull, but it really did feel like that, right? Like you are expected to do what your family and.

Because a lot of us, because your family did work so hard. did. Because, I mean, was, the loyalty is to uphold your name.

Yep, it was a, you know, there's pride in that. To my dad's credit, he never once pushed me in a direction to come back, to take over. He thought I should plow my own road and that was very freeing for me.

speaker-1 (20:32.674)
My parents didn't either.

speaker-0 (20:42.734)
Now it was still made me nervous. So I did a lot of things to make sure that I wasn't a good candidate to come back anyway. And I wrote about these in the book. I ran from the law. I mean, I got a little legal trouble. you know, I was, I did something which I would never let my son today do. I only went to three years of high school. I didn't drop out. I decided I would do the last year of my high school in the first year of my.

college career at the same time. And so I moved out. I just left at 17. And that was something that my dad probably wished I wouldn't have done in hindsight. It probably wasn't a really smart idea. But he kind of knew based on other things that I had done that maybe he should let me go. And he did. And he was always there to catch me when I fell.

17.

speaker-0 (21:39.886)
He was there when I needed him, but he made it easy. And I didn't make it easy. I probably wasn't the most lovable kid at some points because I had been hardened by some things that my mom She left. She not only left, she went to a different country. Mexico. To California, then into Mexico. She went to a different country. And that was tough. That was tough for me. That was tough.

Your mom left her.

speaker-0 (22:08.854)
So my dad, a lot of ways, he's the hero of my story because of that, but he never pushed me to do that. So, I mean, I'm in my piece with that, you know, and, the business needed to, it's still in business, but it's just, doesn't have the Co-Ach name anymore. And that's, everybody's okay with that. You know, my dad's retired. I'm not part of the business anymore or never was, but, it's still part of the community. and,

wouldn't be there but for my family, so there's still some pride.

Yeah, yeah, well my story is sort of similar and that or not sort of similar but I mean I apparently when I was 12 I don't remember this conversation but I apparently told my mother I don't I don't want to be a rancher.

And to my parents credit, they, I mean, they could have taken me to Valentine Hyde, my brother and sister graduated from there, but they just didn't think I was going to benefit from shop class, you know? actually I probably would have benefited from shop class because I was never good at that part of it. But, and so I, they kind of scouted around for some options for me. If I was going to, you know, go to college, they wanted me to be well-prepared. So we had some friends in Cherokee County that,

that their kids went to Mount Michael. So I'm Presbyterian kid sent off to a Catholic boarding school that's a college prep school. so.

speaker-1 (23:41.134)
I basically left the house when I was 14, not 17. When you were 17, all those transitions that you had, I was 14. Away from the ranch, away from, but yeah, it's just really interesting.

Let me tell you what my dad did, and I wrote about in the book, that to this day readers will say I cannot believe he did this. When I was 13, again, he was a single dad at this point, and

I was contacted by a woman that had done some camps in Ainsworth and like for kids in the area and I'd done that as a middle schooler. She said, I'm taking some, I'm taking some people on a trip to Africa.

and I had done some trips with her to Europe, like just like a week trip, you know, for kids. My dad was happy to pay whatever and let me go experience travel. It was like a school group though, right? Like, you know, it very chaperone. It wasn't anything terribly normal about that. And it was only like, you know, seven, 10 days.

What?

speaker-0 (24:51.542)
Well, I had gotten a knack for travel and I felt like I guess I was unafraid and that was something that maybe distinguished myself. I wasn't afraid to go to a different country. I wasn't afraid to try new things. Well, she contacted me and says, I think you'd be good to help me out on a different trip that I'm taking. So would you like to go to Africa? I went to Africa for a month with no cell phone.

I this is pre cell phones, right? I went there for a month.

It was a safari like trip. went to five countries, sketchy places, saw some really unique things in Eastern Africa with a group of people that I was like, shabby. Like I was the helper. So he put, and what was ironic about this, as I look back on it was I didn't ask my dad's permission. I just said, I have this opportunity. I'm going to Africa for the month of July.

from you dad as a ride to the airport and he didn't bat an eye and he took me in the airport he said goodbye to me and I was gone for a month and he didn't know where I was

How old were you? 13? 13!

speaker-0 (26:06.734)
I 13. was shortly after my mother had left and this opportunity presented itself and I went to five countries, climbed mountains, saw mountain gorillas. I I wrote about all this in the book.

effective.

And it gave me a perspective, I cannot like to that's the thing people say, you gotta be kidding. Your dad let you do this. And I'm like, I didn't give him a whole lot of choice. I was kind of feral and I, and so I did that. So although it wasn't the same as what you did, like kind of moving away, it was a

Yeah.

speaker-1 (26:42.286)
No, it's a big, deal. Big, big, big, big deal. I'm almost 13 year old now, and it just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Yeah, I'm a very different You grow up in a month. mean.

back a different kid.

speaker-0 (26:54.758)
And then I came back and I go to my freshman year in high school. I just spent a month independent in Africa and I'm looking around and going, I had less in common with my peers because I had seen things and I had experienced things that they hadn't and it wasn't their fault.

searching for more you wanted some more because it could have gone two ways could have been like hey I got perspective you're gonna get perspective anyway look at it we got perspective but now my perspective is I'm grateful that I'm able to live in this really small town and have everybody you know taking care of me or whatever or

What happened with you is it gave her perspective and you leave me wanting more. Like there's more than Bassett. And you wanted to know you like, you know, a lot of people in rural Nebraska, um, my father-in-law, uh, 11th death, he's 75 years old and I don't, I don't think he's ever been to any other state besides Iowa. And he doesn't have any desire whatsoever to go anywhere. And I, that for me, that's hard to relate to.

You know, and I know people in Cherry County that, that, that, well, my great grandmother is in that picture right there holding me. that was the first time she'd ever left garden County, Nebraska, to see her great grandchild. It's crazy. You know, it's just, to me, that's like, can you imagine being in rock County and never leaving, but there are people in rock County who have never left. There's not, there's nothing, there's not a damn thing wrong with it, but it's just something that I don't relate to. You didn't relate to, you wanted more.

They're all

speaker-1 (28:32.792)
Was it?

I mean I saw people like that all around me. were my my dad's employees, my teachers, my my friends parents. They were just kind of ingrained and and to my father's credit he was willing to let me see other things. I can't he needs to write a book from his perspective. All I know is from my perspective had he not been

supportive of those things. But at the same time, I'm a parent now. If my son came to me and says, I just need to, at 13 and said, I need to ride to the airport and I'll see you in a month. First of all, his mom would... Exactly. mean, I know it's a day, you know, we're talking, I think it was 1989 versus today.

I'll take a hike.

speaker-1 (29:23.872)
It's Gen X, man, we were latchkey kids.

We were and that's gonna be my next book because I swear to God the stuff that we I do

Do you identify with generation? Yeah, proud of it actually. Yeah. But now, yeah, it's just it wouldn't and frankly, I don't think your kid would ever do that to you, right? Different time. Maybe because of

Thanks for having me.

I feel better about it. Yeah, I could get on my phone and figure out exactly where he is in the world. But this it was a unique time. But that was my I ran as far as I could. And I got all the way to Eastern.

speaker-1 (29:54.286)
That's interesting.

speaker-1 (30:00.576)
and wanted some more. It's super, super interesting. So did you take a trip to California to see your mom after she left? And how old were you?

I did. So this was a little bit later. She'd been there a couple of years. and I was, I, well, the one I wrote, I didn't really see her again until I was in college. So she kind of disappeared through high school. I I knew where she was. communicated a little bit.

Did you, you did talk to her once?

Merry Christmas. So her mother still lived in Masset, right? So, oh, her grandmother, Connection that was still that connection. But at some point in my college, my mother was born and raised there. Wow. Yeah. And she had a real maybe I mean, I wrote about this. I thought maybe that's where I get this itch from. Like, yeah, you know, she she just never felt like she fit in there. She just.

That was good.

speaker-1 (30:45.044)
It from Basit then.

speaker-1 (30:54.062)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (30:57.869)
Yeah.

particularly at that time, she had interests that were just very different than any of the people, any of my other friends' moms. My mom was always the weird one, you know, because she had fingernails and you know what I mean? And she didn't chew tobacco, but she smoked, yeah, she couldn't even smoke a regular cigarette. My mother smoked these little bitty, they looked like straws.

She didn't chew tobacco.

speaker-0 (31:26.478)
You know what I mean? That was kind of popular back then. She thought it made her look different. And it did. So I did get to see my mother a few times when I got older and a little more perspective.

Where does she live? Where does she live and come from?

Well, she lived when she initially moved there she she lived in San Diego like a suburb of San Diego La Jolla was a nice nice part of town and then at some point she moved south of the border into the Baja Peninsula and on the beach and and lived there south of Cabo. Well Cabo is the the so Tijuana is like across the border

Robles and Lucas.

speaker-1 (32:13.986)
Yep.

Cabo's like at the tip. Yeah. She was halfway in between. Ensenada was the city town she lived in. And so I was able to visit her once or twice.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (32:25.806)
So how did that go if you don't mind me asking? That would be tough. You go from 13 to 19 or whatever. You're completely different person at that point. Was it awkward? Was it natural? How did it go?

Yeah.

speaker-0 (32:44.77)
You know, she was still trying to, she tried to be my mother, you know. What I learned, you know, again, as a 40-something year old looking back is she had her own demons. She was fighting her own problems. And she didn't see, from her point of view, she didn't see the problem with what she did. She thought.

she would say things like, well, you were grown up enough, you can handle this. So you can be, you turned out okay, like no harm, no foul. Yeah, I wasn't there, but by the way, you could have come live with me. mean, that was an offer that was on the table. You wanna move to Southern California. And as much as I wanted out of Basset, Nebraska, I frankly, as a 13-year-old kid was scared to move to California.

Yeah.

Even though wasn't scared to go to Africa for a month, was scared to kind of relocate, know, I had a real, real connection to my friends and what I was into. And I thought, I don't want to start over. And so I said, well, I'm just going to stay here. And eventually, like I said, that didn't last very long because I said, I'm not going to do all four years of high school. I'm gone. So, but it was, it was hard. We just didn't, I was communicating with a woman.

very close to obviously who just didn't see me the same and with hindsight being 2020 what I can say is she was ill she just wasn't and I have to say that out loud because well people don't abandon their children people who are firing on all simple numbers are thinking clearly don't

speaker-1 (34:14.764)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (34:32.492)
Right.

speaker-0 (34:37.8)
uproot and leave their preteen kids and say I hope life turns out well for you I'll be here if you want to call me but that's not something a well person does so I've had to make some peace with

Have you forgiven her? I have. Yeah. Yeah. And that would be peace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the interesting part of your background. I never knew about that. Um, this is not stuff you talk about in political campaign. Um, that's right. Um,

I did it for me.

speaker-0 (35:08.972)
people have always asked me, where's your mom? And, know, my dad would be married and the woman he married was one of those other angels in my life. You know what I mean? Like when I was a lovable kid, I was kind of pushing people away. so, you know, maybe it's not fair to my to my mother, but I'm happy to let my stepmother play that role. know, so when I, the people that knew me growing up,

in the book, they know different because they know everybody.

Yeah, yeah. So what do you hope small town readers take away about staying or leaving?

Yeah, you know, I hope they take away what I took away from the experience of writing the book and kind of looking back, which is and it's cliche and it's an 80s. I go back, it's an 80s metal song, but you don't know what you got till it's. And as cliche as that is, I hope readers will.

That's right.

speaker-0 (36:12.622)
look at their own circumstances. I mean, you don't have to grow up in a small town to recognize what you had when you were younger that you might look at differently. So I hope readers will take away that. You know, I've asked the reader to go on this journey with me of all grown up in small town Nebraska and if you haven't grown up in small town Nebraska or anywhere

You'll know what it's like after you read my book. And that's what I'm really proud of. Like people, this isn't a book just for people who grew up in a small town. They know what it's like. But if you didn't grow up in a small town, you're going to see it through somebody who lived it as they're living it. And so, that's kind of the fun part for me. hope readers get out. There's a lot of fun stories in there about what us Gen Xers did and how far away they go. From the cops.

Take parties and freaking, you know, Alpine stereo and a freaking Chevrolet Citation. I mean, power boosters and mean, you know, equalizer and your stereo and that's why I continue to have her ring in my right ear to this day.

All of that. As you know, the most important thing growing up in small towns what you drove and what you were listening to.

Yes sir, what you were listening to. let's talk about that for a second. Yeah sure. Because how did, how did like, so you listen to a lot of the stuff that I do. I do. Like you know like I think I brought, I'm trying to think of a band that I brought to Valentine Nebraska. I think...

speaker-1 (37:44.794)
and Daken and I was going to school in Omaha so bring home White Snake might have been a band that I brought and I always was fascinated like how in the heck does this music get to like these small towns because I think MTV is probably the answer a lot of it MTV would probably be a lot of the answer but how did how would you introduce to these these bands when you were a kid?

I am your n-

But I'm also the oldest in my family on the firstborn so I didn't have older siblings Right, but I had really good friends who had all had older brothers and it was a spring and there's these older brothers of my friends who were introducing us to And one of them like I just idolized this guy because he had the long hair and earrings and wore

Bon joy!

He looked like Banjo Man and for me, he was like, he was, you know, Steven Pearcy or he... Yeah, this guy in my town was a guy that he was... He lived up the street from me. He worked for a time for my dad.

speaker-1 (38:50.686)
you're talking about getting your towel.

speaker-1 (38:56.534)
Like Mike Damone

speaker-0 (39:05.082)
and my dad would assign me, his name was Troy, and he'd say, you're gonna ride with Troy while he makes deliveries and sprays lawns and does these things. And he had a tape deck. No, he brought a brief, a of tapes. And I would sit in the back and I would just look at every tape.

He brought the ZOOMBOX briefcase full of tapes

speaker-1 (39:23.726)
And you the open liners too. would read the open You probably knew the engineers, didn't you?

the names of the songs.

I got, I was, I was obsessed with it. And then I got a BMG was a BMG tape subscription. Remember when you, when you could, and then, you know, your first one, you could get 10 for a penny, a piece. And so I just, I just went to town and every month I'd get one or two and it just, just became part of who I was and how I absorbed the world.

You

speaker-1 (39:46.722)
Yeah

What the hell?

speaker-0 (39:59.648)
And then I would start getting to go to Omaha to go to concerts. We didn't talk about that forever. Like my very first concert and my dad, my dad grew up in the sixties and he's an old hippie and he understood the power of like generational music. Although he was more into his than of course mine. But my very first concert was he took me to see Cinderella Winger.

and the Bullet Boy. That was my first, I think so. Yeah. It my first concert and then- A lot? Actually, it in Rapid City.

Mmm. True. Ninety one. Ninety one.

speaker-1 (40:39.118)
was that?

speaker-1 (40:42.606)
After this podcast, I'm going to tell you a story about that particular concert and my ex-girlfriend. Can't tell about it on the air.

That was my first concert and that just kind of and then between that concert the tapes this guy Troy who was just I idolized him because he looked like a rock. had the all the girls liked him and it was because of him I got my ear pierced and grew my hair. I mean I was

Yeah.

speaker-1 (41:10.926)
Wow. Absolutely. Wow.

I wrote about this in the It was actually my mother who pierced it because she was a...

my god. Yeah. How old were you? 6th grade? were a freak dude. That's the time like that. People were talking about you.

when I got my hair. Wow.

speaker-0 (41:29.25)
My mother did it because she wanted me to stand out.

Yeah, same reason she smokes Capris, right? Wow. Yeah, I my ear pierced once too. I don't think I've ever told this story on the podcast. I was at a party and had a super seed cup full of beer and my friend Lisa, who I'm still very dear friends with, she's in Valentine, she had a diamond stud and my friend Todd Davenport

I won't tell you his...eh, what the hell. He will never listen to this. His name is...his nickname is Fung. But Fungus, Fung...he like...I'm like...I'm...I'm just, you know, obviously not in a sober state of mind. And I, uh...he dipped this...

I'm like, want to get my ear pierced. He dips this diamond stud into the super seed bottle, a cup of beer, you know, cause that would sterilize it. That would sterilize it and just jammed it right in my fricking ear. And so my ear is pierced just like that, right? You know, three days later, three days later, my ear like swells up to, you know, like a, like a

ping pong size. So I go to the med center and the doctor digs it out of there. He's like, you know, don't ever do this again. Anyway, somehow years later, my dad found out about that. And my mom knew, but dad didn't until later. His comment was like, I thought you were smarter than that, which is like my dad's death. No, that's all he had to say. He's like, you know, like that's all he had to say. I thought you were smarter than that.

speaker-0 (43:03.915)
BOMA

So you started early. My brother did it. You actually got it done the right way. Didn't have have a drunk buddy put it in a fricking cup of beer.

because

speaker-0 (43:13.986)
But my dad, you know, he grew up in the 60s. He went to Woodstock. He understood that culture and he wanted me to, I mean, he was kind of a rebel at the time. yeah, that just started me on this path of to this day. It's just kind of my jam. I passed it on to my son to an extent, you know.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (43:31.474)
Awesome. Well, as long as your son knows who George Lynch is, I'm happy. That's good. Okay. Those guys are now in their seventies, but I digress because I know how old I am. That's great. So you later became a state senator and this politics, or this politics, me, this show is not really about politics, but I mean, we talk about some aspects of politics, but

He knows you docking this for sure.

speaker-1 (44:01.063)
How did rural Nebraska shape your politics?

Well, this is a story that's going to hit home for you, I think. So I mentioned Karen earlier and I'm working in the King Kong and I'm 14, 13, 14, way younger than you probably could get hired today, you know, because I'm in there washing dishes and I'm working after school.

Everybody did small towns, right?

So I remember one day she came to me and she says, hey Colby, I'm gonna have to your hours. I said, really? That did not sit well with me because I was a hard worker and the alternative was working at the fertilizer plant, saving for a car, all that. And I said, why? And she said, well, the legislature now, Lincoln's thinking about.

or is going to pass this bill. It's going to limit the amount of hours a kid can work depending on their age and how late they can work and total hours and all that. And I was, I was like, that is not okay. I was pretty upset about it. So I go home and I tell my dad the story. said, Karen says she's going to cut my car. And he said, and I said, I'm trying to save for this car. And what I was hoping my dad would say is, I'll kick in the money.

speaker-1 (45:15.554)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (45:24.436)
inside he says well we better call your center and he gets he goes to the wall folks in and some

It was at the camp? Who was it? Who was your state senator?

In Basset, it was powered light.

Oh, how are they up? Yeah, sure. 43rd district. Been there for since Noah built the ark.

third disc? Yes. Calls Howard Lam.

speaker-0 (45:48.549)
Long time representing, of course my dad knew him because he's in business. And I tell Howard the story and he says, well, I hadn't heard about that, but let me check into it. Get off the phone. I didn't know what a state senator was. I was pretty green.

Yeah.

speaker-0 (46:04.942)
And about a week later, I get a little letter from letterhead of the state senator Howard Lamb. And he says, I looked into it and I says, I agree with you. You gotta be able to work as much you want. do what I can to keep this from happening. Took that into my boss. And I said, he says he's take care of it. You don't have to cut my hours. And at the end of the day, the bill never passed. I felt like I had something to do with it. I really probably didn't.

but what it showed me, what my dad role model for me in that very small instance was you can have an impact if you are proactive about it. And he didn't, he didn't do anything other than talk a little business with the Senator and then hand me the phone as a 12 year old. And I talked to the Senator and I told him the story and I felt like it, you know, I, never forgot that of course. I felt empowered about that.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (46:54.712)
They have a power.

And you know, my life took some swerves and I'm living in Lincoln and I start to see things happening at that level of government. I thought I could have some influence over and I was kind of unafraid to do that. And had my dad not put that...

speaker-0 (47:19.182)
planted that seed. I don't know if that would have been the path I would taken. And I don't think he meant for me to run for state.

But it's one of those little funny moments of life

funny moment in life and it was a was a as it turned out it was one of those forks in the road that really turned me into you know had gotten me into the opportunity to do what I did for eight years which was pretty cool.

What leadership lessons carry over from your upbringing? know, leadership in the legislature or business or whatever.

You know, it's that work ethic. You know what mean? There's just no substitute for grinding it out. has been, my wife will tell you I'm just stubborn in that way, but like that was the, you know, I was working in my father's fertilizer plant as a really young kid and that instilled in me the...

speaker-0 (48:14.594)
the notion that if someone's gonna have it, it's gonna be by your own effort. And that's how we all work. I'm always unique. All my friends work hard. Everybody in that, that grew up in this small town, we all worked. We're this branding cattle, sweeping fertilizer bins, washing dishes.

Well, identity, I've talked about that, friend of mine, JD Krauss is from Valentine, Nebraska. He talked about that. That your identity is your work ethic. You you're defined by, he's a hard worker. She's a boy. That guy is the hardest worker in town or whatever. That's kind of your identity. And he has actually unique take on that, that there's more to life than just hard work and it's about servant. He's a deep Christian guy. He just has a really deep take on that.

It's more than that, you know. It's really interesting. It's really interesting. Check out, it's called Born in Cherry County.

I agree.

speaker-0 (49:13.6)
I'm gonna do that because the opposite is also true, right? Like, you know, I remember people over the years working for my dad and they got labeled lazy. that is a scarlet letter. You know, that...

You don't want that reputation.

And here's the deal you could wear that earring in town because you were a hard worker they see past that because you know that they saw effort they saw effort you know, but if you didn't and then you have got the earring and even you're just as even bigger death knell, right? It does go back to that hard work thing Yeah, I'm with you. with you. I I mean I I

Exactly.

speaker-1 (49:50.858)
I fancy myself as my entire career. I was able to retire early because of that, I think. It is what it is. It is what it is. But the older you get, the different reflections you have on that, obviously. What was the hardest chapter of the book for you to write?

there I'll give something away here so we talked about my mother a little bit so halfway through the book she dies and I won't go into how you're gonna have to read the book for that but

Yeah.

speaker-0 (50:31.918)
When she died, I was just out of college, 20. Yeah, so it's been a while. But what made it difficult was to write was what I wrote about was the responsibility my dad had to tell me that my mother had died. And there's a whole story behind that, but.

How old were you?

speaker-1 (50:38.006)
Okay, this has been Number of Years.

speaker-0 (50:59.936)
What made it difficult was he was the same age that I am that I was when I was writing the book telling his son that my son was so I couldn't help but almost like I wrote about from the perspective of the kid who's my mind. Okay. But then I was thinking about the burden of a father telling their son. And of course I'm putting myself into this role of I am a father. I do have a son. How would I handle it? So I was just like

Yeah.

speaker-0 (51:29.422)
really heavy for me you know and so that was probably the toughest to write about because I wanted to um and it's got some funny endings I certainly can't wait for you because there's a lot of like this is not a doom and gloom book this is redemption and small town hijinks and all that but yeah but um it's the father son stuff that was probably the most challenging to write but particularly that scene was was hard because I didn't want to get it wrong

Very emotional.

Can't wait to read the book.

speaker-1 (51:44.558)
I know, that's what I'm-

speaker-1 (51:56.802)
Yeah. So what would you tell your 18 year old self?

Slow down. Honestly, I was in such a hurry. I was in such a rush.

Haha

speaker-1 (52:09.218)
Were you running away from Bassett or were you running to something?

ran away and I did things that I regret and I wrote about this I didn't go to senior prom

Yeah. Big deal. Well, you didn't, you just skipped your second period.

skipped it. Because I skipped it. Right? But I didn't go to the junior prom either. I would tell my 18 year old self, you know what? Go to prom. You won't regret that. Because today I do. And it's not like it was a sea change in my life because I chose not to go to prom. But I would tell my 18 year old self, slow the F down. Go to prom. Enjoy.

I don't know my problems either.

speaker-0 (52:54.978)
what you have because in the moment I couldn't see it. Reflecting back I can see it.

Gratitude is something that the older you get the more you fall that way or understand it.

Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (53:10.094)
Um, so what I would tell my 18 year old self is go to the parties, kiss the girls, do all that, but recognize how special that time in your life is. you know, with the pressures of adulthood, I'd do anything to go back and relive some of those days. They were the best days of my life. And I wrote about those things like driving, you know, driving around drinking beers, just, we had goals of kissing girls, you know, like.

Like that was life. And although I was oriented towards other things, those were really the best times. And I would tell my 18 year old self, you don't know how good you got it, man. Cause someday you're going to be an adult and you're going to have responsibilities and jobs and be a parent yourself. And you're going to wish you had this kind of freedom, you know? So that's what I'd say.

Yeah, yeah, good advice, good advice. What do you define family legacy today as?

wow, so I can only define it for what was modeled for me and what I try to model for my own family. And I defined it as...

impact that you can have in whatever role that you are like I had impact as a role as a senator but frankly the biggest impact I have right now is the role as a father and so the legacy is kind of be where your feet are is what I've tried to live by. where your feet are and that means just you're being a doctor.

speaker-1 (54:47.34)
Interesting.

speaker-1 (54:51.502)
My dad gave that advice once to somebody.

Yeah, and it, I learned that lesson probably too late, later in life. And I've tried to reorientate myself to it. But, the legacy that I'm leaving is the one I leave as a father, maybe as a former politician, maybe it's the work I'm doing now. I'm hoping this book is a legacy that I can leave. And that was a big part of it. And all authors are egomaniacs, right? It's like, oh, I...

something really important, you know, so I'm trying to be humble about it, but I think if I can put a light on small town America, a light on father-son relationships, I'm hoping that's a legacy that outlives me as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, it's easy. Everybody do it. That's right. Good for you. Congratulations on the book. Again, if listeners want to check out the book, you just go to Amazon.

Running naked, cold Wicoash, it'll show up.

speaker-1 (55:50.803)
And you can, the running naked part is a literal story. We won't get into.

There is a little story there. are photos in the book, but it's nothing R rated. you don't have to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate your time. Listeners, we got the man drove all the way from Lincoln, Nebraska to be in our studio today, and I really appreciate it. bet you. Awesome, was awesome.

Happy to be here. Thanks a lot.

speaker-0 (56:12.398)
When you get it all polished up, send it to me so I can spray it.

I will I will