Nailing History
Introducing "Nailing History," the podcast where two friends attempt to nail down historical facts like they're trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the manual. Join Matt and Jon (or Jon and Matt) as they stumble through the annals of time, armed with Wikipedia, Chat GPT, and a sense of reckless abandon.
In each episode, Matt and Jon pick a historical event that tickles their curiosity (and occasionally their funny bone) and dissect it like a frog in biology class—except they're the frogs, and they have no idea what they're doing. From ancient civilizations to modern mishaps, they cover it all with the finesse of a bull in a china shop.
But wait, there's more! In between butchering historical names and dates, Matt and Jon take a break to explore the intersection of history and pop culture. Ever wondered if Cleopatra would have been a TikTok sensation? Yeah, neither have they, but that won't stop them from imagining it in excruciating detail.
So grab your popcorn and prepare to laugh, cringe, and possibly learn something (though don't hold your breath). With Matt and Jon leading the charge, "Nailing History" is the only podcast where you're guaranteed to leave scratching your head and questioning everything you thought you knew about the past. After all, who needs a PhD when you've got two clueless buddies and a microphone?
Nailing History
138: Road Trip Through The Founders’ Backyards
The plan was simple: drive to Charlottesville, see three presidential homes, soak in the views, and come back with a few good stories. What we got was a bracing look at how history is curated, where it gets messy, and how visitor experiences can either illuminate the past or accidentally hide it in plain sight. We start at Monticello, where Jefferson’s clever design choices and meticulous gadgets share space with a frank accounting of slavery, debt, and contradictions that won’t sit quietly on the tour bus. The foyer artifacts, the pulley calendar, and the Lewis and Clark links all impress—but the muddy lawn and scripted talking points tell their own tale about legacy and upkeep.
Then the plot twists at Highland. We wind up a beautiful, wooded drive expecting Monroe’s home and meet a yellow house, a guest house, and an archaeological dig. The reveal—delivered by a theatrical tour guide knocking on an empty foundation—lands somewhere between clever and deflating. It raises honest questions about transparency: if the house burned in the 1820s, what exactly are we touring? There’s value in the research and the landscape, but for visitors seeking Monroe himself, Fredericksburg’s dedicated museum looks like the smarter bet.
Montpelier brings the clarity we were hunting. With DuPont-era layers acknowledged and peeled back, the tour builds a richer picture of Madison’s life, the Constitution’s context, and the brutal economics of enslavement on the estate. The exhibits beneath the house do the heavy lifting—names, roles, reconstructed quarters—and the guide threads together how debt, decisions, and power shaped people’s lives, including families sold south “down the river.” It’s thoughtful, grounded, and surprisingly moving.
Between site visits we wander UVA’s Rotunda and find refuge at Miller’s, an old-school bar with pool tables and PBR that reminded us travel is as much about the in-between moments as the headline stops. If you care about American history, architecture, and how institutions tell hard stories, this one’s for you. Hit play, subscribe for more road-tested deep dives, and tell us: which site would you visit first, and why?
Hey fans. Uh Matt here. Um just wanted to give you guys a bit of an update. We did get access back to our Google account. So thank you, Google. Um sorry for all the bad words for last week's episode, but um that was pretty hot. So um, but right after that long, you know, I don't know how long it was, 40-minute rant about Google and how they screwed us, um, John and I sat down and finally got onto tape, I guess, um, our talk about a trip that we made um that August. Um, if you remember from last week, we lost our notes um from when we had talked about this a week or so after we went there. Um, so we just kind of went off the top of our heads. And um, after recording this and getting access back to our Google account, um, I was able to go back through and see if we had missed anything um we that we didn't touch on um from this talk. And we pretty much hit everything that uh we had written down. So I guess our memories aren't so bad. Three months later, we're still still hitting the high notes. So uh hope you guys enjoy um as we start this. I say, do you want to talk this for about this for 20 minutes? And then we proceeded to talk about the trip for 90 minutes. So I'm hoping I can edit it down a little bit um for you guys, but uh uh hope you guys enjoy. John, I mean, should we try to just you know, we're we're 37 minutes in. You want to try to go 20 minutes to talk about our trip? Yeah, I don't we can't go in that much more detail. We're we're we're we're cooked, as you as you say. We're cooked. Well, it's yeah, I don't remember much, fans. We know the highlights. I remember John and Mr. R took my car for a joyride while I was taking a nap. That's the main thing that I remember from the whole trip.
SPEAKER_04:We went to get food. Did you ask? Did you ask? What were we gonna do?
SPEAKER_01:Uber? I drove. Sorry, I was tired after driving for ten hours.
SPEAKER_02:It's okay.
SPEAKER_04:I'm not asking for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_03:Came back all in one piece.
SPEAKER_04:How to drive. Nice.
SPEAKER_02:How many miles? Good.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh. I mean, I just think I drove. I don't know. Whatever. And then I I thought maybe I was like, am I gonna have it? I'm like, ah, well, maybe you know, they'll offer to drive like to D D later on in the in the trip, you know. Oh, you know, but no. Only when you wanted to drive you would drive. Never when it was an inconvenience. Wow, and we Ubered. Once. We were out the other night, the the second night we were out, and I had to drive home. That's okay. I guess I'll always drive. That's fine.
SPEAKER_03:Now I know your true feelings. I'll offer to drive.
SPEAKER_01:That's pretty much what I remember from the trip.
SPEAKER_03:There was no television in the Airbnb. It smelled like Who booked the Airbnb for one? Did it?
SPEAKER_01:Alright. So the fans we went down to I don't know how much we talked about this with the fans because it's been so long, but we went down to Charlottesville, Virginia for like I guess we could call it like a mini historic tri a miniature historical triangle, a mini triangle of sorts. Yeah. Definitely three points. That's what makes up a triangle. It's more it would be like more of a scalene triangle, right? Where like two are real close. No, is that a scalene? Whatever, like two points are really close and then one point's really far away. Yeah. Scalene business. I don't think that's what it is, but I think a scalene triangle is just where all the lengths are different. No.
SPEAKER_03:But anyway, we went on what was the impetus? Anyway, we went to What's that word mean? What does that word mean? Why do we decide to go? What was the did I put it out? Did you throw it out there?
SPEAKER_01:No, I think at one point I said that I wanted to go to um I wanted to see Mount Vernon. I don't know what made me think of it. So I said, hey, I want to go to Mount Vernon, and then you said, Well, I've been there. I want to go to Monticello, and then I said, Okay, that's good, because I just found out that Mount Vernon's under construction and like part of it's closed off.
SPEAKER_03:So Yeah, so it came about pretty quickly. So we decided on doing Monticello, which is in Charlottesville, Virginia, and uh it just so happens that Mon isosceles triangle.
SPEAKER_01:A scaling triangle is where all sides are unequal, and an isosceles triangle is where two sides are the same and one is different. So like the one is short and the two are long. Got it.
SPEAKER_03:I've said word I have not heard in a long time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I said it before I looked it up. Impressed. The same.
SPEAKER_03:Sorry for stealing your own.
SPEAKER_01:So we decided to go, so in a funk.
SPEAKER_03:I knew that would get you in a funk. It was it definitely put you. Now I know it put you in a funk. I had my guess, I had my assumptions put. So we went to so we decided let's go to Monticello. You know, we had this show.
SPEAKER_01:We'll have Matt Drive, and then it'll be fine, because then we could just go and take it for a joyro whenever we want.
SPEAKER_03:I needed you. What did you get your booty sleep? You were tired. I understood you drove a lot. You I got it. I wasn't like, oh, why are you falling asleep, dude? We got it here. You were driving.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, so we went. Alright, it's fine. It's fine. It's over. It's been two months. Three months. Three months already. Wow. Two months. Yeah, no three months. So um, yeah, so we went, so we so yeah, so we went to so we went to three presidential. So we John wanted to see Monticello, which is where Thomas Jefferson lived. And then we kind of did a little bit more research and we found out that um I don't know, you probably knew it, but they're James Monroe was right up the street because they were them boys. Yeah. And then James Madison was like in a little bit further. So they all kind of and we kind of, you know, they're all Virginia boys, but they all kind of did live near each other. Hop, skip, and a jump away from each other. Uh Jefferson and Jefferson and Monroe much closer. They were like, you know, in each in each other's backyards. Yeah. Um, and then James Madison's like a 40-minute drive away. So we went to do that. Um stayed in Charlottesville, which is the home of UVA, which is a pretty cool little town.
SPEAKER_03:Which is what was founded by Thomas Jefferson, and he could literally see it. UVA was.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Nice little town. Well, when we we we stopped when we got there, we stopped to get a nice little bite to eat um in the uh some outdoor seating, and we got a nice view of a homeless gentleman sleeping in his own vomit. That was nice, nice little touch. Dave Matthews played there a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh yeah. Dave Matthews was from there. Dave Matthews band's from there, so it's pretty cool. It's a cool little town. I mean, it was they had like the road the main streets basically is blocked off from vehicle vehicular traffic, so you can kind of walk around their shops and imagine what was going on. If I was to give a review of the town, we'll just get the Charlesville part of it over with. The breweries were trash. All the microbreweries, like, they didn't have a great selection of beer. They tasted fine, I guess, except for the bar that Dave Matthews either worked at or got started at. Either got started at musically or worked there. I am under the impression that he worked there, but the people who currently work there think that he performed there and never worked there. So I don't know. But that bar was pretty cool. It was like dark, kind of like old school as far as like just kind of like a pub feel. The food was good from what I remember. And then the best part was upstairs. There was a pool table. There were pool tables. Oh, the main dr the main draw that I liked it as soon as we got there is it was the only bar that had uh a domestic beer, a non-craft trash beer. And because like I don't mind craft beer or whatever, but the whole thing was it was August. So like it was I wanted a refreshing beer at the time, and like they didn't have many of those. Like they didn't have like and none of these places had like a pilsner or like an American ale, right? Or American lager, it was all like Pulses, salads. Pulches are good for stuff, but yeah, the taste. I guess I'm not a big, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're bet yeah, they're fine, but like you gotta have listen. I'm not a I don't I don't own, I don't run a craft brewery, but you gotta start with a pilsner and an American lager, and then from that build from there.
SPEAKER_03:And take your do your own distinct take on them. Do your take on an American lager. But but I even I even think though. You mean just have Budweiser?
SPEAKER_01:Just have Budweiser. Craft Budweiser. Well, if you're a craft beer, you have but like I'm sure people know how to make Budweiser at this point or know how to make um Coors Banquet or you know, Miller Light or something. Get one of each of those down and then build up from there. I mean, whatever. But this place where Dave Matthews had is called Miller's. They had Paps Blue Ribbon and they were actually like one of the biggest sellers of plat Paps Blue Ribbon in the country. Um they've like bragged about that a lot in this upstairs where the pool tables were. And I can only imagine because it's like again, it's the only place where you can get like a domestic beer. So like that's all that anybody was drinking in there. I felt like you had a window.
SPEAKER_03:Everybody was drinking PB to get up there. We were sitting at the bar downstairs for a while because the upstairs room didn't open till eight. And then once it opened, crowds flooded in.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it was it was slammed pretty quickly, I feel like it was it was an interesting crowd to say the least, up there, but they played good tunes. You could smoke up there, which was awesome. I haven't been in a bar where you could smoke in in a long, long time. Um, and the bet I think the funniest part was they had signs. So you have everyone was and everybody was smoking in there. Like you definitely just go there to smoke and drink PBR. Like, I don't like they were smoking cigars, cigarettes, whatever, but there were some there were signs all over that said no vaping, which like I is absurd to me. I mean, I can only imagine they just don't want that type of person at a bar like this, which is awesome. What what scent is that? Blueberry?
SPEAKER_03:Get the hell out of here.
SPEAKER_01:Blue raspberry, super chill. So, anyway, the review, I think that's really it. We went to a really bad craft brewery on Friday night that was terrible. Like the beer wasn't really the beer was fine, but again, it didn't have a great selection. The pizza. I couldn't the pizza. So, like there was yeah, it was just like the food sucked. It wasn't a food place. Like this is a craft brewery that they only do beer, but they have to offer food, probably. But we were starving. I was starving.
SPEAKER_03:It's fair to say three young, fairly fair-toned guys walk in. I think they kind of had they called our number was we walked in. They were fair-toned? Like the politics of the place. I think we got I think we got profiled. Like they didn't want us there. They didn't want us there. You didn't want us ordered, you didn't want me to order that pizza, remember?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I knew that. You couldn't read the room. I knew right away. Like, I'm like, this isn't a place to get food. They had a little style pizza thing. I certainly wasn't going to order it, but John ordered it, and the guy did give him an attitude, and he I saw him do it. He just took it and put it into it's like frozen or whatever, and he put it into a pizza oven. Do you remember what kind of what what we got? Was it like margarita or like it wasn't? It wasn't but like it wasn't like just it was like they were trying to sell, like, I don't know. Threw it into like one of those like pizza ovens that you can get for your house, and uh it was disgusting. It was the worst. It was I worse than I don't know if I've ever had bad pizza. I mean, we've had some bad pizza in our hometown, John, but this pizza was like borderline inedible, inedible.
SPEAKER_03:It was like Elios.
SPEAKER_01:Worse. I like Elios. It was worse. It was so bad. I mean, I don't like Elios, but I'll eat Elios. The stuff was horrible. And then the pretzel, and you got a pretzel too. No dipping, no mustard, nothing, just like shitty, shitty pretzel. I wish I knew what that place was called. I mean, I guess we shouldn't talk shit on it, but I'll say this much. My only recommendation is if anybody goes on the social, I don't know what this place is called. Don't leave the downtown to go anywhere to drink. For one. Um, and two, go to Miller's. Just don't even waste your time anywhere else. Just go to Miller's. Food's good downstairs. And then there was there was good music we left before the live music started, but I think there's live music every day there. There's music outside.
SPEAKER_03:Outside, there's like busking, yeah, people out in the street.
SPEAKER_01:It's cool. It's a cool town. I don't think we did it right. Honestly, just go to Miller's. Okay, so that's it for Charlottesville. I don't know. Do you have anything else to say? To just Charlottesville. UVA was cool. We learned about those Laker Allen Poe.
SPEAKER_03:We learned about the app bozo going there for a semester.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, Laker Allen Poe went there. Um, this is the the Secret Society's Z Boys and the Imps. The Imps. And how about Otto War Out of Otto Warmbeer, the uh famed butt head who got who got busted in North Korea.
SPEAKER_03:The story goes he was put up by it by the Z Boys, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so like this the there's like these secret society. It sounds a very that poet society. I don't know, I don't know if it's lame. And they like I don't know, when we look it up, they're like, oh, they do what they van they do vandalism and uh charity or something, right?
SPEAKER_03:No, it's like it's like quirky mixchief and like charity, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And like charity, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So that's prank each other. Pranks and charity.
SPEAKER_01:But if you guys remember, I don't know if you guys remember Otto Wombier was the guy who went to North Korea and got caught stealing propaganda from the hotel he was staying at, and uh then he went to a he got sentenced to hard labor, and then um like a year later, a year a year later, North Korea's like, okay, you can have him back now, and they send him back in a coma and he died like two days later. Not funny, but interesting story.
SPEAKER_03:He was a student, he was a freshman at the University of Virginia, and he apparently is was saying that one of these clubs, one of these societies put him up to it. Basically, like go ahead and like get in. Like as a pratiation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03:To steal a sign in North Korea.
SPEAKER_01:But then, like, but then the Z Boys were like, uh, yeah, we don't need nah.
unknown:We don't know that guy.
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. The whole society thing looks so strange. It definitely looked like his dad could have been one. It's one of these, like, they're not fraternities, but it was like, yeah, secret society's like, oh, my father was a Z-boy and my great-grandfather was one of these things.
SPEAKER_01:You'll have to talk to see if we can find a somebody to see if it's actually cool or not. You know, I'd be curious, like the modern student, if it was if it's actually like cool to be in one of them. Or if it's like equivalent to like the kids who have lightsaber fights out on the quad at night in on college campuses.
SPEAKER_03:I just had a lightsaber fight last week. For Halloween.
SPEAKER_02:Are you serious? Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Oh cool. So like John said, Edgar Allan Poe. They were really obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe having gone there. Like there's Edgar Allan Poe swag all over the bookstore. It's weird.
SPEAKER_03:Bookstore was nice. Fine. Yeah, the guy's a bum. I don't know why all these cities seem to love this guy, but he seemed like flamed out of everything he did in his life. I mean, I guess he wrote The Raven. Maybe some of his stories were half decent, but that other one that was that other one that he wrote was good.
SPEAKER_01:The heartbeating one. What was that one?
SPEAKER_03:Telltale Heart.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
unknown:That was a good one.
SPEAKER_01:So anyway, so the so the main attraction was going to Monticello Um Highlands, which is where James Monroe lives, and then where did James Madison live? Montpelier. Montpelier.
SPEAKER_03:So we basically did it. So we got there on the Friday, and then we basically on Saturday we did it. We did two. So we did Monticello in the morning. Uh we were there at 9 a.m. part of the first tour group. And they kind of the way they do this is you drive in, it's like a theme park. Seriously, the parking. I think that was my first words. Uh there was parking everywhere, and it wasn't very crowded when we got there. Um, so we got out, go through like metal detectors, and it's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_01:And then you go it is, it does, yeah. It's a little bit more official than just like showing up to uh you know, Yorktown or whatever.
SPEAKER_03:So you go through, you walk up these stairs to get picked up by a bus, which will then basically take you up to the house itself and to the grounds. You can snap a picture of a life-size statue with Thomas Jefferson, which I did. Uh, we got in, and then yeah, you get up there.
SPEAKER_01:You know what's crazy about the picture that I took of John? Um, he stood next to this statue, and his stance was exactly the same as how Thomas Jefferson is standing. Like your right foot was point, like the his feet were planted exactly the same, and it was just a coincidence.
SPEAKER_03:Like he's living through me.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe. Or maybe it says that Thomas Jefferson was a bozo.
SPEAKER_03:Um so we get up there.
SPEAKER_01:Wame. Were you trying to find a way to add that into the show to just learn about 6-7?
SPEAKER_03:I'm not that cool.
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_04:That was pathetic.
SPEAKER_03:Uh so you get up there to the top of the hill, and they have like cardboard cave cutouts of the stump of slaves working there. Weren't there like what?
SPEAKER_04:No. That's not true.
SPEAKER_03:No, they drive up. There was like I don't know. No, silhouette things, weren't there?
SPEAKER_04:No. Crap.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe. Maybe you were just like having a nightmare as you were driving up picturing it. I mean, unless I missed it, I definitely don't remember that at all.
SPEAKER_03:Anyway, you get to the top, you see one building, and they basically start, then the circus, then the you know the ride show begins. They basically circle you into these different like tour groups. And you're like, what time are you here? Oh, 9 a.m., 9 15? Okay, go here. They shovel you in with these different groups. So we went in, and as you're walking up, you're getting the whole backstory from the tour guide, and basically you come to find out that Thomas Jefferson wanted it to look kind of modest, so that's why he didn't want it to be multiple stories high. So this is fans.
SPEAKER_01:This is the They started as as soon as we got in there, they started making Thomas Jefferson seem like a fing idiot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. They laid it, they laid it down pretty hard.
SPEAKER_01:Like literally, the first things out of their mouth are basically like, yeah, you know Thomas Jefferson, he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he sure didn't live up to his ideals, did he? Now, with all men are created. Like, as like literally, I think it might have been pre-recorded on what they played in the bus on the way up there. They were so quick to tell you that he was a f head immediately.
SPEAKER_03:Even though he designed the whole house. He was an amateur architect. I think they made a point to say that he was an amateur architect because he designed the home himself.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah. He like designed it like three different times. It went through a couple iterations, but but anyway, John, talk about the the one-story thing.
SPEAKER_03:It was the look you remember the house. They basically said he they he wanted it to look more modest, and he didn't want to guess maybe give the impression of like royalty, like kind of being, I guess, garish and overly kind of verbose. Is that the right word? Basically, just like kind of look crazy, but we're we gauge like we just looked at this this house, it's massive. He don't want to be like a mansion base. It's like this is the largest one-story house I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_01:And it's on the top of a f mountain in like the most beautiful country of like staring. In like the blue mountain miles and miles and miles.
SPEAKER_03:I just want it to be modest. Modest take.
SPEAKER_01:So the way that he designed it was like the windows of the second floor are like only at the ground level. So like the windows of the house like span both, they're all one unit of windows, but they span from the first floor to like the bottom portion of the second floor. So you get the natural light on the second floor, but it doesn't. Um but you can't see if you can't tell from the outside.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So we go in, which was pretty cool. Yeah. So we go in, you get taken into like a f uh uh an entry walkway. Foyer foyer where it's kind of he met guests, and it's kind of the most like you know, captivating part of the room. Is this the one?
SPEAKER_01:Is this was this the place where he had all the Lewis and Clark stuff? Is that the Lewis and Clark stuff tour?
SPEAKER_03:Yep, all the Lewis and Clark stuff. We can just kind of go over the quick highlights in this. So in this one room, you had different kind of things to his expl to the explorations, Lewis and Clark, because he was the president when that happened. Uh one cool thing in that room was basically uh, you know, obviously there's no calendars back then. He basically had this weight and pulley system going on in the corner where was it every day of the week week? Yeah, it was like a grandfather clock. Yeah, and every day the the weight would drop and tell you what day of the week it was. That was cool. But the trippiest thing in this whole room was this like serious Alice in Wonderland mirror that he had.
SPEAKER_01:We were the only ones that looked at it too. It was wild. I was like walking, it was like uh it was like convex, it was like convex, I guess, but it was like I've never looked into a mirror like this in my life. Yeah, it was like really trippy, and uh I don't even remember now like what was trippy about it, but I remember looking at it. It's like whoa, I was like, I brought you guys over. I'm like, you're looking into this mirror, and then I think there was somebody in the tour guys who was like, yeah, that was a gift or something. I'm like, what's up with it? They're like, it's like looking in the back of a spoon. I'm like, I never looked into a fing spoon like that before in my life.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so that was crazy, and then from there on we kind of just proceeded to Mac Matt just getting kind of pushed out of a web out of the way, looking trying to look at book collections and other things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he had like they have like his book like so his book collection got donated to the Library of Congress after the Library of Congress burned down during the War of 1812. Yeah, so he donated his book collection, but they still had a couple original parts of his book, like Don Quixote. I think they had the original Don Quixote, his original Don Quixote. So we were walking through and we were able to see the book. Um, and I was like been over looking at it, and then the most gigantic person I've ever spin around pushed me out of the way. So we have photo evidence. We have photo evidence fans if you want to see that too. We all and uh we also there was a there was a baby crying the whole time. That was really nice, a nice touch with like a family that was either like they were either Mexican or Native American. I couldn't really tell. Not to be, not that I'm care, but I thought they were Native American the whole time.
SPEAKER_03:And I think I guess you say that in kind of like a why were you why are you here kind of what are you getting?
SPEAKER_01:No, I was just thinking about is like I wonder if they take the tour and everybody's talking about slavery and how they've been treated so poorly and no one and like Al, like, oh no men's created all men aren't created equal, but the slavery, but they don't say like, oh yeah, all men are created equal, except we pushed all the Indians out of their own land and like shoved them into one corner of the country and whatever. Like so, like I I it was a very awkward as I thought that they were Native Americans. Okay, I was it was very awkward that I felt like they were like these f people. We can't catch a brick.
SPEAKER_03:Now we know why we've been disabled. Tiptoeing around, tiptoeing around. It's after dark, dude. We were really just walking stomping through it. So um Saw where he died on July 4th, 1826. Yes.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:He was basically upright. Right? His bed was weird. His bed was basically cut out into a wall. And they said he wanted more room. And every morning he returned when he got woke up, he put his feet in ice water, right? I don't remember that part. He had ice, like ice water.
SPEAKER_01:There was something with his bed. His bed was super short because they he sat up to sleep, I think.
SPEAKER_03:You have experience with that. Could you would you recommend would you recommend it?
SPEAKER_01:No. No. No. Um, and then what else? I got it's kind of his boots. Oh, oh, John, now let's not forget. You tried to you pulled a the old classic John move at a museum and tried to outsmart the poor guy.
SPEAKER_03:I don't recall exactly.
SPEAKER_01:So if you fans remember, if you fans remember, if you're fan, if you fans, if you remember, um when we went to the Teduz Kusciusko museum, um, we discussed a certain fur coat. Well, is it a fur coat? Is that what it is? Or yes. Is that what it is? That's right. Fur coat that was given to Teduz Kusciusko from Prince Alexander.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, uh Emperor Alexander uh Emperor Paul before Alexander Russian Emperor.
SPEAKER_01:The they were they basically like get out of the country, here's some money, here's a fur coat, leave from Poland. Well, after he was after he was captured in the Polish Revolution, whatever. That was gifted from Taduz Kusciusko to Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson is wearing that in his presidential portrait, or that's that's one of the famous ones, and he's wearing it in the Jefferson Memorial.
SPEAKER_03:He's wearing it as he's sitting on the thing, you sure? Let me see.
SPEAKER_01:In any case, maybe it's not wearing it. So he's talking, and as soon as John um, as soon as as soon as like, you know, we're there, and the whole time John's like they're not gonna say anything about Taduz Kushusko. Because as you remember, they were we we understand that Thomas Jefferson and Taduz Kushusko were were friendly at the time, and Thomas Jefferson helped him get out of the country and blah blah. So we thought maybe they would have talked to him about it, but of course they didn't. So, you know, when they at the point in the at the point in the uh tour when they were really laying it on about how much of a shit had Thomas. Jefferson is when they start talking about how he died with no money and he died in debt and his family had to take care of it because he was a bum. Um, you know, because of you know, for whatever reason, um, they had to auction off his house, Monticello, and I forget how much it got sold for pretty cheap, but of course, John had to bring up I said what about the fur coat coat where'd it go? And the guide gave me some he just said, like, oh yeah, it must have gotten auctioned off with the other stuff or something. Like he didn't they didn't know where it is.
SPEAKER_03:He didn't know, he never even heard of the guy. Even though there was a picture there was a picture of Tedusco Chusco in the dining area in the dining room.
SPEAKER_01:There was, yes.
SPEAKER_03:Tiny little picture.
SPEAKER_01:Tiny little picture, not called out in the tour. And then as we were leaving, when we finished the tour, we were going outside. Um, John brought up brought him up again. And I forget what exactly it was about the freeing of the slaves.
SPEAKER_03:That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because Kaciusko had it in his will that he specifically wanted the money that was due to him from his fighting in the American Revolution, his back pay. He basically wanted that money to go for free Thomas Shreve. Specifically his slaves, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And the guy gave you some nonsense saying, Oh, well, you know, uh families and you know, it's it's hard to I forget what your question was exactly, but the guy's like, yeah, you know, some families and you know, executing will, yeah, yeah. Because wasn't there like there was a bunch of contention with his will anyway, or something?
SPEAKER_03:Cachusco's will.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, with Cachusko, yeah, right, that's true.
SPEAKER_03:That kind of lingered until like the 1830s.
SPEAKER_01:He didn't have it anyway. The tour guide was fine, but he didn't have an answer for that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then um, and then like you get out, so then you you go through the house and then you leave into the backyard, which was like for how much did we pay per ticket?
SPEAKER_03:40 something was that 40 something?
SPEAKER_01:Something like that. It was expensive. For us to pay forty-some dollars to go see some guy's house, this backyard was maintained like absolute ass. Do you remember that? Yeah, it was all muddied. It was all muddy, there was it wasn't nice grass. I couldn't believe how bad how poorly the lawn was.
SPEAKER_03:Well, maybe they wanted it to look like Thomas Jefferson in his last days or when his family took over the took over the shop. Maybe everything all the debtors come, all the creditors coming out of the woodwork and don't have enough time to sell.
SPEAKER_01:They preserved the house, which uh is important and stuff, but uh would have been nice to see a nice, nicely cut.
SPEAKER_03:I think the lasting impression they want you to walk away from Monticello with is thinking the guy didn't take care of things, and they did a very good job of that. Like his family, his progeny, is his you know. Yeah. So that's we go through there. We went walked around the slave quarter. They had not the slave quarter. Did they have that?
SPEAKER_01:They had the say they had the slave quarters, they had a weird bench that was like, oh, sit here and think about how bad slavery was.
SPEAKER_04:Makes you wonder, huh? What did we do? They did. Remember that? I have a picture of me sitting on that thing.
SPEAKER_03:And what was the one, oh, but that we did learn the one story with Slip. The one story that because we thought we were gonna get beat over the head with Sally Hemings stuff, because that's a big thing. Like we did, we did, but we could have gotten beaten over the head more than the other thing.
SPEAKER_01:Again, it was like one of the first things they brought up, like like when when you first meet and you get put into your groups, the lady, the intro lady, not even our tour guy, but the intro lady, she's like, Yeah, you know, you'll see Tomonatello, then you'll see where Sally Hemmings live. Yeah. Anyway, she was a big deal.
SPEAKER_03:So, what was it though with her brother? That was about the you know what, you can try to get away from it, but I think our fans need to know this.
SPEAKER_01:This is sad. This is that story. Do you remember the story, or do you want me to remind you? Remind me, I'll come in as I. So the story goes, Sally Hemmings came to Sally Hemmings came when when when Thomas Jefferson was assigned to be in France for whatever, was he like the ambassador of France or whatever they called it back then? Yeah, he was over there. Sally Hemings went with him, and Sally Hemings being a slave and going to France, somehow you're automatically free.
SPEAKER_03:Well, France didn't allow slavery.
SPEAKER_01:France didn't allow slavery because she was playing as I'm free because I'm she could have left and he would have had, yeah, and like she wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. She told Thomas Jefferson, like I and Sally, so by backstory, if nobody knows Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson's uh slave who he later developed a relation with. Obviously, he never got married, but he had children with. Um, so she at this point they're like because Thomas Jefferson's wife died like shortly before the declaration of independence was written.
SPEAKER_03:Around the 1770s. Yeah, it was sometime.
SPEAKER_01:He lived like while all this nonsense was going on, his wife died. So after his wife died, he started like shacking up with this woman who was apparently very hot for that as so many ways that they could explain it. Um so she went to so she went to France with him, and she told him, like, listen, I'll stay your slave, but in order to in order for me to remain your slave, I want you to free my brother who's your slave, who was his personal chef.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. But then Jefferson was paying for him to get, he was basically also covering the cost of training James.
SPEAKER_01:He was getting trained to be a chef. I forget. He was being he was being trained in France to be cut to for being a chef so he could be a better chef. Thomas Jefferson's just he's just tossing money all over the place. Ah, yeah, learn how to be a friend. Like he doesn't care about money at this point, which you later learn he died broke. So then this brother learned how to be a chef. Then Sally Heming said, I will not leave you if you free my brother who's your chef. So then Thomas Jefferson said, Fine, I will I will free your brother who's my chef, but he needs to find somebody to replace him to be my chef, my slave chef, which was agreed to. Turns out this guy chose his brother to replace him to be his chef. So, which was accepted. So now, I mean, one of them got freed, but the brother took over, and then like after some circumstances, I think it's John Hemmings, I think John's right is the one that got freed. He wound up in in Baltimore for a little bit, and then he ended up committing suicide like five years after he was freed. Because uh, yeah, I mean, it's like probably life was pretty pretty tough for these people if they were freed.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, it wasn't just a job waiting for you, I wouldn't I would imagine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Which is sad. But like that's a crazy story. It's like, oh okay, yeah, sure, I'll free him, but give me your other brother. Well, like that really solved it.
SPEAKER_03:I guess for me, it wasn't that it was like I was like, it was just the whole story of the freedom and this and that, and it's like, well, this person's given freedom. Here's a very intimate story of somebody's life who got it, and within five years they'd killed themselves after acquiring their freedom. It's just kind of tragic. And it's like it for me, it kind of you wanted to question, okay. Well, obviously slavery is abhorrent. We're gonna get no. I'm saying you can get right. I'm just saying, like I don't want to get I listen. I I have my personal email address linked. The case is pending. I know the case is pending.
SPEAKER_01:I have my personal, I now have my personal email address linked. I should have. I didn't have time. All right, so we gotta watch it. But I thought it was. John, to your point, let me try to word it. Let me try to word it better of what you're trying to say. Is you you think of all these stories of of slaves being freed, and they're always like great stories. Like, oh, he was freed and his life was better. And this was one circumstance where it happened and it was a sad outcome. And like maybe he would have been, I mean, you know, I don't want to say he would have been better off, but like, you know, it's just a sad it's a negative, it's it's a negative story based on being freed. And they told the entire story, like in the tour. I think we got the story, yeah, and they left out that part. We had to read that ourselves.
SPEAKER_03:Because we I would have someone would have asked a question, maybe not us, but somebody online why did he why did he do that if he was free? I would have been the first thing. He's free.
SPEAKER_01:You're leaving yourself up to a question of like, and then how do they answer that question? Because it was just as bad, because of the same reason of like being a free black man doesn't necessarily mean that you're given the same freedoms as everybody else, even though Thomas Jefferson. I've I wish we I remembered the f they kept saying the same phrase over and over again. Like they didn't live up to his own principles, they didn't live up to his ideals, yeah. So Thomas Jefferson didn't live up to his ideals. Not everyone is created, you know, that all men are created equal. So and they could have tied it in that way, but so let's get off the subject of slavery. But yeah, so we did the same thing.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, we're going to Madison's house. What are you talking about? We went to two other plantation homes.
SPEAKER_01:We can't do that. Okay, right. Listen, I know, but let's get off of the Jefferson. So then just like so we're done that, then we we leave and we're trying to find we we walk, we don't take the bus back down to the to the um to the visitor center. We actually walk down because we wanted to walk by the the grave site of Thomas Jefferson. Yep. And we walked by it and they were having a funeral for for someone of his family. Somehow, if you have if you have lineage, distant relative, you can still be buried in this uh his thing. But we went to look at Thomas Jefferson, and there was this like random dude like in there, just like answering questions. We're like, oh, do you work here? He's like, nah, nah. I'm just uh helping out here uh with the funeral. And we're like, okay. I'm like, well, and then we're like asking him questions, and like he didn't have any answers. It was pretty funny. I don't remember the details of that. It was kind of like it was a ghost.
SPEAKER_03:And the pillar that was there to him was erected in the obelisk. The obelisk. That wasn't that was put there in the 1880s. I think Chester Arthur might have been the president when that was built, because the original headstone had basically been jacked over the years. Yeah, people were taking pieces of it as and the last remaining piece that they're aware of is in St. Louis now. It was ship sent out to St. Louis. I think so. Because that's where the expedition, the Lewis and Clark expedition, had kicked off. That was interesting. Yeah, he's like his mother's there, his other relations are there. That was nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like if his best friend was there, that was kind of nice. It was a nice little story. Something like his his best friend like died, and he's like, I want to be buried next to him. I think that was like something that I remember.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We got down, we kept walking. It wasn't very far. I mean, we could have walked up to the city. No, it wasn't far.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but so we go back to the visitor center, we get back down, and we had there was a museum that was pretty cool, some like old surveying equipment that was cool. Um, they actually had we've we learned that he every day he wrote down the weather every single the weather in the morning and the weather in the afternoon at Monticello every single day. I was like, what the hell? He didn't have it, like he didn't have anything else better to do. Every single day he wrote in that thing. Remember that?
SPEAKER_03:I remember I had you you in stitches too at one point. We talked about this before, and like you couldn't remember, I'm sure. It was something you and Seth were you and Mr. were both laughing. I don't remember. But also, some guy came up at me. We're we were looking at because they had an iteration of like the different iterations. Yeah, they had like the Monticello one or two. Some guy came up at me. I don't know what he was talking like.
SPEAKER_01:I was just talking to you, and then he started Yeah, he he butt he bed buttons in like just a typical like historical museum experience. Yeah, a little bit chiming in. You just you you you just stick to the authority figures to attack them, you know. You don't you don't attack the uh clubs patrons? Um then that was pretty I mean I don't know, I don't remember much else from that. Um then we went to eat dinner or eat lunch at some like old school tavern down the hill from from him. What was that place called?
SPEAKER_03:Michi.
SPEAKER_01:Michi.
SPEAKER_03:Michi Tavern, is that what it is like it was yeah, it was diner stuff. It was uh a la carte. Is it a la carte?
SPEAKER_01:It was cool. It wasn't a la carte, it was like it was like a buffet. And you could so John and I have a very bad experience, and some people might may know of a of a buffet buffet that we went to on a casino cruise in when we were 18, where it was it was uh marketed as a buffet, so we went and got one plate full of stuff, and then we went to get more. They said, Oh, this is just a buffet, it's not an all-you-can-eat buffet. So we went starving, and um we I was very worried that we were gonna have the same situation here because when you walk in, it's very old school. You go in, you wait in line, they serve you, but they kept saying, like, we'll serve like you get your first and then any seconds we'll serve you. But I didn't trust that. So I loaded my plate up with all the entrees. It was like chicken, it was mostly chicken, right?
SPEAKER_03:Fried chicken was their big thing. Uh what else? I'm looking at the pictures here. I thought the sides were good too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was like southern, it was just like southern food.
SPEAKER_03:Pork. Pulled pork. Pulled pork that was really good. Oh, yeah, did they? Biscuits, beets, looks like. I think those were good. Gestacha soup is gross. Cornbread, green beans, yeah. Super southern. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it was southern food. It was it was good, but so I went through and then, you know, then of course, so we sit down, and um then of course they do have like waiters walking around saying, like, hey, you know, they they greet you. So you find a seat, and then the waiters come up and they say, like, hey, you know, enjoy and you know, anything you need, let me know. I'll get you seconds or whatever. So, of course, this poor old man was working there, and uh, an old guy, it was like the middle of the day on a Saturday, and this old picture, he's on the he's on the website. I remember I saw him. He's like they get him wearing a lame ass outfit. Like it's like one of those jobs that you feel bad for anybody having, kind of, you know, like wow, that sucks. So there's this old guy, and John just got to the assumption because of how shitty the job was that nobody that old would possibly actually work there. So if he's that old, he must owe he must own the place. Like, I mean, you're a glorified bus boy, you're not even a waiter. A bus boy might be run a favor every so often. So the guy walking around in John Nas and oh, so do you own the place?
SPEAKER_02:I did.
SPEAKER_03:Then immediately his demeanor was like, he was kind of happy beforehand, and then he was like, No, no. I wish. I wish sure. I'd be in a much better spot in my life if I did. So I was pretty bad. So I told myself that he was retired, he doesn't need to worry about money, he's still just doing this for fun. Kind of like a wah wah.
SPEAKER_01:But then I didn't he say like I've been working here for like 30 years or something.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe he's got a good retirement.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I I started working here when I was a junior in high school and I just never left.
SPEAKER_03:Here he is. His picture's on the website too. So I mean that's why I was thinking like, oh, this guy's probably owns the place. He just so he must have like an approach. Yeah, anyway. He's um tells the kids all he knows.
SPEAKER_01:It was good. So then So it was good, it was fine. We were killing time because we thought we had to make we had an appointment at Highlands, a timed appointment, but we thought we had to be there at a certain time, like a time ticket. Two o'clock, I believe. So we were kind of in a rust, so we we hung around for a little bit and then we we scooted up to um James Matt no James Monrose Highland, which is like up the street from Monticello. You want to take this one?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So you remember the scene? We're driving. It's very beautiful, very scenic area, Blue Ridge Mountains.
SPEAKER_01:And first of all, let me let me let me hold on, sorry, I don't I don't mean to interrupt because I know I do that a lot. John when going into it, John kept I just want to let the fans know. Going into it, John kept saying, I think we're gonna be blown away by Highlands. I think Highlands is gonna be the the sneaker, the sneaky, the sneaker. Yeah, like the sneaky highlight. This is gonna be the highlight. Yeah, we think you think Monticello, but no, it's gonna be it's gonna be Highlands. So go ahead.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I was so this Highlands, it was being managed by the College of William and Mary. First warning sign. But anyway, so we go from Michi's Tavern, and it was about a 10-minute drive and some kind of backwinding roads. Really nice. Uh drive, there's a signage as you come as you come in, and you can see past the sign, it's probably like a mile of like wooded trees and overhang, like this trees kind of guiding your way. And so it really builds this anticipation. You're you know, driving up this long, you know, driveway, and eventually you can see it.
SPEAKER_01:I think we kept saying that we had a didn't we keep making some illusion, like, oh, uh, I think they got a little bit of a wee wee measuring contest here or something, or isn't it? Wasn't there something something about like, oh, James Monroe is a little bit of a like he was kind of had a bigger wee wee because of it? He was like he was the big the big dick in town, basically.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, like it was given this impression that like because it was kind of hidden too, it was off the main road. And higher in elevation than than Monticello. Higher in elevation. I'm looking on the Google maps right here. I see it, James Monrose Highland, make your reservation today. So it's like it's a big secret, you know. It's like almost it looks like this, you know, it's a must-see thing, right? So we turn off the road and we're winding up this you know long way, and we get there, we get towards a parking lot, and we still can't see a home. And I look off to my right and I make a joke to Matt and Mr. R, and I say, Ha, what if that like sh it's a shed? It's a it's literally a shed. I'm like, ha ha ha, what if that's the house right there? And they're like, ah, that'd be really funny, ha ha ha. Anyway, so we park and they have a visitor center, a gift shop, really, with the with a desk. But you walk in, there is a there's a lady there.
SPEAKER_01:Remember her? Yeah, she was like, Oh, she was yeah, she was like she didn't give us a tip.
SPEAKER_03:She kind of was like, seemed like badass. She was like, no nonsense. Yeah, she was just like a tough, yeah, just like cool, pretty, kind of pretty. Pretty. We were like, Yeah, we're here for a two o'clock. She's kind of like, I don't care. Do what you want to do, do what you want.
SPEAKER_01:And then John's like, John's like, yeah, I bought tickets online whatever. They're like, what? Like it was immediate weird vibes from this place.
SPEAKER_03:She's like, You can go whenever you want. And we were like, that was another tell. Just go ahead. It's really not a big deal. And that was foreshadowing. So we go.
SPEAKER_01:So we walk out. Well, first of all, though, so she gives us a map. She's like, You want a map? You want you want me to show like you want a map? We got a tour going. Oh, there was a tour scheduled or something. So she's like, You can go out now, and like, you know, the tour meets here or whatever. Okay. So she's like, You here's a map. I'll show you around. So, like, she takes the map out, and there's the house, and there's a map of the whole place, and there's a house shown there. And then she's like, Okay, so you want to go here, make this left, and then you can walk right up to the to the home. Um, here you'll you'll pass by this. This is a tree that uh from from Monroe, the Monroe era, the original from the Monroe era, which immediately I was like, so what?
SPEAKER_03:This is here, yeah. This is we're came for his house. We came for his house.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. Oh, so there's a tree that was here when he lived here. Like, big deal, we're here for the house.
SPEAKER_03:And so we're wandering, we see us there's there's like a kind of a maze-looking thing we're walking through. There's a big statue of him, and we make another big wee-wee joke as we see his statue. I get a picture next to it. Um, he looks cool. Like, no, nah. He's like standing. We're pretty excited at this point. Yeah, we're really pumped. Like, wow, this is cool. The cool atmosphere, shrubbery, everything's kind of leading into something. Great. And so, like, we end up walking, we don't go straight to where we didn't follow her direction. We went the right, we went the wrong way. We walked under like a tent, which like was like, oh, that they must put weddings on here too. Oh, cool. Like, you can like see the house, and then you can have a wedding here too. All you can just block the whole place up. That'd be awesome. This place looks really sweet. Mind you, we still haven't seen the house yet. So we're walking under this tent. We eventually come out the other side.
SPEAKER_01:I don't remember that, but I think you're making the no, there was a tent.
SPEAKER_03:There was a there was a there was a it was a tent. And so we walk under that. Whatever. We come out the other side.
SPEAKER_01:There and there was no tent.
SPEAKER_03:Go ahead. And then we see in front, so there is a house, there is a building, there is a yellow building with uh what is this?
SPEAKER_01:Initially, my thought was this house doesn't look like it's from the 1700s.
SPEAKER_03:The house that we saw looked earliest 1850s, you'd say. Yeah, early, absolute earliest. So we see that, but behind it there's some like white structure, and that looked a little older, but we weren't sure what was going on. We were a little confused. And so in front of the yellow house, there was basically um a few trees, and basically these, you know, a couple a rectangle, you'd say it's laid out like an archaeology dig.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, an archaeology dick.
SPEAKER_03:Like they're looking for something, and there's basically a big pile of dirt there, big pile of dirt, and there's like a rectangle, like a stone rectangle encasing it all in, kind of like, and so you can walk in there, and so meanwhile, uh Mr. R and I are kind of standing off on the side, and we're trying to get R. I'm lagging back.
SPEAKER_01:I'm lagging behind a little bit, I think.
SPEAKER_03:Matt's dragging a little bit, but he so Matt's walking in this rectangle, and I and Mr. R, Mr. R and I, we're like reading starting to just read the brochure. We're and as I'm reading it, I'm looking at Mr. R, and he's like, I think we're we're both coming to a conclusion that's like, wait a minute, what's going on here? And then without fail, I look up and I just hear Matt, he's like, Wait, what?
SPEAKER_04:I'm like, what the f is this?
SPEAKER_03:So fans. Spoiler alert, James Monroe's Highland does not exist. It burnt down in 1820, and they have an archaeological dig on the site where they think it was.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and they have it. And like this was something recently discovered. So, like, ten years ago, we would have gone there and we would have thought that what the house that we were seeing. The guest house was it? The guest house. The guest house.
SPEAKER_03:So the part that was in the structure we thought was the house, but turns out that was a guest house that was a later edition. And then this yellow house from the 1850s looking house was built by a whole different family, not the Munrose. The Munroes had sold out after their house burnt down in the 1820s.
SPEAKER_01:No, I don't think so. I think they sold the house and the house burned down after they sold it. Oh I don't think it burned while they were in it.
SPEAKER_03:Oh. It was in the 1820s, it burnt down in the 1820s.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think he moved out of there like fairly soon after his presidency. Yeah. Well, we wouldn't know more, but to fast forward a little bit, then inside the house, they they made the house into a museum. Yeah. And the museum, you learn jack shit about James Monroe's slave.
SPEAKER_03:Absolute nothing. You found out that he owned slaves. That does come up. That is mentioned.
SPEAKER_01:The slavery, it's slavery, it's so into slavery for this, and um literally learned very little about James. Like, I I didn't went into it not really knowing that much about James Monroe. And I think we left and we thought, I think I said to Tom, like, I think I might know less now.
SPEAKER_03:We did learn, though, that James Madison liked staying. Apparently, James Madison preferred staying at James Monroe. He thought Monticello was a little too snooty.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which was funny because Thomas Jefferson, the amateur architect he is, must not have accomplished what he was looking for. They said it, they said it something. They had the phrase, like you could like he felt like he could, you know, take his shoes off more. So like some phrase of like kick back more with Madison.
SPEAKER_03:So it's also funny because we'll get to where James Madison was living. It's interesting that he needed maybe that's why he needed a place to kind of kick back. But anyway, so yeah, we're cruising around this museum, and then we saw that there was that quote, and there's like art, there are some artifacts and this, that, and the other, but I learned that it's just so dumbfounded that we're at a place that the house doesn't exist because the marketing I was so if you knew that the house burned down, nobody would go to that fing place.
SPEAKER_01:Nobody would go.
SPEAKER_03:He actually has he has a proper museum dedicated to him in Fredericksburg that they took his law offices and they made it into a James Monroe museum. And I think that is if you want to learn about his life and all the stuff he did, like that's the place to go. If you want to get shisted out of$25 by College of William and Mary.
SPEAKER_01:It was cheap. It was cheap.
SPEAKER_03:When you're out seeing Monticello, obviously you're not coming out here just to go to this place, it's obviously going after the Monticello crowd and and and riding those coattails. So for sure. Good on you, College of William and Mary.
SPEAKER_01:Which James Monroe probably did himself. So did himself. I mean, it sucked in there. It sucked. And then the best part.
SPEAKER_03:We walk out, so we need to catch a breath. We have we walk out the front door of this of the brand of the yellow house, because that's I guess the supposed to be the official entrance. We walk out, and we there's a bench there on there's a bench, you can sit down, and we just need to take five. We just need to you know catch our breath. Because like we don't know, we just walk through, we we feel like we all got hoodwinked into this thing. And we're sitting on this bench, and we at this point there is an official tour going on, starting and with a total choot running this thing.
SPEAKER_01:Like, like Americ would give uh the uh tour guide from the American American Revolution Museum like a run for his money.
SPEAKER_03:So, how many were in the tour? Probably like 10 people.
SPEAKER_01:There were a decent amount of people, honestly.
SPEAKER_03:Different ethnic different group. I mean, I think there were different different culture, different they weren't all American. They were definitely like it was an eclectic group.
SPEAKER_01:Well, like we were our initial plan was to go on the tour.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like our initial plan was to go there, but then we're like, all right, we'll just we'll kill some time beforehand. So, but but by the time we're on this on the porch, we're like, we probably saw everything for one, and two, it's like I have no interest in going on this tour. There's nothing to tour.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right. So we thought, and then we saw that, and then this happened. So we're sitting there, and this this young kid, he's what, probably 25? 25. Probably William.
SPEAKER_01:William and Mary's intern, probably a William and Mary history student. Intern here. Yeah. So we're sitting cut it, probably couldn't cut it at uh Williamsburg. They sent him over. If you can't cut it at Williamsburg, they sent you over to get your earn your keep here.
SPEAKER_03:You gotta prove yourself. It's proving ground.
SPEAKER_01:So we're sitting there all the time. He went from hoeing the tobacco fields to giving tours of the violin.
SPEAKER_03:So we're sitting here, and he's got 10 people, and he's like starting his thing up. So he's like, he's like basically what it's one of these like situations, like, okay, everyone, I want you to close your eyes and take yourself. Imagine it's 1820, and you're here at the home of James Madison, and you're gonna see. And so let's begin. We first walk to the door, and he basically kind of looks like a butler. Imagine like an 1820s butler, like super properly dressed, has like a certain strut and a walk. So he basically does like an about two-point, like a three-point kick-up walk, like military, like think of like military dress turn sort of thing. John, you're not setting it up right.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know how to what sorry. What he said was he's standing in front of in front of us, in front of the entrance to this house that you may you must think is the house of James Monroe. Right.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And he asked the he asked the crowd, he says, he says, well, hold on, let me knock on the door first to make sure there's no private tours going on. Yes. And then and then he does the about face turn and like fakes out the whole so like the he says that and the whole the the the premise is the whole the tour the the people in the tour are gonna assume that he's gonna go to the house, but instead he about faces turns to the nothingness of the of the archaeology, and then he go he proceeds to go knock knock knock, anybody in here? And walks in, and then he turns to the crowd with like a shoulder shrug, like this is it.
SPEAKER_03:As you can tell, the house is not here. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_04:I looked at the base for the$25.
SPEAKER_03:They call that the old Jimmy M fake out. I think some of the ladies in the group were like, oh, this is interesting. I don't know. I looked at faces and I was like, was nobody pissed? Like I tried looking around seeing like confusion.
SPEAKER_01:I would have been so angry if we like waited for the tour.
SPEAKER_03:Waited like 40 minutes. Yeah, we were there for some time before they got to do got to going with it. It would have been hilarious, though. I mean, that I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:I would have definitely said something. I just really know what my my vocal reaction would have been if this is how we were told. Hey, this bozo.
SPEAKER_03:Pretty funny. It was funny. I mean pretty funny. The guest house was kind of modeled, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:There was the guest house. I think the guest house was original. They don't they're not really sure.
SPEAKER_03:The guest house was original. I got a picture of the donkey. There's this little like stable house thing. Yeah, there's like a donkey's the donkey sticking out. It's so sad. So sad.
SPEAKER_01:The donkey looked so sad. I don't know what it was doing there. Um, but this donkey, it just was like looking at us, like, please come kill me.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. Looks like he had the same face five years ago when this picture was taken that I'm looking at.
SPEAKER_01:So I mean that's that's Highland.
SPEAKER_03:So then we proceeded to keep sending pictures back and forth using ChatGPT of Matt basically shrugging his shoulders, like, oh, I guess I'm here in Highland. And like funny puns about how Thomas Jefferson was making fun of James Monroe as his house burnt down, that kind of stuff. You know, just it was like fun.
SPEAKER_01:It opened, it was good we went because it it brought some good, some good banter, but then that's so we left Highland.
SPEAKER_03:We were like dumbfounded. The gift shop was great, bought a couple of drinks, hightailed out of there. Yeah, it's true, yeah. And then we spent our night, that's when we had spent the night in Chancellorsville, went downtown. That's when we went to Miller's and did all that. Charlottesville. Charlottesville. So it kind of saved that kind of saved the saved the day a little bit. It was pretty though. I will say, like the landscape in the area was pretty. The view from Monticello was probably nicer, but it's awesome, but it was fun.
SPEAKER_01:It was a good day. It was fun. Highlands was just bullshit. And we and we did a little bit more of a tour of UVA and went to the Rotunda, which is the library that he that he did.
SPEAKER_03:There's not much to say about it. It was cool. But he designed the rotunda, yeah. He and he was a Thomas Jefferson is able to see the rotunda from his from Monticello. He made a point of doing that. And it was kind of cool. They had like the living quarters kind of walking down.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like they had the original, the original structure is kind of cool how it was designed. The original thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So then, yeah, so we had that night in Chancellor, then we went back. And then Charlottesville. I keep saying Chancellor. Charlotte's. We drove through Charlotte Chancellor'sville on the way back. Anyway, we so Sunday we were coming home, and it worked just so worked out that we would be passing by our third stop, that third and final stop on the tour, and that was James Madison's Montpierre Montpelier.
SPEAKER_01:And James Madison who wrote the Constitution. That's or the father of the Constitution. That's how he's known. That's how some describe him. He penned the Constitution.
SPEAKER_03:Penn the Constitution. Oh, he didn't? Did not. Who penned it? He's the father of the Virgin. He kind of came up with the Virginia plan. Which was not. Who penned the Constitution? All the men that everyone that was at the Who wrote it physically? Different people. Not him. He was like the note taker there. He was like up front and center taking all the notes.
SPEAKER_01:Final physical Governor Mor Govern Governor Morris wrote the final draft of the Constitution. I see Jacob Shalis.
SPEAKER_03:Well, the physic final physical document.
SPEAKER_01:I can only assume you're using ChatGPT. You lazy piece of the case.
SPEAKER_03:However, the content and language were primarily drafted by Governor Morris, who was the main author on the committee of style. Many delegates contributed to James Madison playing a particular crucial role in drafting process and earning the title Father of the Constitution. But Jacob Schalus, as an assistant clerk for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, he physically transcribed the final draft onto parchment over about 40 hours for 30 bucks.
SPEAKER_01:So when so then so we went to Montpellier, Montpellier, I guess. But the funny part is we're driving into um Montpellier.
SPEAKER_03:Very British inspired. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And but we start walking, we started driving up, and then all of a sudden you're looking to the right, and uh you see like horse tracks. And we're like, that's weird. That doesn't look like it would be part of um like James Madison's whatever. And um we're like, well, whatever. So we stopped, so whatever, we kept going, and then it turns out, so then we check in and everything, and I'm like, we're waiting for the tour to start. So I'm wandering around the museum. Um I think everybody used the facilities, and we made a point of that. But anyway, as I'm going, I've come to learn that the uh, of course, the uh the aristocratic American family, the DuPonts, ended up purchasing the property and made it their own. Um, I don't remember you know, I'm sure we had all the specifics written down on uh the Google Docs, the Google Doc that Google took from us. They bought it and they use it as their own. They didn't preserve really anything about it. The the horse track thing was they had a they had an annual horse. I don't know if it was a horse race or if it was a horse like dressage or some some some event, some horse event, because the woman, the DuPont woman who lived here was into horses or something. And just what what ended up happening was when she died in the nineties, I think, or the late 80s or or early to mid-90s, she left uh she left money in her estate to restore the property as it was to to what James Madison, how James Madison had been. So the house so the house was just redone, nothing was a I mean, I think they found some original stuff like from over the years and everything, but they all had to redo it. The house at one point was strictly a DuPont house with no homage to James Madison.
SPEAKER_03:I think DuPont, I think I sent you this is this I found out because I'm reading a book right now that's called about the Jeffersonian era. But the original DuPont, not we're listening to the original DuPont, not the industrialist where all the money was made that then he could give to his shithead grandkids and their grandkids, but like the O.G. DuPont who came out during the French Revolution, became Demboys with Thomas Jefferson, and apparently he was super important in basically us getting the Louisiana Purchase. So, like DuPont, this DuPont from Thomas Jefferson's era, he was running cover and was kind of helping kind of act as a go between Napoleon and Jefferson. But when they actually bought this estate, when the DuPont family actually bought Montpellier from James Madison, though that James Madison house, that was in like 1901. So by that point, we had about two or three generations of shitheads.
SPEAKER_01:Just living off your dull. You're just saying they weren't always bad. You're just using that to let the fans know that you're listening to an audiobook.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just saying I learned something interesting. They weren't all they weren't all stupid. So let's see.
SPEAKER_01:Um this house, I don't I probably remember the least from this house, although I do think this was my favorite house. It was the very it was a very classic plantation home, I thought. Nice brick.
SPEAKER_03:Grandfather clock we saw.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that which was apparently original, I think. Wasn't it? Yep. But like just the it started on the outside. So the the the history of this home was James Madison's dad got his riches from a tobacco farming, I believe. And uh basically they lived down at the bottom of the hill, and then they built this place to like show off or whatever. And then the original home was pretty small, and then James Madison had built onto it. He basically there were two front doors because he basically built like an addition for once he got married for his family to also live in there.
SPEAKER_03:His mother basically ran half the house. She had her side of the house, and then he had his side.
SPEAKER_01:Mm-hmm. Um and then, yeah, I mean, there wasn't really much. There were some weird there were some weird paintings of like naked women on the wall. I remember that grandfather clock.
SPEAKER_03:Um The dining room.
SPEAKER_01:I remember they were asking some questions. He was asking some questions, some tri was trying to get some uh some participation, and we impressed him, I think, with two answers. I know the one answer that really impressed him was he asked um I don't even know why this came up, but he asked what other president died on the 4th of July, other than um John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and I raised my hand and said James Monroe, and he said, Very good. And a lot of people don't know that. I said, Well, we just came from Highlands yesterday, and he kind of you kind of got the look like, oh I feel for it. Yeah, they got you.
SPEAKER_03:They do ding you, huh? Um He was maybe the best tour guide we had of the three.
SPEAKER_01:He was a good tour, he was he was a good tour guide. Oh, yeah. There was a funny thing. He he had you could tell that, and not to lay on the slave stuff too much, even though they did it, so we should be able to also. Um, you could tell that they have all been trained. This guy was old school. This is an old school guy. This is like Tim Coyne from John Tyler level, old school, and you could tell that they had been trained to say enslaved people instead of slaves, and he slipped up a couple times. You could tell like he was having a hard time with it. For sure. Not that it's like not that he like did not that he disrespected the sl like the enslaved people or whatever, but you could just say he was having a he was having a hard time like with the new lingo and keeping up with it. It's like he would like trip up and like say slave, uh enslaved people.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. He was uh reminded, I don't think we ever talked about yeah, another tour guide we had when we were in California. Yeah, he was he was just an old timer doing his thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was cool. He was he was a nice guy. They they took you up to, which I thought was kind of bogus. I know you were rolling your eyes at it. Um we went up to a room where like he was like, this is probably the room where he wrote the Constitution. Yeah, they have like this room that's like kind of his his study.
SPEAKER_03:Mitchum was yeah, an author was up there like a week before he'd said Mitchum was there doing a whole thing about it.
SPEAKER_01:We'll get it. Yeah, I don't I don't I don't there wasn't anything like very memorable from this house except it was my favorite house.
SPEAKER_03:The house itself is like what you would think of like what a real plan. Like Monticello was weird because it was like Thomas Jefferson's pet project. Highland wasn't there, and then Monticello was like the aristocratic home you would expect to find in a Virginian aristocratic home that you would expect to find. Long sweeping driveway, fields for miles, like yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I will say too, they really like I will say, you know, again, I mean, the whole weekend the whole weekend was just so focused on slavery, like you can't really talk about it without it. I mean, I think they laid on about the treatment of the slaves the heaviest with the Madisons.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, when you went downstairs, oh, you could go under the house, and it was like a whole exhibit about how Dolly Madison.
SPEAKER_01:The the the theme here, which is an interesting theme that you don't really talk about often, was James Madison also died broke. And when he died, his wife his wife had to pay off his debts, and she did so by selling splitting up slave families off. Yeah, and splitting up safety, splitting them up down to Florida and Alabama, sending them down the river is where the phrase was termed, where the slavery was more in demand, unfortunately. And I think and that was like that was the the heavy theme of this one was how sad it was of these slave families being broken up just because she had to sell them off to pay for her shithead husband's debts. And um specifically, the the probably the saddest one was she sold like her head, I don't know what would you call it. Like basically her nanny from the time she was who raised her. I think it was her.
SPEAKER_03:And she took ownership of her when she came of age. That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01:I think, and then she and then she sold her, even sold her, and that was like crazy. It'd be like selling your own mom down the river, up the river, down the river, whatever. You don't remember that? That was like it was it the whole thing was which is something you don't really think about. Then they had like an exhibit of how the slaves lived. It was kind of interesting. I don't remember the rest of it. There was a cool garden.
SPEAKER_03:There was like a wooden shed they tried rebuilding using the same tools as slate, the same tools that I don't remember that. Remember, there was like that, like kind of looked like it was in Valley Forge. It was like the the wooden Yeah. And they had like names. I don't remember them trying to rebuild it. I think they know they yeah, they it it was not an original structure. They re somewhat recent.
SPEAKER_01:There was a garden area. Garden what that was that was uh DuPont's garden, but that was nice. Like an old school garden. Madison was very short.
SPEAKER_03:We learned he was very short, very tiny man.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I wish I feel like there was more to talk about, but thanks to Google, I don't have my notes. I don't know really what else to say. Well, we went, uh trying to think. We went in that visitor center. They had that video that we were watching a little bit of. That was okay.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's where the Mitchum, yeah, that's where they had that author talking about it. Uh that cafeteria. I guess like if we missed his grave. Oh, that's maybe as we were we blew by his grave. And we didn't blew by his grave.
SPEAKER_01:No one knew how to get there. Went too far. No one knew how to get there, but there was no signage on how to get to his grave. I remember that. Go figure. And I think that was it. I will say that like the reason that we don't have as much to talk about from the James Madison one is because it was probably the most straightforward experience.
SPEAKER_03:You didn't touch anything. That's good.
SPEAKER_01:Well none of it was original.
SPEAKER_03:There were no candlesticks there. Man, what that's crazy.
unknown:What?
SPEAKER_03:Leaving their family with all those debts. I mean, to be fair, if that's the truth of their character, I mean unless his family knew that that was the skill, that's just what it meant to be a a plantation owner or whatever, like you was just assumed you were gonna have to take over the debts of your father.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's what they were alluding to.
SPEAKER_03:If it was just an imposition, that was like comedy. That's just what people did.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Probably made for fractious relationships, I would think. Or if it was just I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:And I think didn't they even say that like Monticello went into disrepair and that they like sold it for real cheap, like he wasn't even taking care of it, or was his kid not taking care of it for Jefferson?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. I think so. Yeah, I gotta remember all these all these places we're seeing now. It's like they've had a hundred years now, or at least yeah, hundred fifty a hundred years, past fifty years, whatever, uh all this restoration money that's going in. I mean, I'm sure a lot of these places were like felt a crap. Yeah, yeah. Not Highlands, though. That one went up in smoke. A long time ago.
SPEAKER_01:Not much to take care of over there, that's for sure. I guess that's it. I don't know. I think we we talked for way longer than 20 minutes on it. Stuff really started to unlock when we started talking about it. I didn't think I was gonna be able to to to get back into the into the feeling, but I think we uh got a pretty good description. I don't think we missed that much, actually.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was a fun trip. We gotta figure out where we're gonna go. Next.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, fans, thanks for uh listening in. Sorry about the Google mishap. Or, you know, if you guys want to file a complaint to Google, make sure we get our email back. I'd appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we're living in 1984. Living in 1984, you know, fans. We'll we'll work with we'll work with what we got.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think we did anything to deserve it, but we might have. We'll file it. Full disclosure. It'll be interesting.
SPEAKER_03:We did, it was it'll be interesting to tell you to read whatever it is they come back with and why it is.
SPEAKER_01:I hope they give it I hope they don't just say no. I hope if they say no, they explain what happened. Fun fact, they did not. And if so, I'm sorry, Google. If we do deserve it, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_03:If we don't until I get a hard drive, a local hard drive and get all my information off.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much. Got anything to leave them with, John?
SPEAKER_03:You gotta stay curious. See you guys.