#119. Bill Barnum on Housing, Redwood, and Humboldt’s Future

Bill Barnum returns to the 100% Humboldt podcast for a wide-ranging conversation with Scott Hammond about Humboldt County’s past, present, and future. They talk about redwood, timber, housing, downtown Eureka parking lots, population growth, local development, and the long timelines behind building in Humboldt. Bill also reflects on family history, law, faith, identity, community, and what it would take for Humboldt to hold onto more opportunity while becoming a little less divided.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Bill Barnum

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, boys and girls, and all those out to see. It's me, Scott Hammond, with the 100% Humboldt Podcast. I had to think about what I was doing for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

What are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:09

With my new best friend, old best friend. I'm not calling you old, Bill Barnum. Hi, Bill. Hello again. How's it going? Going well. Great to have you back. Good to be back. Tell us what's your uh what's your job? Just review us. What's your your pedigree, your history in Humboldt County, California? Oh my gosh. Who are you? What do you want?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

What do I want? Well, you know, it's interesting when you when you interview people, I watch your interviews. It's uh uh when you do your autobiography in a minute or less, you know we all tend to talk about our work.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So we'll do that. So um sort of fun. It might cue you into some questions because I I notice you're really good at riffing with your guests. So try to keep up. This is fun. So you ask, so you you deserve this. My first job was at pay less drugs. Oh, yeah. On the old mall, I was a stock boy.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

That's right. Uh I got fired. I think you've told me this maybe off camera before, but great story. Cute story. He let you go.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Seventeen years old. Uh, we got up near Christmas, and four of the floor managers quit.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Huh.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Assistant manager called a Saturday meeting. He goes, uh, I need volunteers. I need a floor manager. Actually, I need four.

Fired For Asking Fair Pay

SPEAKER_01 1:30

I'm 17. I raised my hand. We had a training session, and he took advantage of my exuberance, so he had me open and close the store Saturday and Sunday through Christmas. Wow. Yeah. Got through to January and I sat down. His name was Sheldon. I said, Sheldon, how am I doing? He goes, You're doing great. You saved me. Good for you. I said, Well, I wanted to ask, since I'm doing the job and you're satisfied, could I have a step up and pay? I'm still getting a buck sixty five an hour. And the bottom step for this position is 205. So I'd like to get to 205.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

What do you think, Sheldon? Come on, man.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

And he looked at me and he got really quiet. And he says, How old are you? As though now it's relevant. Right. I'm 17. He goes, Oh, when's your birthday? He said, June. He goes, Oh. Well, we'll talk about it in June. Nice. So I just kind of cocked my head like a Labrador retriever and said, Huh. Well, I I wouldn't have asked if you were unhappy with me, but since you said I'm doing a good job, I thought I should at least qualify for the bottom step. Sure. And he steel-eyed me and he goes, we'll talk about it in June. So I stood my ground and said, I I just think it's fair. Yeah, what do you say? He says, he goes, clean out your effing locker and get the hell out of here. Get out of here. So I rode my 10-speed bike home and walked the house, and my dad looks up. He goes, Well, you're home early. I said, Yeah, I got fired. Told him the story. He goes, Good for you, son.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

That's my boy.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Stick up for yourself. And he said, You're a high school senior. You don't need a job from Natal June. Just relax and have fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So that's what I did. Good good dad story.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah. So then I I did get a job after graduating. I got a job selling cars for RV Harper.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

And I did that for two years going to Humboldt.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

He's legendary.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Wonderful. And his son Danny and I. We opened the Mid-City Mazda store on Broadway.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Moved it out.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Then I went to work for Paul Nicholas. Yeah, remember him. Right down the street. Another great mentor. Uh worked for him at Northwestern Mutual Life. Then I went to law school. Say hi to Paul. Hi, Paul. And then I came back from law school, worked for a guy named Francis Matthews for a few years. Sure. And then we went out. Dave Dunn and I went out, formed Dunn and Barnum in 82. We hired a young lawyer in 83 named Rob Arkley and made him a partner in 85. 87 I went solo and stayed solo until I completed my career in 2019.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Good story.

Car Sales Law And Mentors

SPEAKER_00 4:15

That's all I got.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

The hour up already?

SPEAKER_00 4:23

I tell people they said it's the fastest hour of my week. It it's draining because I have to focus and I have to riff and be brilliant if I can be.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Like you don't have to do that in sales, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

No, no. I just show up and stand around.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Sign here.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

No, Harvey Harper opened one of the first Ford dealerships in the in the in the n not in the nation, the Western Trevor Burrus.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

His grandfather, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Drove from uh Phoenix, Arizona to Eureka. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

How about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Started the Ford dealership.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Wow. And we have a fur a couple of first too. I think Channel III, KIEM, and and uh the gentleman who won the Peabody, who Ron Pellegi's friend. Bill Smolen. Yeah. He was a award-winning broadcaster early on. Real pioneer. He was in radio and then. K-Red Radio, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

K KIM was actually a radio before it converted callsign to TV. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

How about that? And I know that he uh he started real early. And then the Vance Hotel was early because it had its first sewage or uh plumbing or hot water or electricity. It had a first down in Old Town.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I think probably electricity.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Might have been. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of first hearing in the county. Yeah. Well, good story. So uh so you're retired. How do you like retirement?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Well, um, I haven't really experienced it yet. Um my my my dad passed away a few years ago, and so now I'm working in Barnum Timber Company, and that's been uh a time of change. We chatted about it off camera. Um if you want to get into that. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Let's talk about redwood lumber. There you go. Is the the market's dropped, dropped out?

SPEAKER_01 6:07

It's essentially gone. Um there there's no significant volume of redwood logs being sold in the marketplace right now. Big changes in the last decade or so. Um, when when you and I were youngsters, um a product known as Clear Heart Redwood was a high-value, high-demand

Why Redwood Logs Stopped Selling

SPEAKER_01 6:32

product. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Beautiful, beautiful wood.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Beautiful products. And um so the old growth was logged out pretty much by the 1990s, and what we're logging now principally in the county is second growth. And it doesn't have quite the quality characteristics of the old growth. And so the industry sort of morphed a significant volume, excuse me, of redwood was converted into redwood fence boards, roughly three-quarters of an inch by five and a half, sold as one by six redwood. And those are sold mainly by Home Depot and Lowe's. But those are being cut out of uh logs uh from redwood trees that are being thinned from forests. Redwood's a unique species in that if you start with an old-growth redwood, and let's say it's four feet in diameter, redwood has a quality unlike Douglas fir, that when you harvest that first-growth tree, it's sempervirens, it's always living. And so it throws up, shoots, and grows a whole new generation of trees. Sometimes two or three, as many as fourteen or fifteen. And um to maximize the yield from that forestry, uh, the industry goes in and thins those forests and takes out the inferior or smaller. Sometimes the opposite. They'll go in and take the better trees and leave the smaller. In any event, you end up with a volume of redwood logs that, for instance, might be, say, 14 inches in diameter at the butt, at the cut end, and you might have three inches of whitewood on either side and eight inches of redwood in the middle, but the tree's not mature, so the redwood hasn't deepened into a deep red, uh, instead of sort of a strawberry-colored.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And the white on either side is the sap which has not yet been infused with color. They'll make fence boards out of that, and the fence board will have some whitewood and some strawberry redwood. And that goes to market in huge volumes. So what's happened across the country is that redwood has lost its mystique as being a high v high-value product. Um, used to be a lot of redwood deck boards sold.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Now competing with things like treks and other plastic uh fake woods. So anyway, um there there is some demand for redwood, but the industry's sort of in change, or there have been some um reduction in uh lumber production as demand has dropped. And so as recently as 2024, we had record high log prices for redwood, and now it's virtually not merchantable. Wow. That may change, you know, in two or three years, but the industry, uh all of the lumber industry has uh a history of sort of feast and famine depending upon nationwide demand. Demand is down now.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Aaron Ross Powell We saw that in COVID, right? Could you know plywood for a hundred bucks a sheet?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Yep. So yeah. Big spike in in prices. There's an awful lot of remodeling going on during COVID.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Folks had time on their hands and demand went way up. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, we built a second home for our special needs son Gabe. Yeah. A little ADU in the back and seemed like a good use of time.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. So anyway, as always, there's uh up and down markets. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

It seems like feast or famine for us, whether it's cannabis or internet or crypto or Redwood. Crypto is uh I don't know if that counts.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

I don't think that Scott and Bill are playing in the crypto game.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Aaron Ross Powell No, I I I don't I v vaguely know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Trevor Burrus I can spell it.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

That's about it. So let's go back to your your pedigree in terms of who you are, where you went to school. So you're a local guy. You went to St. Bernard's?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

No, I went to Eureka High. Uh-huh. Uh and uh went to Humboldt State University. When I started there, it was California State University at Humboldt, later Humboldt State University.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yep. CSU. Now it's Pauli, but back then HSU. And HSU and now Cal Poly, CP. CPH. CPH, yeah. Um prior guest, Dr. Richard Carvalho, president of Cal

Cal Poly Humboldt Meets Housing Crunch

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Poly.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Yeah. I'm going to meet him.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, you will. He's a great guy. Hi, Richard. Um he um what a great nice man. He's able to explain all of that that morphing into a Cal Poly. And we uh we'll probably talk about that for a second. Sure. What do you think of that? That's a really cool thing. It's a d it's a next level designation.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Aaron Powell Oh, I think it is.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Um, only help the county.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

But now it has to live up to the to that title. Yeah. And so we have to graduate superior quality uh students and get them out in the working world and build a reputation on on their shoulders.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Aaron Powell And as he was talking, he's very adamant about wanting to retain people into the county, these grads, and create uh uh an economy and jobs and industry, et cetera. Um and I and I thought back to my talk with this guy, Bill Barnum, of episode 57, a hundred episodes ago, about housing and you know, housing and healthcare and and all the things that are gonna need to support all that. And I go, I don't know about all the math. I guess we'll we'll wait and see, but he's got a big grand grand vision that I think um uh I'm believing that he's got a team that's gonna put together and do it.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Well, I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

We'll take time.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah. It's difficult for the university uh to attract uh the faculty that they're gonna need because the housing here is so scarce. Um had a chat with uh John Ford, the county planning director. John has his thumb on the pulse, he knows what's going on. He told me last week that the biggest demand for his agency services is remodel permits. So he's finding that people are moving up from Bay Area, LA, and other places with equity and finding uh scarce supply of suitable housing. So they're buying up what you and I would consider the middle-class housing, uh, four or five, six, seven hundred thousand dollar houses, but they're sitting on a million or two of equity. Yeah. So they buy those houses and then remodel them.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Aaron Ross Powell And just do a a rebuild. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

They just can't find uh market rate housing at that $8,000, $9 million value. They've got they have the money for it. There's just no resource here for them.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Aaron Powell Yeah. Which is really hard. I I I look at um you know uh these h these monstrosities downtown, the you know, right behind McCrady's son and down over by City Hall and Myrtle, where you just drove by that.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Me too.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

And I go, um I go, cool. And it was state money, and that's okay. But where are we gonna, you know, not everybody owns a car anymore. So we'll give that honor. But uh I I already don't have parking anyway

Downtown Housing Versus Parking Reality

SPEAKER_00 13:40

downtown. And these guys are a half block away, and I'm going, these poor guys from McCray Easton, where are they gonna park? Yeah. There's no lot that you know, they're not building other lots. No.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

And the city's gonna take over that lot behind uh the brewery and put a transportation hub in there.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

If I remember correctly, and I may not, I think they have something like 40 apartments planned on that half block. And they're gonna be able to pull the buses off the street and have sort of a bus station there. Right. Uh again, that's um it's interesting. The city um can conducted a bunch of its um parking studies at a time when there was very little parking happening.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Aaron Powell Now there's an interesting factoid. Very subtle.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Well, you I mean you work downtown. I did for years in my law practice, and uh now if I drive downtown, it's not unusual that I'm parking a couple blocks away. And you know, big city people laugh at that and say, well, gosh, you're you're lucky to get a lucky. You're lucky, that's fine. But the character of Eureka is not truly urban. It's sort of a pseudo-urban because uh we've really only got about, what is that, five blocks, first, second, third, fourth, fifth. Um and from A to what would it even be? A to L? L. It's just not very big. Yeah. Um So anyway, the the the parking lots, we talked about this, I think, the first time around. The parking lots were organized in the late 1950s, um, and old 18th-century buildings torn down. The the the lots were often uh or the buildings were often on uh wooden frames up out of gullies. Gullies were filled, parking lots provided, and it was good for uh the retail merchants, uh 5th, 4th, 3rd. They used to have an organization called North of Forth that was uh uh a retail sponsoring organization. And you had to have the parking. We'll we'll see how this plays out. One criticism I have of it is I I think all of this um high-rise on the parking lots, if you think about this, it's uh it's a band-aid in terms of a decade or more of time. There's only so many parking lots that could be converted.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And it may help the city meet its regional housing needs allocation for low-income housing, but that's usually over, I think, a five-year period. And so every five years, the state's gonna come back and say, City of Eureka, you need to have more zoning, more and more. More capacity. And there's uh obviously a finite supply of empty parking lots that are owned or operated by the city.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

They were talking waterfront, too, behind Dick Taylor chocolates, right?

unknown 16:21

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah. Of course. Speaking of Dick Taylor. Yeah. Oh, did you know there's a chocolate bar perhaps in your future? Aaron Ross Powell Well, lead us not into temptation. No, no. But deliver us, no, from peanut butter chocolate. What? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I joked with you about town uh before we went on. That's not going to make it all the way home.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Well, you don't have it in your pocket yet. Aaron Ross Powell I don't think Monica can see this until later, right? Aaron Ross Powell She won't see this until Monday morning.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Oh, that's good by that.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

It'll be gone. Sorry, Monica. He ate it. We couldn't help it. Well, they've got to tell the truth. So they will revisit every five years and come back and say I think it's five years.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

It may be a longer time horizon. But the point is, is that um You're gonna run out of parking lots too. You're gonna run out of parking lots. And so it's a band-aid. Of those who are saying, yes, we need it, that's fine. So then you do it. So then what do you do? Where are you gonna go? We're gonna talk about the waterfront. The waterfront, that's um uh a favorite uh unhappy topic for me. Well when I was 18 years old, a high high school senior, I was involved in um one of the advanced planning groups for uh the reconstruction of Old Town. And the zoning all along our waterfront was zoned as uh waterfront dependent, which

Waterfront Zoning And Stalled Projects

SPEAKER_01 17:41

meant that uh it would be for fisheries or fish processing or other things like that. Well, you can see what's happened.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

So I graduated high school in 72, so we're 54 years later, and it's been fallow for half a century. That's not that's not good planning.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah. That's not good planning. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Something is missing here, and that's anything resembling planning.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Aaron Ross Powell We've had some very capable people, won't name names because they're as disappointed as I am, but people have proposed things like waterfront hotel projects, couldn't get through the zoning burden. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Amphitheater, big cut convention center.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

And uh here we are. That just has not happened.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

It's a shame. Aaron Powell Let's cut to the chase real quick, if I if I may. Please. I rarely do this.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Well, I watched the show, so I may have seen the chase get cut.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I'm not exaggerating. Um what do you think the obstructionist mentality how do you how do you see it? Because it to me, it just seems like there's such a uh we can't do it, I won't do it, I'll stand against it. I don't don't confuse me with the facts, kind of headspace. And and I understand we're not going to bring a nuclear power plant

NIMBY Politics And Protest Tactics

SPEAKER_00 19:00

to Humboldt Bay. Not like that. I I get it. Yeah. You know, um, here's Amazon up in McKillyville, just building a warehouse. Okay. And that's met with great violent, you know, uh opposition. So the oppositionist Mofo factor, how do we how do you source that? How do you read that and and how is it played out? I think you were just kind of going there. Over 53 years, it's it's we're stagnant. And what are the results that our kids and grandkids will will live in a in a really weird job-free Humboldt County?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

I was talking to somebody about that this last week, you know, um, I'm gonna be 72 in a week. So 65 years ago, Humboldt um was a pretty dynamic place. Um the peak population post-World War II was 1960. 106,000 people in the county. 106. 106. Yeah, we're at 131 now.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

So do the math. 25,000 more.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

That's not even a 1% growth. In 66 years. That was my birthday. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Yeah. It's very quiet growth. So what did we had? We had um uh sawmills. Uh at that point we had peaked. I think there were a few hundred sawmills, of some very small ones up to the big ones, uh up until 1960. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

And many of them were on the bay. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

And and everywhere. Pl back uh Whitethorne and Salyre, which is I guess Trinity County, but you get the idea. Yeah, up. Every little valley had a sawmill. And so people could say, well, that's extractive, and it's true, and it was overcut, and that's true. Um the fishering the fishery business was big. Um company called Eureka Fisheries, um that the Thomas and Hunter families operated was at one time the largest volume fish processing company in the West Coast. Wow. Don't have that anymore. Um it was a very diverse community. I remember being at uh Marshall School, Zane Junior High, and Eureka High. It was uh quite socially diverse, uh a real blue-collar working community. Um the university was uh Humboldt State College in those days, uh, was probably three or four thousand students.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Wow, really small.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Before that it was the teachers' college, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

It was the normal college. Normal 1913. I was gonna say 1913. So the growth was very slow, but it's interesting to me that we went from 106 in 1960. We dropped, and this is an interesting decade. Halfway through the 60s, 1965, is when the two pulp mills opened. Huh. So they opened in a declining timber. Interesting. And they depended upon wood chips as a waste product of that industry. By 1970, we dropped to 93,000 people. Wow. That's quite a drop. And of course, I've grown since then. At the height of cannabis, I think we're nearing 136,000. I think we're 4,000 or 5,000 down now just since 16, 17, 18, somewhere before.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Since it was legalization.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

So I think because of who we are behind the Redwood Curtain, there's a cadre strata of people that are sort of I would use like humble hermits. They're sort of like here we are behind the Redwood Curtain. We don't want change. We don't want a vibrant economy. Where are the employee employee opportunities here today? They're in government, government, government.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Government. Health. Government. I'm trying to think of an industry. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I mean. I mean, we could say education, but education is a byproduct of government. We have a very stable economy in that sense, because the payrolls are good. And we have a wonderful art community. Art community here is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

But we just unpredictable.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Trevor Burrus Well, obviously when when the when the people who can afford to buy art have money to buy art, then the artists make money. And when the wealthier people don't have money for art, then the artists starve. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Sounds like Texas with oil.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah. When oil prices are up there. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Everybody. Everybody buys a truck.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah. Or two. So I don't know. I think there's always been NIMBY's. I think in any community you're going to have NIMBES, but here in Humboldt we have sort of an extra Humboldt Hermit. Let's just not have change. And it's interesting. Some of the biggest changes in the last decades have come from out of the area. Not that I applaud this, but just to make the observation. The Bayshore Mall came in, what, 1987? And that was general growth out of Chicago. And that that entity's tanked. Malls all over have tanked or being repurposed. You know, the little strip mall next to the mall has Victoria Place.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

That was developed by a family, uh Mongano family properties of Visalia.

unknown 24:39

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Visalia.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah. So out of the area, money comes in and sees things that we here don't see. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Yeah. That stayed f fairly full, but yeah, it's kind of oddly located. Hard to get in and out of.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah. What are you going to do?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

And then we talk about all the feature of offshore wind and the fish farm that's not happening and Great Road Redwood Trail that'll be done in five decades.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Well, the Great Redwood Trail, I mean, it's uh they said it'll be about 300 miles long. Um who's gonna maintain it?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Who's gonna police it? Keep it safe? Can that be done? Aaron Ross Powell Great questions. I haven't thought of that. Nobody's is that addressed to any of their planning? Haven't checked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Thoroughly uninterested. How does it translate into a revenue for any part of the county? I I don't see it. You're not gonna have Starbucks along the trail.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Jitterbean would make money, but Starbucks no.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Hey, Rick.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

The Roberts family. Hey Roberts. Yeah. They'll make coffee anywhere.

unknown 25:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

No, I I think it it probably has a destination effect. People will come and stay in camp and spend m some money, but it it it ain't it it ain't an industry.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Trevor Burrus Well, look at Oric. Uh 1968, 70, 72, we're gonna expand the national park, and they said, don't worry, you're gonna have tourism.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Just was there.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Well, you know, the the only gas station up there is gone, and um motels are gone. The biggest building is the Federal Building. Yeah. It's the National Park Building. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The gateway. The gateway to the National Park Buildings.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Don't get me wrong. We just did Brown Creek at Prairie Creek in Trevor Burrus. It's gorgeous. Vern Canyon, all of that. Trevor Burrus, Jr. It's amazing, but it it's the most underused park in the system. Yeah. Versus Zion, which is number one. Not surprising. Yeah. And they have a gateway city called Springdale, which is full of bougie hotels and coffee and food, and it's amazing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Do we not know how to market? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

I don't know what it is. Crescent City doesn't seem to be the big gateway city for Redwood National Park either.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Trevor Burrus It's cheek by jowl. We haven't done much with that, have we?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Aaron Powell No, we haven't. And it's it's sad because it that I think it's the ilk of Humboldt Bay. You look at the bay, you go, hmm. Wow, there's a lot of open land here that's doing nothing. And it's it it is interesting that Humboldt Hermit concept. And and it's funny because if I was a Humboldt Hermit, I would tell you it viro arguments and it's cool and it's green and let's keep it that way and let's preserve it. Let's keep it that way. And yet um and Jody and I talk about this. Hi, Jody. If you don't have jobs, you don't have families, you don't have money, you you have something really not that great. And and those NIMBY's have denied that again and again and again to have at least the possibility of some jobs, I think. Are we really that hurt by using some land in McKinleyville zone for Amazon? Get a couple hundred jobs? I I don't know. Is that going to really destroy the the vibrancy of Humboldt County? I just don't see it. So I don't understand. Maybe somebody can call me and tell me about that. Anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

I don't like I don't like the uh the style of protest. Um what do you mean? Well, at the Amazon hearing, um I talked to John Ford about this. I have a lot of sympathy for for people in government that have to deal with an unhappy public. Um, people used to comport themselves. You'd walk up to the microphone and say, make no mistake, I'm opposed to this project. I don't think it's good for the community, and blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

I've been heard, you'd sit down, have a seat. Have another speaker. But the railing, the interruptions, uh screaming and foul language and whatnot, it's just it's just disruptive. It doesn't really affect the decision process.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Um I'm sure Amazon encounters this most everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Or not. Maybe they're just welcome to I think it's everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

I uh you know, Amazon has a lot of enemies and uh in our social communities everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Trevor Burrus, Jr. They're big in Medford and Rugue Valley and big giant warehouse. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Yeah. Well, you heard the story that um Amazon wanted to build a big project in Queens, uh but uh Congresswoman AOC fought it and said, don't come to my district. Well, that was some number of thousands of jobs lost. And I understand that. Amazon's not a uh favored neighbor for many communities. I understand it. I just think people ought to, you know, keep their integrity and speak to opposition and sit down. It's not going to change it anyway. Um, to a location, as you point out, Steve Mosier developed that commercial subdivision decades ago. As with all things humble, the absorption rate is very slow. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Yeah, it's dated very empty considering. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

So think about if you're the investor and you lay money out to put in utilities and streets and sidewalks and whatnot, and you're just forty years ago.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

And you wait for a return on that investment. And that's why there's essentially no growth here. If you don't have those things available, they won't come.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Right. So before we do the chocolate bar thing, one one last point. I think just a quick review of your story from last time. So Eureka was zoned for so much growth in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and developers were unable to get projects through efficiently, affordably, uh, and get an ROI in their on their buck. Could you reiterate that story real quick? There were only, what, three homes? Try. Three or four. There's a handful of homes that got built, not 300.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yes. Um, well, should build

The Math Behind Unbuilt Homes

SPEAKER_01 30:29

with this basic fact. Humboldt County has about 57,000 homes. Okay. The average home is older than I am.

unknown 30:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

You're what are you, 40, five?

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Be seventy-two in a week. So you drive around anywhere in Humboldt and ask yourself, how old's that house? How old is that house? Pretty old. You're looking at old housing. So that's all old housing. Drive around Eureka, especially West Side, and look at all the houses that are still on peer and post foundations.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Bunches. Bunches.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Very rudimentary construction techniques of 100, 150 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yes, true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Think about 1926 is just a hundred years ago, and those houses were were built on concrete foundations. So you're really looking at houses pre-1925. Wow. So um Eureka really built out. Uh we have uh the last large expansion of the city boundary was in the 1950s. Um my father and his partner Fred Lumblade Sr. um acquired 320 acres from Campton Road out to Herrick, uh, where the golf course is. They donated the golf course and Lumbar Hills and all those areas. That was the last annexation of any significant size.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Lumbar Hills started in 1965 and about 163 houses there. Not huge. Not huge. Um so it's not a um it's not a Sacramento-style track development where you build 300 homes and sell them in a year. Nothing like that in Humboldt County. Up in um McKinleyville, um Jim Furtado's done a wonderful job providing affordable housing. And Kurt Kramer's done a fabulous job on the apartment side. Um I know Kurt's trying to get the North McKay tract developed. That'll be about 320 units. Okay. But you notice how long this takes. When I was practicing law 33 years ago, 1993, I was working for Louisiana Pacific Corporation when we made that tract available.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Thirty-three years ago. And it's not developed yet. It's not it's not there's not a house up yet. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

So I told you this before, and you you get under my uh burr under my saddle with these stories, but the the county, um, which of course adjoins the city, the city, the county. The county in 1995, 31 years ago, did the Eureka Community Area Plan.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

That's what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Yeah, that's what we talked about. And they said 1,200 units uh would be built in the Dun Robinson tract, 300 in the Slack Winsler track, 200 in the Reardon tract.

unknown 33:22

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

For a total of what is that?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

1,200, 150, 1700 units. Okay, that's 31 years ago. How many houses are there today? Under You remember this story?

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Double under double figures? Oh, there's two. Two houses. I thought there was three. Two houses. Good Lord.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Now, if that's what planning produces, if planning says 1,700 and the market says two, is that really planning?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

You got a disconnection of some sort.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

So you see, the game is the state says to the county, you need your regional housing needs allocation, you have to zone for housing. Doesn't mean the housing's ever going to get built.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

It's implied, but it's I don't even know if it's implied. It's almost scamish. You know, to me. Um we talked about this before. Right now, if you want to buy uh raw land and put all the improvements in it to create a merchantable building lot for a home, it's about $80,000 a lot. But you also have to get paid for the dirt. Right?

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Right. The dirt's the dirt's got value. That acre costs money.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Yeah. Now, my buddy Kirk Kramer told me 20 years ago that if you want a rule of thumb, if you're buying raw land as a developer, the cost of the lot developed should be approximately one quarter of the finished product. So $150,000 lot, $600,000 house. Well, the median wage earner in Humboldt County can't afford a $600,000 house.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Not even close.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Our building costs with a more stringent building cost, you know, every new house has to be sprinkled for fire. It's a good thing, but it's $15,000 to $20,000 a door. All told it's a little more than $300 a square foot for basic housing.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Yeah. Nothing fancy. Trevor Burrus, Jr. 12 years ago was State Farm, we were quoting buck fifty, buck seventy-five, and now it's well over three fifty.

unknown 35:24

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

So if you're if you were to build just a 1,000 square foot house, which would be very small, 3 in 2 or 3 in 1 house, that'd be $300,000 for construction and you've got to buy a lot.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

100.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Easy.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Remember, 80 to build the improvements. Are you going to get by with 20,000 for the dirt? Not going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

So it's it becomes math.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Aaron Ross Powell It's just math. And if you're the investor, you have to see I can produce a product, but I have to have a buyer. At the end of the game, I need revenue. I'll invest elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Trevor Burrus And their math is what they would check theirs twice.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Aaron Ross Powell At the kitchen table. Does that make me money? I don't think so. Or is my investment one year, five years, or ten years?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Or Lumbar Hills, what is that? That's 61 years now.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

What is that? That's just not even three lots a year.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Yeah. I'm getting a burn in my saddle right now. See? Yeah. I'm starting to squirm a little bit, Nick. Yeah. What's wrong with your chair here? Hey, um, when we go to Boise, Idaho, the Treasure Valley, it's it's uh people are wonderful, the drivers are wor are worse. Well, they're from California. Yeah, that's the accusation. I'm not sure I buy it, but uh half of them are Portland. Or Portland. That's fair. Well, they really cuss the Portlandiers in in Boise politics. The city of Boise, they hate those Portland guys. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Did you see the news this last two days ago? The um the people who are, I guess they're animal rights and vegan people in Oregon have obtained enough signatures for an initiative that will ban the killing of animals and fish in Oregon. Wow. You may not hunt, you may not fish, you can't raise cattle or sheep.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

And you can't sell an animal. Those Portland guys could get away with a lot because they're three quarters. Three-quarters of the states run the show. Yeah. But isn't that interesting? That is an interesting uh set of laws.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yeah. So you think about the guys that, you know, go up to float the Deschutes River and fish for trout on the Deschutes.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Sun Sun River.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Illegal. Yeah. Done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Catch and release. Yeah. I don't know that you could do that. You might kill them. Yeah, you might kill them. Yeah, get a hook in the mouth, kill the fish.

unknown 37:51

Man.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Where do I live? I live. Isn't that something? So po so Boise, real quick. Subdivisions. As far as the eye can see. Yeah. Dude, it it is. And they absorb. It's amazing. You build it, they sell it. Nampa, Caldwell, Meridian, Eagle, Boise proper. It's like and these cats do giant big pro microns gone in there on the east side of Boise. You know, 2,000 jobs. Wouldn't that be a thing? Um and I don't know that I'm advocating for that. I don't know either. But there is there is uh You don't need to worry about it. Not my lifetime. We're still in California. I still love Humboldt and the people and the and but it is confusing and sad to me. So hey, on that unsatisfactory note, sure. Let's talk about you uh winning a chocolate bar. I'd like to earn it. Ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Ding ding ding.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

I'll try to get it to ring right. But there's always a question. Well, there is. There's several. So I'm gonna make them uh I'm gonna make them next level for you, upper division. So for this uh oh, this is a brown chocolate and brown butt dark chocolate, brown butter, nibs, and sea salt. Wow. The nibs are quite good. Joni puts those in her uh yogurt and fruit in the morning. It's a 73% Uganda chocolate. I like that ratio. That's good. Yeah,

Chocolate Quiz On Faith And Joy

SPEAKER_00 39:12

these are this is actually one of my favorite ones. It's pretty good. This is the brown butter. I thought this was the peanut butter.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Are you gonna embezzle that or are you actually gonna give it out? No, I'm not I'm gonna well, we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Yeah. You might lose you might lose the contest. Somebody's gotta eat it. Best three out of five falls? Uh sure. You and me? Yeah. Okay, here we go. Are you ready? Question number one. Okay. What's life giving for you, Bill Barnum? What what brings you that uh that hit in life that gives you uh I don't know, encouragement, life? Um joie de vive. Psh. What gives you uh motivation?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Eucharist.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Eucharist. Explain. Well, I uh For those of us that don't know what that might be.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Um I'm a cradle Catholic. I'm married to a a beautiful, wonderful Catholic woman. Um we we actually met in church. Um and we we believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And um He uh He invited us. Uh I am the way and the truth and life. No one comes to the Father except through me. He eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Aaron Ross Powell Remember me.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

Yeah. So He's the bread of life, he's invited us, and uh that's what we look forward to.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

I love it. Yeah. Love it. Good answer. Hey, part B of the question. Yeah. What uh sucks you your soul dry? What what depletes you? Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's a really good question. Um besides the stuff we're talking about earlier.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Yeah, golly. I I don't really know that I ever let anything have that effect on me. I I think I got a little bit of a spiritual Teflon. Good. So I don't think I would have an answer for you. Yeah. I don't think I go there. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

I um as as much as I know there's sadness in the world, I do. Absolutely. I watch a lot of news and I don't resorb it because I can't change it.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Aaron Ross Powell The news the news is really like history. And history, as Henry Ford said, history is bunk. So when you read a history book, you're reading really an op-ed.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Ah interesting. So it's spun history.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Aaron Ross Powell Well, i it depends on your point of view. Um my brother Charles taught me a great expression that I lean on in my life. He called it OPR, other person's reality. Now, if you're going to tell the story of the conflict with Iran right now, if you were um a Shia Muslim, you'd have a slightly different opinion of the matter than Mr. Trump does. Sure. So if you're writing the book in Iran, you'd write one story. If you're writing it in Washington, D.C. in the Trump White House, you'd have a different opinion entirely. What is history? Yeah. History's a story and a and an opinion. It's a hot bad. It's bunk.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So qu question for you, this came up the other night. It's interesting bunk, though. Question number two is coming right up. But I digress. The other night at Home Group, somebody said, hey, we're not a Christian nation. It wasn't developed on Christian principles. And I said, in and the American experiment has failed. And I go, whoa, hold on. A little time out here, bro. And I I challenge that. And you're well read. You've been to law school. I one would assume you have some level of historical

Are We A Christian Nation

SPEAKER_00 42:32

perspective. Where w was our nation, our laws, our constitution, were we based in not just Christian values, but men and women that added to this that had a Christian perspective mindset?

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Aaron Ross Powell I think if you were to look at the individual biographies of the founding fathers, you'll find there were more deists than there were Christians.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Aaron Powell So Jefferson and Franklin.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

They were r reputedly agrarian farmers in their orientation. They knew that the wealth came out of the grounds through hard work. But they had a wide variety of faiths or not faiths. They were students of history of uh Greece and Rome and and of course England, Britain. And they sort of, if you dig into it, it's quite interesting. The conflicts among the original colonies and those who were favoring slavery held out as long as they could, and we saw what happened. There's more diversity in those individuals than we like to think about. So if someone says we are a Christian nation, nation always have been, I think that um is not a very deep analysis. I think we certainly have Judeo-Christian principles that the society generally has followed, but with religious freedom. There's an awful lot of diversity out there.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Yeah, and Franklin was really interesting. He's my he's my boy. That guy. Yeah. Went over to the French and got him to fund a war, dude. Yeah. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

And you know, we've got to capital early Navy over there fighting the Muslims in the Barbary Coast. Oh, really? Yeah. So in the the Marine thing, marine theme from the shores of Montezuma to the hills of what is it? Tripoli. Tripoli. Libya. That's okay. Um so we were fighting over there very early in our young nation's career. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

The Decebris are a band that do a st a song on Ben Franklin. It's quite entertaining. Hey, but that we're really digressing. We are. Question number two. Yeah. So you and Monica get to go out for the day, doing whatever you want, and then go to whatever restaurant you want. Yeah. Where where do you where are you going?

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Well again, humble, you can go so so many places, we don't have time to list them, right? That's that's the beauty of it. Um I think when we want to go out and have a uh a special dinner together, um, we'll go up to Moonstone Grill at sunset.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Beautiful photographs in this phone from

The Perfect Humboldt Day Out

SPEAKER_01 45:19

sunset up there. Um we've had more and better restaurants in the past. Ironically, we had a lot of really great restaurants during the cannabis era.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

So there was cash everywhere. Oh, yeah. So we have to recognize that um the oh happy day of restaurant life is gone.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

It has shifted. Yeah. It's shifted tremendously. I remember the old ones like menorah tie and and um you're not old enough to remember more on the phone. Oh, yeah. Tommaso's yeah. That was great. What was it, Fat Alberts? He was down there.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

What's that now? That's um Sea Grill.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Ah. Well, m more recently, we we we really liked uh Nick Cole's Oberon Grill. That was great. And Avalon. We it was Bevan or Avalon, it was fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Oh yeah. Everybody mentions Larapin on the show and uh you know uh two doors down and I had a problem with Larupin.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

That's where I learned that I have a food allergy to basil, so sort of, you know.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

I got a bad vibe there. What are you gonna do? Discovery.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

It wasn't Dixie's problem. It was all mine.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yeah. What a legend she she is, it was. Yeah. So uh you you haven't really said what you would do with the day. If you if you're given a day I know you're retired, so you you can have a day off anytime you want. But what would you do with a day and where would you go to eat? Oh, you said moonstone.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Yeah. Um the um we're we're we're really pretty much homebodies, either here or out at the ranch. Um we like being active in the garden. Um sort of small picture stuff. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

It's good.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

We call it a quiet night in where we get a salad, yeah. A remote, and then we watch our senior citizen program. And it's funny, I never thought I'd find a really great deal of satisfaction in that.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

You know what's been entertaining of late, if folks haven't seen it, it's really quite sweet, is uh I think it's on Netflix. It's um uh Love on the Spectrum. Yeah. And that's really cool show. And we've seen some of the um couples therapy also. Uh and again, it's uh it's sort of entertaining because you see yourselves in in the lives of others. And it's it's good. It's humbling. We should all keep in mind that uh we're not all that.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

I love I love on the spectrum. Sweet is such a good show. Touching. Yeah. Gotcha. So uh who are you and what do you want? Question number four. Three. I think it's five or something like that. Well, you're gonna earn this chalk of more. Apparently. Who who are you? Not what do you do. So you said it well. I can tell you that I'm a statement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Um I think that uh my mom passed away a month ago.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

I'm sorry to hear that.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah. She was 94, 10 months and 22 days.

SPEAKER_00 48:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

She passed at home in her own bed, which is something we all aspire to.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Um not to be morose or or uh dark about this, but maybe a bit of a sense of humor. I've been imagining that there's a giant

Grief Identity And The Baton

SPEAKER_01 48:26

escalator to heaven. Wait, there's not? And there is. And we're all on it. And uh I watched my mother go up into the clouds and disappear. And then I heard a clanking sound and come tumbling down this escalator, and I reached up and grab it. It was a baton. Ah. She passed the baton. Good. So I'm next in the relay race. Yeah, you're you're you're heading up the you're you're going. I've been sort of who who am I? I'm a child of God. I'm on the escalator. Uh I want to be who he thinks I should be and ally myself with his ambitions for me.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Yeah. So I think those thoughts. Um I'd like to see a a a community that loved e each other better than we do, a little less rancor, a little less bitterness, uh, less class conflict. People are people, wherever they are. Think about this guy Bezos. He was selling books out of a garage in Seattle. So is he really a guy we should hate because of his success, or just say, if you want to do it differently or better, go do it differently or better? But uh I'm I'm opposed to rancor and darkness and all that. But I'm not I'm not gonna beat anybody up over it. I just my wish, my hope, my desire is we sure could all just get along. Love it. Be more Christ-like if we could.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

If you could. Yeah. Make the effort. I love it. We can and should and do and will. And I I think of all those things about identity. What's your identity? Who's assigning it for you?

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

You know, your your coach, your mom, your dad, your government? What? I'm clear. Yeah. I'm clear. Yeah. Good. I know you are. Yeah. Well, hey, congratulations. Wait.

unknown 50:18

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Bonus question. No. Number six.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

Isn't it becoming abusive on this side of the microphone?

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Usually they're three softballs. You're kidding me. Seven. Hey, um, congratulations on the uh Brown Brother Nibs and Sea Salt uh chocolate bar.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

You're actually going to give it to me? Enjoy that.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Yeah, absolutely. It's been a tease for an hour. I know, you've been staring at that. Just keep your hands off of that chocolate. It'll melt, right? I know. You want it to room temperature. It feels good with red wine, turns out.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Well, I gave up uh alcohol in February. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I'm going the other way now. At a boy. Well, I had enough. How do you feel? You know what's really delightful. I don't miss it at all.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

At a boy.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

And and uh there must be other people like me because I go to the bar and get either a mock tail or a fake beer and they're happy to serve me.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

So non-alcoholic's huge. It's everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 51:07

It really is popular now.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

I'm not going non-chocate.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Yeah. Don't get carried away now. I'm picking my poison.

unknown 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

I like it. So what do you what do you love in and about Humboldt? I if you just bring it into that simple question, what do you what do you love the most? Look at your map. You know, you got your Metzger's map. Oh, my Metzgers. Let's look at that. Over here with Nick. Here we go. So this is Eureka. This is Cut and Ware we talked about out here.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

So, you know, Oregon. You know, my work, I was a real estate lawyer, as a dirt lawyer. And so look at that map and compare it to, say, the the the grasslands of Kansas. Look at the diversity here.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

We've got ocean,

Why Humboldt’s Landscape Feels Magical

SPEAKER_01 51:46

we've got bay.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Rivers.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

We've got six main rivers. We've got creeks everywhere. We've alive with fish, alive with deer, mountain lions. Yep. Um Redwood. And so we've carved out these little highways so we can get access to all these beautiful places, get up on a ridge top, watch a sunset. Um it just sears into your mind. When I was young, we used to go snow skiing at Horse Mountain.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Oh, let me show you where that is.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

I know you know already. East, east, east, east, east. Oh, this is too nice. So it's right here.

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Yeah, east and up the hill.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Oh, so the twist back here, yeah. A little southeast. So this is it right there.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

A little more east, a little more east. South? Okay, right there. That's horse mountain. Oh, that's horse.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

Okay, well, this is Redwood Valley right here.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Yeah. Point is you could go skiing there, and you're gonna have dinner on the beach at Moonstone. Same night. Same day. Wow. Get up, go skiing, three or four in the afternoon, get the car, go down to the beach, bonfire. Wow. Hot dogs, burgers. Oh, for a swim. Yeah, it's you could. You could. You could. I didn't, but you could. Um so it's that. Um Humboldt County is is just amazingly and the redwoods, um, river gorges, pss what's not to talk about? Fern Canyon? Unbelievable. So this is three thousand six hundred square miles, half the size of New Jersey. They have eight million people, we have 131,000.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

I know where I'd rather be.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Do the math on that.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Not quite as human either.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

What summer? Well, not 85 in 85.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

But it doesn't snow like it does there. That's true. Frozen. It does in the mountains. Yeah. A little bit in the summer. In the summer.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

That's what I love about Humble Humble uh just everything.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Well, hey, um your show now. What um what are you proud of in your life?

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Um I don't think about that. That's an interesting question. What am I proud of? Um You know, Scott, I just don't think about myself pridefully. I'm sure I have pride.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

But necessarily connotates a prideful attitude.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Um Maybe we misuse the language a little.

SPEAKER_01 54:08

Maybe so. Maybe I'll

Legacy Mentoring And Final Wrap

SPEAKER_01 54:10

I would choose choose a different word. Um self-satisfied. Okay. Um love my family um generationally. A lot of interesting people. Some are really interesting. Uh like all families.

SPEAKER_00 54:27

Not your family, but so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

I I think that's it. You know, we we uh we derive so much of our identity from those we love and who love us. So uh I'm so satisfied that it's uh it's a good tribe. They're all human, they're all foiled like me. And so there's stuff to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 54:48

Yeah. We're all in the journey, as my daughter-in-law so well put it.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Um we need strength for that journey.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Yeah, we do. We do. Can't do it alone. And to that, it's done in community, isn't it? It is. Yeah, with the tribe. Um which is all often the uh difficult part because here I go depending on you again. Yeah. You know, and you gotta depend on me, and then here we go. And what if we anyway, and then the and we go round and round and there line therein lines the beauty and the command to be uh to love one another.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

I try to orient myself to being productive of something good. So when I think my private thoughts, I think about well, what can I be doing that could be good? I love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

So at the end of your life, uh as you as you as you ascend.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

Should I calendar this?

SPEAKER_00 55:42

The escalator. Yeah. What would you um would you prefer what desire? What are your druthers around? How would you like to be remembered?

SPEAKER_01 55:52

I joked with you last time you asked me that question.

SPEAKER_00 55:54

I said, Maybe that's a different answer today.

SPEAKER_01 55:56

Remember the punchline?

SPEAKER_00 55:57

No, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

Nobody cares.

SPEAKER_00 55:58

Nobody cares. I'll be forgotten within weeks.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Well, you know, there's so much true to that. I told you uh and I I I I think of I think these thoughts. My great-great-grandfather was Dr. Reuben Gross, and he built the brick building at Fifth and F.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

Fifth and F, is it?

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Arthur Johnson's building. Still there. Yeah, still there. Let's walk by it, too. He built that in 1903. Same year he built his home at 8th and H. It's now the Hysterical Society. Beautiful home. Yeah. Beautiful Queen Anne Victoria. Oh my gosh. That was Dr. Gross. His wife was Mary Mean, so I had mean and gross relatives. Good one. That button. Um it's been, you know, he's my great-great-grandfather. Who who thinks of my great-great-grandfather anymore?

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Nobody. Handful. I do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

But you actually maybe that's enough. Yeah. Yeah. And so the baton falls, we grab it, we ride the escalator, and you look down and say, who am I going to throw this at?

SPEAKER_00 56:56

Maybe just throw it back down the yeah. Yes. Clank it, clank, clank claim.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

Yeah, who's going to grab it?

SPEAKER_00 57:01

Yeah. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 57:02

So yeah, I I uh So I don't really have grandiosity thoughts or thoughts of what my legacy? My legacy hopefully will be people who uh love and remember me while I'm loving and remembering them.

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Good word. Yeah, I like it. And what about a tombstone inscription? Anything clever?

SPEAKER_01 57:21

Nah.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

Nah. Hear lies? Yeah. Hear lie. I like my bosses. Dog on it, dog on it, do better. Yeah. He just he will cuss and then he says, just do better. And I'm going, you know, in the spirit that's given in, I hear that and like that. I um I think about mentoring. I think about how how I was I mentored and how can I mentor, even if it's momentary mentorship. Sheldon was not a mentor. Not a good mentor. No. May you be a good mentor to all those that you are in your life. And I I think, you know, you don't have to look that far.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

My sister got my mother a little wooden plaque. We all get the little wooden plaques. This one's cute. It says, uh, my name is Mom, but my real name is Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. That's so cute.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 58:14

A lot of moms like it.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

A lot of moms. That's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Couldn't put it on an epitaph, but you get the idea. It fits.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

It's cute. Yeah. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for inviting. Yeah, no. What a joy. It's always fun.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Every hundred or so shows, I'll show up. Okay, yeah. Come on by.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

I'm just out on the street. You say, come on. Hey, Bill, what are you doing? Well, folks, if that concludes uh number 120 episodes, by the way. Not bad. Congrats. And uh thanks for being here. If you want to like us, love us, make comments, send money. Uh, we're on all the podcast platforms. Yeah. Yeah. For you. Well, for me. Yeah. They could send you some money, I guess. You want it? Um I I was gonna ask for your website or your your phone number or anything. You don't you don't need that. Off off offline. Maybe somebody would meet you with somebody on the street and go, hey, I saw your show. Oh, they do? Yeah, what do you have to go? Yeah. Yeah. And so uh your reviews, like us, love us. We're on YouTube, we're on access Humboldt TV, bold day of giving tomorrow. Hey, and vote for us for uh Best of Humboldt, North Coast Journal, uh Best Podcast. That'd be awesome if you have a mind to do so. In the meantime, we'll see you next week. Thanks for coming. And uh Scott Hammond, 100% Humboldt. And I was gonna say like a good neighbor, but that that that's copywritten. Is it? It is. Steal it. Thanks, Bill. Thanks. Bye bye.