E-15-From Navy Decks To Small-Town Legends: Jerry Flynn's Wild, True Tales

Press play on a living time capsule: we set out to record our parents before the details slip away, and Jerry shows why it matters. From a slick-tired Plymouth that fishtailed into a power pole and blacked out half a town to a Navy career that made Japan home port as Vietnam heated up, this conversation swings between laugh-out-loud mischief and moments that make the room go still. Jerry’s fear of needles meets the blunt efficiency of shot lines, and his sea stories carry the hum of engines, the order of decks, and the snap of new orders after Kennedy’s assassination.

Then comes the memory that lingers: responding to a jet crash off Hong Kong, laying an American flag on a small boat so a burned, drowned body wouldn’t stick to the deck, circling the seawall while fuel floats on the water and bureaucracy waits on a coroner. It’s raw, unvarnished, and deeply human. The shoreline isn’t softer. We tumble through harvests and flipped combines on a ballfield, a Mercury flying dark between two parked cars at 2 a.m., a shop fire that races down an intake, and a prankster launching a PVC “missile.” Jerry maps the people and places that defined a small Texas town: segregation across the tracks, a water man who knew every hidden valve, and a hospital stitched together from old Air Force barracks.

By the end, the stories stack into a portrait: a .22 Magnum “quick draw” that leaves a scar and 21 days in a hospital bed, beer money made by selling the gun, and a family line that stretches from sons to great-grandkids. It’s memory saved in full color—Navy veteran stories, small-town Texas legends, farm accidents, Hong Kong crash recovery, and the humor that keeps you going. If you’ve ever wished you hit record on your elders, this is your nudge. Listen, share with someone who needs a reason to ask better questions, and leave a review to help more families capture their own stories.

Transcript

Why We’re Recording Family Stories

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Așteptati atija și a distinctie a jindancie.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

Auștivă indian ciat a distintii. Aușd-a întâlnit și așteaptă și știam. Și ja, ce ați laște aștepta, l-au fost lumește. M-au jede au fost și tana, este aștept, de aștept l-a gratis, l-am și spaga, dar au fost că-ți cheteri.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Și am băi, aici banner.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Atrás plastig ducky tau, dar to auge. Afortați nata plastica jobba. Ai, o femmin tot blind out. Asto what a fire. Oh, that's a nine brand.

SPEAKER_04 2:29

Well, we all started. How are you doing? I think it's that what are you doing? I said looking for reasons to keep breathing, and we almost had a red. I was gonna do something. Maybe to try to help Zach and help me. And maybe to help somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So that's what we're doing here. Yeah. So it's just uh it ain't nothing big, it's just getting up here and talking, telling the stories, having a good time, you know, getting together.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

Uh we decided a while back that we we everybody needed to get their parents on here. Yeah, because uh I turned 50 this year, so that means you know I feel old, so I I mean, you know, our parents are older, so Yeah, ain't old yet. We're not I know, that's what I'm saying. I feel old, so uh Jerry, how how old are you? Eighty-three. Eighty-three years old. So yeah, we wanted to get our parents on here, you know, just to maybe tell a story that we forgot about or maybe we didn't know, we've never heard before, that we can carry on and tell other people and pass on the stories.

SPEAKER_05 4:01

Good idea.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yeah. I mean, you know, because I forget stories all the time about what somebody's told me. If we can record them, if we can record them, then we'll have 'em

The Icy Night And The Light Pole

SPEAKER_00 4:10

to share with others what we're wanting to do.

SPEAKER_04 4:12

There's a there's a bunch of stories that different people tell.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

And and it may be different. Your version may be different of the way somebody else seen it.

SPEAKER_04 4:21

Yeah, the real version. Ray Hopkins uh he likes to tell the story about uh being in Vernon, it was icy, and he said he's never seen anybody wreck their vehicle on purpose. He said you you ran into a telephone pole and knocked out like half of Vernon's electricity, and the cops were looking for you, and you jumped in the car with them.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

Oh, you're talking about me? Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh, Ray was West Bank.

SPEAKER_04 4:47

Oh, that's what it was. So so what is the story? Go ahead and tell me the story about that.

SPEAKER_05 4:52

Well, we closed down the VFW when it was upstairs, Robert L. Moore's building. I don't know whether you remember that or not. No. So we were going out to the Grazy Spoon Cafe out on East Woolbar. That's where everybody went at the VFW close. And I had a 66 Plymouth Sports Fury that had a 440 in it with slick tires on the back. And it was raining. And it kind of gas on it a little bit, and it would fish tail pretty good. And about the third time I did that, it says Ray said, Where is the damn seat belt? And I'm not sure that 66 Plymouth even had any seatbelts in it. I don't I don't remember. Never used them. And then I gassed on it one more time and it fish tailed and it went directly into a light pole. It's a power pole. It's the s old C. Put messed up my plummeth pretty good and put all the lights out on the east side of the barn.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

So you hit it pretty hard. You hit it pretty hard then.

SPEAKER_05 5:53

Put the lights out at at the Greasy Spoon Cafe. And when the lights went out, they told me later, says everybody in her says we're Flynn. So they decided they better go look for me. Mm-hmm. And Dan Creighton came down there and he had a Thunderbird then. I don't remember what model it was. And he came down, Charles Ray Talet was with him. And somebody else, I don't remember who. I got in the car with him. I said, let's go riding. So we rolled around. Cops came down there. I was pretty inebriated. Cops came down there to my car, checking everything out. We drove by then and watched them check it out. And about 20 or 30 minutes later, I finally went to the bus station and called the police. I said, I've I've had a wreck out here at Suzy Kid. Well, where you been? I said, Well, it's coming to the find the phone. You said you passed a bunch of phones and houses. I said, I ain't gonna wake nobody up, just use a phone. So I talked my way out of leaving the scene. And uh they finally talked to me a while and turned me loose. I got a ride home with Dan Craight.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

Oh, uh Ray said you and y'all were riding around, y'all passed it, and uh they stopped y'all and said he said, Anybody anybody in here know Jerry Flynn?

SPEAKER_05 7:34

Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I'm talking to Charles Ray. Charles Ray knew ever cop in Vernon it and uh they asked him, have you seen Jerry Flynn? He said, No, I hadn't seen him. I said, No, that's his car, but uh we hadn't seen him at all. I was in the back seat. So I got by with that. Then they went down to the bus station. Did you know there was a bus station in Lord?

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah, what yeah there still is. Where is it at now? I mean it's like Kemp Saber in it. Oh, is it? I don't know. I didn't think it stopped there anymore. It doesn't. I hadn't seen it. It doesn't matter. Wow. You know, you asked me about that uh my Corvette, if I still had that Corvette. I was changing the the intake on it. It the the uh fuel injectors leaked real bad. Or a couple of them did, so uh I had a Edderbrock intake, so I was gonna I took the uh fuel injectors out of the Atterbrock intake and I put them in the it. And my daddy told me the day before, he said, no, don't burn my shop down. So anyway, they were leaking by. The old ones were leaking by, so I changed the oil. There's a bunch of gas in the oil. I mean filled it the oil pad completely up to the top. And uh so I'm I decided I'm just gonna leave it underneath it. Then I'm gonna after I started I'll pull it out. Once I get the timing right, I couldn't get the timing right for shit. And finally I got it right or where it fired off. And when it fired off, it backfired. It said I watched it, it said and fire ran down the just like this. Just a flash of fire ran down to the intake, uh right down the side of the motors, right to that oil pan. And it had a it was a oil pan was made, never seen it before, made of plastic or rubber. And the only reason I used it is it had a little pore spout on it. I thought it'd be easier to and uh the walls of that oil pan said just disappeared and looked like a damn sea of fire. So you did burn the shop down. And Daddy said don't burn the shop down. So I had left the the luckily the key was in the on position still. And uh I reached over there through the fire and and put it in neutral and turned the wheel through in the fire. I'm standing in this lake of fire and I push it out the door and uh it gets to roll and I push it out, push it on out, and it was it was too late then. Corey, how did you get that hardly up on that high dive? Yeah, there wasn't no putting it out. Broke the windshield immediately. Then I was just worried about it, you know. Catching something else. Well, hell, thank God the Corvettes got a gas tank in the rear end, or it would have I mean, yeah. I just put I just put like seven or ten gallons in it. Yeah, so my it's actually my dad's fault for jinxing me telling me.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Shouldn't have said yeah, shouldn't have said anything.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Yeah, put it in his mind. He was happy to see that he was happy to see it go, I promise. Yeah. Some things take all your time. No, it's just this is like a motorcycle. You know, when I when I was first got a first motorcycle, I lived in Woodstall Falls. Or did I live in Woodstall Falls? Maybe I lived in Varney, I can't remember. Anyway, it was a a a Vulcan and it looked just like a Dina Waglide. And I brought it out to the farm. My dad got in so much trouble over this, too. He got in so much trouble over this. So I brought it out to the farm and my grandmother, she had a stroke, so she was in a wheelchair for a little while. You know, she's already passed away at the time. But so while I was inside talking to my mama, my dad went out there with a Polaroid and took a bunch of pictures. Oh, on it? And it showed no. He put he brought the wheelchair out of the bar and put the wheelchair. It's all Polaroids with captions wrote on them. Oh man. He said, okay, it shows a is who wins the race. And it's got first it's got the motorcycle in front of the wheelchair. He took a picture and says, Who wins the race?

Fire In The Shop And Near Misses

SPEAKER_04 11:30

And it and then the next picture it shows us the the wheelchair in front of the motorcycle, who really wins the race? And he brought them in there to me, and my mom got so mad.

SPEAKER_05 11:40

Yeah, what she got mad about is I took a picture of the wheelchair, and uh, it was uh a black wheelchair that had a chrome all over it. Motorcycle was a black motorcycle with chrome all over it. I took a before and after picture. That's what she got mad about.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Oh, yeah, before and after. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's about right. On a motorcycle, you've had one long enough. That doesn't matter. It's it's you're going to when it's gonna happen, yeah. Sad but true. Sad but true. Yeah. Been there did that. Mm-hmm. Man. So, Jerry, you've uh you got a hat on that says Vietnam veteran, you've served in the army or what what do you serve in? Navy. Navy. Uh I bet you have uh tell us about that experience. Would you do that again? Let's let's tell it in let's tell it in order here though. Yeah. So I'm gonna have to let him tell you, but my dad was a pretty much a little shit, a hellion. And at any given point in time, if my grandmother or my grandpa yelled whoop him, they didn't even ask no questions, they just whooped him. And that was the day, wasn't it? And uh so this is the reason I I stopped this air is because my daddy to this day passes out if he gets a shot. Now you tell a story about that. Right here in this hospital, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_05 13:05

When I got shot? When I shot myself. Oh no, it wasn't in this hospital, it was uh over the West Texas Bill in Dr. Centers' office just taking the shots for starting the school. And uh two or three days later had to go get another shot for something. I don't know what it was, smallpox or something nonsense. And mama took uh daddy's belt with me with her. She said, if you throw a fit this time, I'm gonna beat the hell out of you. So I didn't throw a fit, I just passed out.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

Instead.

SPEAKER_05 13:46

And I did that for got until I was forty, I guess. Oh wow. Yeah, finally got over it.

SPEAKER_04 13:53

So when he went into the Navy, he had to get shots. Oh bunch of shots.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

Quite a lot of shots.

SPEAKER_04 14:00

Yeah. So you'd have to tell them to give them all at one time.

SPEAKER_05 14:03

Do them all at once, you can't wait. Yeah, there's one time I was in Treasure Island, San Francisco, and I got orders to Japan, and I had to take three more shots to go overseas. And I went over to the sick bay and those guys, they're masochists, they're terrible. They were back there playing poker. So I finally looked around and had a Dutch door in it. I looked around this Dutch door that so they know it was there. They didn't care. And he came up there, one guy came up there and looked at my shot card and said, You gonna need three shots, I'll be right back. And he came back with three needles stuck between his fingers, three of them in one hand. I'd never had that before. If I hadn't seen the needles, it'd probably be all right. But he jammed me with three needles at one time and signed my shot card and I walked outside and sat down on a porch. It's an old wooden building. Sit down on a porch and I knew I was gonna pass out. I still had my shot card in my hand. And I sat down on that porch and kind of drooped over, fixed to go out, and my shot card fell out of my hand. And I said, if I was to lose that shot card, I had to take 16 shots. So I passed out, and the shot card was laying right there on the ground where I dropped it. I hadn't done that in a long time. Kinda embarrassing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

I don't know why. It happens to last. You know, and when my grandmother said something, she meant it. So he just he didn't want to get that wrath, so he'd just pass out. He they had a they worked on a tractor. Uh that took all the injectors or whatever it was. Tell the story.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

Yeah, it wasn't injectors. Daddy and Millard Word were overhauling an H farmall. Didn't either want to know what they did, but they were doing it. And he took the head off of the head off of that H and sent it to town to get the valves ground and brought it up to here to Val Scott. And then a couple days later we went back up there to get it and I sent it a back seat with 49 Ford. And Val brought the valves back out there. So he didn't didn't send the head, he just sent the valves. And he s had 'em stuck in a piece of cardboard, just like they went back in that tractor. He said, Boy, don't you mess with this. Hadn't Otter never said that. All the way back to the farm, four miles, I was taking one about switching holes. And so I carried him out to the shop. Miller and Daddy was and I got back in the yard was playing with something. I d I know what it was. A piece of dried up mule harness. And Daddy hollered at Mama said, Kitten. Yeah, she daddy called her a kitten. Kitten. And she came outside on the uh the porch and said, What? He said, Beat the hell out of it. And she said, Okay. So she proceeded to beat me with that dried up. I'd I'd rather have a beating from my daddy any time than my mama, because she wasn't for blood. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

So he knew he knew you messed with them on the way home. He

Fear Of Needles, Then The Navy

SPEAKER_04 17:58

knew. He didn't uh one time one time didn't she tell you to go get a a switch? Or was that your grandmother? Who went to go get a switch and you went and got a the the smallest switch you could get off the uh uh a globe willow or some shit. Yeah, then that was never good when I told you to go get your own. Yeah. Um my grandmother was serious before till I was in junior high, I thought she'd dislike me. She's just serious. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 18:30

I was scared of my mama's bed their bedroom. I had to go through their bedroom to get outside of the house from my bedroom, mine and Jackie's bedroom. And I would their bed was pretty close to the wall, but I would back up so that wall and slide down the wall to keep pointing my having my butt too accessible to my mom. She was gonna just whoop it anytime you came by. I knew I had one coming. I didn't know what for, but I had one coming. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 19:03

Oh, so so tell us about some stories about j joining the Navy.

SPEAKER_04 19:08

Yeah, what what year did you join, Jerry?

SPEAKER_05 19:11

I went in May the twenty-third of nineteen sixty-three. Okay. Got out May the twenty-third of nineteen sixty-seven. Yes, it is uh I enjoyed every minute of it.

SPEAKER_04 19:27

You d you signed up voluntary? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:29

Me and Kat Butler signed up, went to boot camp together. Okay. Yeah. Signed up the same day. Yeah. What we had to we had to get the hell out of Dodge. Four got drafted. Oh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

So you could decide where you wanted to go instead?

SPEAKER_04 19:50

If you signed up.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

But if you got drafted, you they put you wherever? Front line.

SPEAKER_05 19:57

Well, we didn't know nothing about Vietnam. It didn't start until November uh nineteen sixty-three. And uh the day that it's they shot Kennedy well that's that's the day Vietnam started uh regardless of what the history books say. We were in uh Yokohama. What moved down there from the Yucco for Thanksgiving. I don't know why. D do not know why. But we did. And uh I think it was Yokohama. Osaka. Anyway, we went to bed the that n one night, and there was about ten or fifteen ships at that port, and got up the next morning, and we was the only ones there, so we couldn't figure out what was going on. And they finally somebody finally came, oh this one kid from coming down to the deck, waking everybody up, and he was a big boy, and he was boo-hooing. He said they've shot the president. So we got up and went up topside to sweep and clamp down, which meant mop and sweep the deck, get all the dust off everything. Where did he get it dusted in the middle of the ocean? I don't know. But we did it every day. But uh, we was the only ones there. We stayed there three or four days, and they finally let us off the ship the third day. They said, don't say anything to them people over about killing the president. We still didn't know. All we knew is they killed him.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

Right.

SPEAKER_05 21:38

By then, probably Lee Harvey Oswald was already dead. Not no, not Lee Harvey. Yeah, he was.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

James Ruby, too?

SPEAKER_05 21:48

Uh what was the guy's name?

SPEAKER_04 21:50

James Ruby, the one that uh tried to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

SPEAKER_05 21:55

No, he didn't try to kill him, he killed him.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

Oh yeah, then they killed him?

SPEAKER_05 21:58

What his was Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby. Yeah. But uh the net we started loading up stuff and hauling us to Vietnam right then.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

So y'all were in Japan uh uh a lot because is is that because they were still rebuilding Japan from No, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 22:21

I was just home port uh when they rebuilt it after World War II. No, it was already rebuilt, rebuilt it better than it was.

SPEAKER_04 22:32

Now, how long did it take to rebuild it? Do you have any idea?

SPEAKER_05 22:36

Uh don't have any idea. Not long.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

You know, I often wondered if if that's the reason that y'all were you were just in Japan, so you were around Japan a lot, weren't you?

SPEAKER_05 22:48

Well, it just just all ships

Japan Home Port And Vietnam Begins

SPEAKER_05 22:52

have a home port, and that's just those was Japan. Yeah. Osaka.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

What else what uh what what else you do in Japan? Yeah, how was Japan? Was that something?

SPEAKER_05 23:01

Oh yeah, Japan is uh uh that's my favorite port. Uh I was in Okinawa and Guam and uh uh got out of uh Hong Kong. Uh yeah, what's the name of that? Thailand. Uh in several different countries, but Japan was my favorite. Japanese wasn't steal from you. The Philippines is steal from you. That's uh we spent a lot of time in Subic Bay, and uh a long pole was a name of the town, and they would figure out every way they could to steal from you. I lost a uh diamond uh half carat, so it was a one carat white gold ring and a Long Jean Wittenauer wristwatch at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

And they just came and slipped it off you or was you gonna wow slipped it off and was gone. Damn, how how do you slip off a ring and that's crazy? Lots of practice. She said, she said, come on. I'd rather not say come out.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Come here, big hands on Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:16

They got ways. Yeah, they got ways.

SPEAKER_05 24:21

Didn't they say I spent two years on that ship? They say Tom Green County. Yeah. But they sent me to San Diego to another ship that was older than Tom Green. I didn't like that ship at the Autogamy County at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Where was this port at?

SPEAKER_04 24:39

It was in California?

SPEAKER_05 24:40

Yeah, San Diego. It was homeported in San Diego.

SPEAKER_04 24:43

So Tom Green County was amphibious navy, right?

SPEAKER_05 24:46

Yeah, both of them were those old amphibs or LSTs. It uh that's out of Gaming County is tied up to a pier in San Diego, and it had dirt rubaness on the mooring lines, it hadn't moved from the pier in no telling how long. And I went aboard it, and 45 days later it went over to Vietnam. So I spent probably out of four years I probably spent close to three years in and out of Vietnam.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

So what was your job on the Tom Green County?

SPEAKER_05 25:23

That was what's a boson mate. That was uh decks and boats and painting and chipping and painting and all that.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Kept all that maintained.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Now uh d now w how did you see you saw somebody get blown up or some shit, didn't you? Catch fire, what was the deal?

SPEAKER_05 25:46

Oh no, that was in Hong Kong. That's when that plane crashed at the end of uh Hong Kong runway. And uh they Harbormaster called for all the all the available boats to come over and help out. And the they put my boat in the water and went over there and faster around and you could see a passenger, big big 727, 707 something. The tail sticking up out of the water, and that's all you could see. And we just floated around out there for a while, and they finally come up with a body, and that guy was burnt and drowned, and uh he was at a fetal position, he was r unrecognizable as a human and put him in my boat.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

Oh, they picked him up and put him in your boat. Oh, that's nice.

SPEAKER_05 26:48

I took the American flag off of the back of that boat and laid it on the deck of the boat and laid that body on that flag because I knew he would stick to the deck if it didn't.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

How much trouble did you get in over that?

SPEAKER_05 27:03

Not none. Nobody ever said a word about doing that. So I took him over to the seawall where Amulson was, and they said, we don't want him now. We'll holler at you if we don't want you. So I don't uh I found out later the coroner wasn't there, so they couldn't have pronounced the guy dead. Got about him. I could have pronounced him dead. Yeah. Just gotta make it official. They finally I I carried him 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. Carried him around out there. They finally waved at me and I went and got him off my boat. That uh that was a that was a mess. Then they told us, y'all get away from here, because it's all that uh jet fuel is floating on the top of the water, so y'all just catch on fire. Get out of here. And I that was the only body that took out of their waters there. There's 54 of them, I think, toward 54.

SPEAKER_04 28:01

Americans?

SPEAKER_05 28:03

All of them were troops that's going back to Vietnam from they'd been in Hong Kong for R and R.

SPEAKER_04 28:10

So what had happened?

SPEAKER_05 28:12

Uh the I read something about it just not very long ago, and uh you can look that plane crash up,

Ports, Theft, And Life At Sea

SPEAKER_05 28:20

and it'll tell you what happened. Something happened to that plane. There was some engine failure or something, and the guy tried to turn around, go back, and he just didn't make it. But everybody on there were troops, is uh different as Marines and probably Air Force and Army both on there. And I think it killed all of them. I'm not sure about that, but it more than likely did.

SPEAKER_04 28:47

It was just out in the water.

SPEAKER_05 28:50

Uh yeah, right at the end of the runway. The runway in Hong Kong was about twenty or thirty feet above the water, and it was just a concrete wall, you water, concrete wall, runway. And uh that's how he run into the end of that runway.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

So concrete wall.

SPEAKER_05 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

Yeah. It'd been better just to land out in the ocean. A better chance to make it, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:21

Yeah. It would, yeah, it would have been a whole lot better to land out there in the ocean. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:31

What's the water like in Japan? Rough?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

They got nice beaches.

SPEAKER_05 29:37

Oh yeah, it's uh that side of the Pacific is all uh it's uh I've seen that ocean as just as uh flat as this floor in here. Uh not a ripple in it. I've also seen it hurricane. Bunch of ripples in it. But the Atlantic is the one that's rough. You see the movies and stuff, the perfect storm. So just way the Atlantic is all the time.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

So the Pacific beaches are better than the way, way better. I got it backwards. Yeah. So you after you got out of the army, what what Navy? Navy, you came back to Chilakothi or how'd you end up here? Yes.

SPEAKER_05 30:27

Never did know why.

SPEAKER_04 30:29

Nobody does.

SPEAKER_05 30:30

The day I got back to I got out of the Navy and they paid me my back pay. I had two months leave, paid leave coming. Uh I didn't exactly, but uh that's how much they paid me for. That's another story. That uh they gave me $630, which at the time is a buttonload of money. And I went back over to this old girl's house and got my clothes and she was gone. So I tried to get the hell out of there before she showed back up. But I didn't. And I finally told her, I finally convinced her I was going, because you I was there with $600 in my pocket, and she tried to get me to stay there and spend all my money until I knew two or three guys that spent all their money before they went home and had to re-enlist because I didn't have as much money to get home.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Oh hell no. Spent all before they got home. I had to re-enlist because of it.

SPEAKER_05 31:38

So I come back to Chilicoty. I was in Chilicoty the next morning. It's 1200 miles to San Diego, and you can pretty much drive it in 24 hours. You could then. And first thing

Hong Kong Crash And Body Recovery

SPEAKER_05 31:55

I saw was my old daddy down at uh stop sign, stoplight. And he says, Why don't you go out there and help Roy put that hay in the barn? And I thought to myself, I just been up 24 hours. I said, right. And I did. And it wouldn't know howdy how you do. Get to work. But nobody here says, I said, Damn, where you been? I ain't seen you in a long time, you know. Didn't ask no questions. I didn't give them no answers.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

So your old daddy was in the army or navy?

SPEAKER_05 32:47

He was in the army. He got drafted uh and he had two kids and got drafted, which was totally wrong. But uh he got drafted, he got basic training and got spinal meningitis, and he stayed at the hospital 88 days, and they discharge didn't they discharge the uh probably three not up much over three the day he came home. I remember the day the first time he was came back here. I was three I was three years old. He walked in the house, scared the hell out of me.

SPEAKER_04 33:25

So where'd he learn how to box at?

SPEAKER_06 33:28

I don't know. I don't know. He traveled around boxing.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Pretty salty.

SPEAKER_04 33:39

Say right? Pretty salty.

SPEAKER_05 33:41

Well, I got into fist fight with him one time.

SPEAKER_04 33:47

How'd that turn out?

SPEAKER_05 33:48

Not good. He beat me all over the front porch quick in a hurry.

SPEAKER_04 33:56

Learn not to do that again. No, I didn't learn to my grandpa was the most laid back. Yeah, he was slow person you ever met. Second is Jerry Flynn. But he wasn't always like that.

SPEAKER_05 34:14

Yeah. People I grew up with made fun of my old daddy all the time. Carried pack of camels in his pocket. And they'd be he'd be talking to them and he'd reach in here and hold his hand on them cigarettes for about a minute, and then he'd finally take them out. Then he'd get him a cigarette out of it, then he'd get him a batch, he'd light that cigarette. Well, that all of that that I just said to you, it took him about five minutes.

SPEAKER_04 34:48

He made it a ordeal. It was an ordeal. He used to get up about uh 4 50 in the morning early. Because it'd take him that long to get to the farm. He moved real slow. I only saw him get excited one time my entire life. And that's because we had a uh a cow that kept jumping the fence. And it was me and uh every other grandkid that he had in the back of this old Ford pickup, I believe. And the tailgate was down. He was trying to get this old cow to s to go back in the gate. And he had a um what did he have in the back? He hadn't didn't they just have us, he had a uh auger in the back of it also. I can't remember. Anyway, he ended up throwing me out the pickup. He wasn't hanging on. Oh, and he got so mad about that, he hit the he put that cow back in the fence at back in the pasture. He he just ran it over.

SPEAKER_05 35:46

Yeah, I bumped one of his cows over the fence. He doesn't know that. Jack Flynn, if you're listening, you you did you're in a good place for me to be telling this. I knocked uh one of his cows over the fence. Then I was mad at her after I did that. I tore up my pickup, so I ran over the four-wheeled out pickup. I backed up over and

Coming Home And Small-Town Work

SPEAKER_05 36:10

back, pulled up, run over three or four times. The one that came to went to the house and got a 22 and shot her in the head nine times. And then I drove her off in the pasture. That's how mad I die. I just I don't like cattle.

SPEAKER_04 36:27

That can make you be upset. You know, I that old TikTok band lasted a long time, didn't it? Yeah, that was a Trump deal. Was it three hours? I think so.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Yeah.

unknown 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

You know, at first he was the one wanting to ban it, but then you know they helped him get elected, so pretty much He's like, I gotta help him now. They're still gonna force him to sell.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

I gotta help him now. You think so? He's gonna force them, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's gotta be well to break ties with the China. Yeah. Because TikTok pays lots of people and to pay them well. You know, if you got enough followers, they pay you well. Oh yeah. Yep. That's not what we're trying to do here, but no, no, no, not at all. But I'm sure we'll hit it. Be TikTok famous. TikTok. Only TikTok I'll be famous is none. None. You never know. You might say something one day. I don't know. You're right, you know. That could just change the world. Uh I mean that's all it takes. Like that one girl.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

She went up there and said, hot to her now. She said what?

SPEAKER_03 37:33

What was that?

SPEAKER_00 37:33

You ain't seen that? No. You had to look it up after this. And it went viral? Yeah. What she spit on? That thing. That's what she said. Sometimes you just gotta spit on that thing, and it went viral. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

But she said hop to her. She said sometimes you just gotta hop to her on that thing. I'll be down.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:01

They ask her a question. You know how they are like you see these little deals, you know, TikToks, like, hey, uh, what's one way to keep a man or whatever, you know. I don't know what question it was, but they asked her and that's what she said. Now she's like meeting famous tanger. I mean, you know, she's just all of a sudden famous. Yep. So you never know. Insane. I've said some funny shit in my life, it's a lot funnier than that. Yeah, I mean, but it just at that time it just the perfect place, perfect. Yep. That's sometimes that's where you gotta be. Perfect place, perfect time. So when you when you rolled the the the John Deere was w was after you got out of the military, correct?

SPEAKER_05 38:49

Uh I'd think about that.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

You were on Harvest.

SPEAKER_05 38:53

Yeah. I wrote on Harvest the first time I went in 1958, 59. I don't know. I went it several times. I don't know whether I'd been a Navy or not at that time. Don't remember. Don't remember what year that was. But I absolutely turned the combine over on third base in a little town in Montana. Gordon Haines' combine. He died, he's still mad about that. I bet he was, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

I bet he was. So how'd you get the third, how'd you get on the third on the diamond with the combine?

SPEAKER_05 39:38

It was just there. We got out on the we had getting ready to move, come home. It was had the headers off the combines. And we got out on the well, I didn't, I didn't get out there. I was in a bar. But Clay Kennedy finally found out what they were doing, and they were running by On the combines.

SPEAKER_04 40:03

So you could do it the fastest.

Combines, Rollovers, And Wild Friends

SPEAKER_04 40:06

So you could do it the fastest?

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Yeah. And Clay Kennedy was on my combine. And I got on the combine with him. I said, You're not doing this right. He said, Well, you take over. So I got on the first time around, got on the actually it was second base. I turned wide open, turned the steering wheel hard left, and stop the left turning brake and turn it combine smooth over in about two seconds. The last thing I knew Clay was still on the combine with it, standing on the left side, there'd be no cab on this. Oh man. No cab in combine. And the last thing I remembered before it hit the ground was Clay jumping over me and hit the ground running.

SPEAKER_04 40:59

He didn't even he hit the ground running. He hit the ground running.

SPEAKER_05 41:03

Oh man. And let it smooth over on its right side. It knocked you out? No. I I held onto the steering wheel all the way down.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

So was it a slow fall or was it a.

SPEAKER_05 41:15

Well, it probably wasn't, but it seemed like free.

SPEAKER_04 41:18

Oh yeah. I know that's what it seemed like when I uh turned that bobtail over, dumping gravel out of it on that on that track. Yep. Been dumping gravel out on that track all day long, man. Perfect. I'd get up and I'd load my my own truck. That way I knew it wasn't to one side or the other. And it it was five o'clock, and one of the old bosses, we will not say names, decided that he wanted to hurry us up. So I said, You better not, you better load me right in the center, I promise you. It'll flip me over. Of course I got out there and halfway around that track and started raising it up real slow and finally got to where I could see the crossline in the bed. That sunbitch was went from one the bottom corner to the top corner to the other side. It was that crooked. Flipped me over like a golf club. That bed leaned over like this. Damn near touch of the ground before that truck ever started. And when it came when it put and it pulled that truck, it said, Wow! Hard. I broke an eye hole with my neck and all sorts of shit crawled out of that sun bitch. Flipped it back over with the down front end loader and drove it back up there to the bar.

SPEAKER_05 42:24

There's no guy up there in Montana that where we got that combine set back up. He had like an old, God, I don't know, uh late 20s, uh Diamond Rio, I think it was, Wrecker. Just no cab owners or no nothing, big old wrecker. And he got out there and he looked at it and just shaking his head. And he got some stakes out of the off of the back of that truck and went out there and started driving them in the ground, and we asked him if he needed any help, he said, I need you to get the hell away from me. So he drove stakes in the ground for probably thirty minutes and changed that diamond reel to the ground and started bro running gin poles up, picked that combine up, just easiest you ever saw. But it was I still remember that old truck.

SPEAKER_04 43:24

What did it do to the combine?

SPEAKER_05 43:27

It damaged it. Bent everything on it. Only reason it didn't turn all the way over is they were those combines were all butane. And it had a 90-gallon butane tank on the back of it. That's the was the only thing that stopped it from going all the way over.

SPEAKER_04 43:44

And killing you, probably. Rolling rocky. That's just a a a tenth of the crazy shit that he's done. Oh yeah. Well, you know. You know, d uh Johnny Hendricks was another one of them wild, crazy people. Not crazy, just wild. Yeah, I just did some things that were. As you were out there by Chris's, they're headed in that direction when he came flying through there one night, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_06 44:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

What's that story?

SPEAKER_05 44:17

Oh, it was that about Dwight Kane's old house, which is the end of that six miles off of road. It it the pavement ended there before it went around on to Glenn Love's house and through there. And me and Buddy Wilson were sitting in two cars. I was sitting in my and he was facing Chillicotti and he was facing his house. Just sitting out there talking until the summer. I kept hearing this roar. And it seemed like it kept getting louder. And I said, Buddy, what the hell is all that noise? He said, Well, it's of course it's in the summertime and real still. I said, Buddy, what's that racket? He said, I don't I don't know, I never heard that before. That must be them trucks going through town.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

Y'all were parked bumper to bumper?

SPEAKER_05 45:19

Side by side. I was hanging out the left window and he was hanging out the left wind of his car talking. And it kept getting louder. He said, Get the hell off the road, that's Hendrix. And we cracked up both cars and just separated, and by the time we got s separated, a fifty mile of Mercury went between us. No headlights, no nothing. It was about two o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_04 45:49

How fast?

SPEAKER_05 45:51

Hard as that Mercury would run.

SPEAKER_04 45:54

Never slowed down.

SPEAKER_05 45:56

Not till he got, and it wasn't very far to the end of that road. That's the first time we saw a light was brake lights.

SPEAKER_04 46:03

Oh, he was going home, huh?

SPEAKER_05 46:05

He's going he's running from the law. And he got away from it. I guess they never didn't know which way he went. This fixed would be a big old wreck there. Buddy had to finally figure it out that it was Johnny D.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

Flying for their Johnny D. No lights. Oh me, Johnny D was a good friend of mine. Crazy. Good friend of my daddy's, too, of course, first, but uh he was a nut. I walked into the to the shop there at Hardamagin Steed, and he's on his hands and knees with a torch, not lit, putting propane in a four-inch piece of PVC that was about 12 foot long, capped off on the end. He wasn't putting propane, he was putting uh acetylene in it. Just sitting there filling it up. I said, What in the hell are you doing, Johnny D? He said, You just watch. Come over here on this side door. Yeah, I'll stand over here. So I get in there and he and uh Lonnie D Grays walks through that door. He said, Lonnie D, he said, do me a favor, grab a piece of that p grab the end of that PVC and hold it up to me.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

He said, No, that ain't high enough. Hold it up. No, about chest height. He said, Well, what do you what do you mean we do with this? He said, just sit there and hold it. Hold on. I'm almost done. Reached down there and struck that something. Went up like a missile.

SPEAKER_04 47:28

Boom, woo. I guarantee Johnny D was still running at the curve, boy. He was gone, boy. I believe Johnny D just died. Is that who just passed away? Oh. One of them didn't. Who did? One of the one of them, either him or Charles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:44

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

They found him in the trailer for like two days. He'd been in there like two days. So was it Lonnie D or was it Charles?

SPEAKER_05 47:50

I saw Lonnie reports a couple of days ago.

SPEAKER_04 47:53

Yeah, it wasn't Lonnie. It was one that lived in by itself. Charles. Yeah. J rode the bicycle all the time. I don't know. He lived in Katie Lee's house. What I heard. Oh, so that wasn't either that wasn't the Graves then.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

No, yeah, it was one of them. I don't know. They said his name, but I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 48:15

No. So it was either Charles or Lonnie, one of the two. Well, Lonnie, I know, so it had to be Charles. It wasn't Lonnie? Mm-mm.

SPEAKER_06 48:25

I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 48:27

I drove a uh what year was that, 2009, Black Chevrolet right up the right, right between their yard one time, about 25 miles, and I had to miss Lonnie D by this far. I was trying to get him. He told my mama how to take you, use you, drop you off at the roadside park.

SPEAKER_06 48:45

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 48:46

Yeah. So after I threw flew through their yard and missed him by that much, I jumped out. And they uh all of them were there. And they all ran up to me. I said, I said, where's the I said, where's Lonnie D at? I said, I know he's here. I just missed him barely. Yeah, barely missed it.

SPEAKER_02 49:01

What are you doing? Why you dropped to my yard?

SPEAKER_04 49:04

I told him they just separated like the sea. He went that way. Yeah. Yeah. He ran from me for I don't know how long. Mm-hmm. That's just one thing you just don't do around here. Yeah. Yeah. And he was just, oh, he's all fucked up. Lonnie D was he was probably one of my favorite. For sure.

SPEAKER_05 49:27

Billy Roy is my favorite. He's the only one I can stand.

SPEAKER_04 49:32

I I get along with Billy. I get along with Billy pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:40

Same as the give me $10.

SPEAKER_04 49:43

Yeah, he wants some money, but he does come and help me quite a bit. When I need some help with something, he'll be there. Yeah. I'll go pick him up quite a bit and help out. My dad does too. Well, I ain't seen your old daddy in a minute. Yeah, he don't get out as much. Not like, you know, just like everybody else. You get older, you don't get out as much. Don't want to go nowhere. Or or just get off the grid. Stay off the Yeah, he don't.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

They don't they don't get out like they used to.

SPEAKER_05 50:17

Ben Belray helped Charlie Langford line up for his auction. He had farm auction. One of his auctions, everybody uh community farm auction.

SPEAKER_04 50:28

Everybody's broke.

SPEAKER_05 50:30

Well, everybody had a bunch of jokes that needed to get rid of. That wasn't during the broke days. But Ben Lonnie lined all that stuff up, and then Charlie paid us. And he wrote me a check, and then he wrote Billy Ray a check, and Billy Ray just folded that check up, put it in his pocket and says, I ain't even gonna look at that. I know that man cheated me. He didn't pay me near enough. I said, I promise you, Charlie Lankwood did not cheat you. I know he did. I bet he paid you twice as much as he paid me this. No, go ahead and look at it. So you finally looked at the check, and his check was just as like just like mine. Charlie, I said, Charlie won't cheat you better.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

Yeah, that was a different time right there, too, boy. Mm-hmm. Oh, Charlie Langford. Mm-hmm. Yeah, time's different.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Time's most definitely different. You can't go up to the school and pick somebody up and slam by the throat and slam them on the hood of the car no more.

SPEAKER_04 51:25

It's not anymore. And get away with it. I'm telling you right now, that was crazy. But you know, it's times have changed. But you know, it's in in a good way. You know, absolutely. But uh it's just it is a different world. Big I mean, just even in our lifetime it's well just chilokothy, how much it changed from population used to say eighteen hundred. When you came back in what, sixty-seven, Jerry, how many people were here?

SPEAKER_05 51:51

1100.

SPEAKER_04 51:51

1100.

SPEAKER_05 51:52

1106 forever.

SPEAKER_04 52:00

What'd it say now? Oh, seven, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:04

It's probably not that many here.

SPEAKER_04 52:06

Yeah. Two-thirds illegal immigrants. Yeah. Might be a few of them.

SPEAKER_05 52:13

They probably really didn't know how many black people lived here across the tracks. But Eugene Epton told me back before farming changed, the cotton stripper and a roundup and a whole bunch of things changed farming. Yeah, labor.

SPEAKER_04 52:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:31

And it uh Eugene Epton, which was the water superintendent here for a long time and he knew where everything, all these lakes around town, he could tell you exactly where to turn them off at. That's another story, but uh he told me there was eight hundred black people lived down there when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_04 52:52

And that wasn't even counted on the census. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:56

No, you well, no use you asking them nothing. Ain't gonna tell you. Not gonna tell you nothing. You go down and run up and knock on somebody's door down there and says, Do you know where Billy Ray is? No, man, I don't know nothing. They won't tell you. Well, I owe him fifty bucks. He said, Oh yeah, he's right over there. Yeah.

unknown 53:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:18

Well, we bought we bought beer down there for. But the black community stayed that way for a long time. Yeah. They they tried to, you know, take care of themselves. They had to, I mean, you know. Yep. But they had their own store. Yep. I mean, they had to. They didn't have no choice. They had to be segregate segregated, but yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

But yeah, times have changed.

SPEAKER_05 53:40

There's still struggles now, but the other parts of the country it does.

SPEAKER_04 53:46

Yeah. Here, I mean, there's not there's nobody left down there.

unknown 53:50

No.

SPEAKER_04 53:51

Billy Ray and M's the only ones left. And that's not many. They're getting well, they're dying every day. Or, you know, every year. Yeah, when we were a kid, there was several.

SPEAKER_06 54:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 54:01

Several different families. Yeah. The Kendricks, uh Givens, the Gibbons, I mean Graves, uh Johnson's.

SPEAKER_05 54:09

I mean Richardson's.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

Yeah, Fogs.

SPEAKER_05 54:13

You know, the boss down there was TJ Richardson forever.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

Oh, oh, that's the one that got bit in the eye. I mean, got stung in the eye by a wasp. What was his nickname? No, that was Big Shot, wasn't it? That's Big Shot that got stung in the eye. Tabor's.

SPEAKER_05 54:27

Big Shot and then you kill it. What was that boy's name? It was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 54:33

Sammy. No, no, no. No, his brother. His brother, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:36

Oh, what was his brother's name?

SPEAKER_04 54:37

Uh I'm thinking just a second. Give me a second. Johnson.

SPEAKER_05 54:40

He dressed up and he gets a big starts with a C, right?

SPEAKER_04 54:43

C Y?

SPEAKER_00 54:44

No, no. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_04 54:45

Starts with the C. The name starts with C.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Uh, Curtis, no. God, I remember him too, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:51

Yeah. He cut out a big star and go down to awesome direct truck traffic.

SPEAKER_04 54:57

Son of a bitch. Rode that bicycle, no, no rubber on it. Mm-hmm. Johnson, yeah. Golly. Kiss my ass. I didn't want to see how I can figure out.

SPEAKER_05 55:06

They couldn't nobody prove who he belonged to. Everybody down there, uh, they claimed TJ Richardson as their daddy. And uh Big Shot, that the boy that we can't think of his name worked at the gin for Glenn Quisenbury in Roy Moult. And Big Shot came down there every day and checked his time pull a time card out and checked his that boy's Make sure he was working? No, it was pays to make sure he was playing here for enough hours. And he came down there one day and pulled that boy's card out of the time slot, time card slot, and looked at it and put it back. And then went back over. Glenn Quisenbury standing over here. He said, Big shot, you pull that

Hospital Memories And Hard Lessons

SPEAKER_05 55:58

card out of there one more time, I'm gonna shoot your ass. Did you get the hell out of here? He never came back no more.

SPEAKER_06 56:07

God dang, what was his name? Ah yeah.

SPEAKER_05 56:14

Ain't no use me trying to remember. I just barely can remember my own name.

SPEAKER_04 56:20

That part of getting older, you just forget. That's why we're trying to get some of these stories down so we don't forget. It we might may have to do it in a two-part series. Yeah, we're gonna make this a I know uh time is So how many so how many kids and grandkids and grandchildren do you got? Great grandkids, you got a bunch, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 56:42

Oh, you're gonna put him on the spot and make him.

SPEAKER_04 56:44

I don't even know how you have no clue where I would answer it. Yeah. My mama tell you everyone. Yeah, I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Yeah. Yeah, you gotta sometimes you gotta have your tidekick here to help you on some of that.

SPEAKER_04 56:59

Well, I don't know. Is it in the twenties? Mama tell me how to watch I I find it. You text her right now and she'll be like, got it.

SPEAKER_00 57:10

So the twins were born in what, 71? 71. Yeah. All right. 71.

SPEAKER_04 57:21

So that wasn't long after you got out of the He was 30 years old. That wasn't long after you got out of the mil uh Navy.

SPEAKER_05 57:26

Yeah. I got married I liked it. A few days being 29 when I got married. Okay. I was old then.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:37

For that time it was, I mean to get married, right? Because most people got married 18 or 19, so you had a few years of running wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:50

Yep. I think your daddy couldn't stand me because I was nine years older than her.

SPEAKER_04 57:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

I'm nine years older than my wife. Well, back then age I mean, I'm not saying it didn't matter, but it wasn't as I don't know. Like getting married early wasn't a big deal back then or even underage, because I think my mom got married when she was sixteen.

SPEAKER_04 58:15

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:16

So might might not have been six.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

Yeah, I mean, so Yep, she could tell more about that, but they were married early. Yeah, I remember when they got married. She was a cutie pie. What year was that they got married, Jerry? Was that that was before the twins? Or right around uh 71. Probably was right around that time, huh?

SPEAKER_04 58:41

Well it'd be it'd be yeah, it's Tommy Glenn's born in 71, that'd be right. So I'm saying they probably wasn't married long before she g got pregnant with him. Or or if they were Yeah. Might be why they got married. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:53

I mean Well that's mystery, just a mystery how that works. First baby'd be born anywhere anytime, and the rest of them take nine months. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:04

So were the twins, were they born in this hospital? Yep. Yeah. Tommy Glenn was too, but they were like some of the last ones.

SPEAKER_06 59:11

Yeah.

unknown 59:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:14

What are you at? Burning. Yep. So they they stopped delivering babies here maybe between 71 and 75, somewhere in there. Yep. This was the operating room. I don't know where the delivery room was.

SPEAKER_00 59:29

I think it was the next one over.

SPEAKER_04 59:31

This one over. Well, I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:35

You know, they have a little nursery up there, you know, down that hall. Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_04 59:41

But I don't think it it wasn't open very long before they stopped delivering babies in it. Well, when did they build this new part of the hospital? What was that seventies? Or earlier than that? It's back in asbestos, so it'd probably be the f I think it was late seventies or mid seventies, maybe. Early seventies probably.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:00

You know what that far end built out of?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

Yeah. Oh, what is it built out of?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:05

Oh Air Force uh Oh the Um it came from the Air Force Base and Children.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:13

Childress. Yeah, I'd heard that, yeah. Yeah. Bunkers. They were like bunkhouses or something.

unknown 1:00:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:18

Barracks. So each individual room is a individual barracks. That was what it was, yeah, originally, yeah. Oh. They were brought in here like and set in and they added the hallways and Well that's pretty smart, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:33

Well they did it right. It's just like every other hospital has ever in it. You can walk around in here and get lost.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

Oh, you still can, because it's really dark back there now. But there's so many doors, like you can go this hall and come back through this hall in the middle. There's like four different ways to get around. So yeah. And then there's doors that go to nowhere. I mean, yeah. You're just like, where am I?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:01

Am I not am I in the right place? Anyways, I laid

The .22 Magnum And A Scar

SPEAKER_05 1:01:05

in a hospital bed over here where the doctor's office is across the way.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:10

Lay in a hospital bed.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:12

So that was the ERO on that side then? It was on this side. I was on this side.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:17

Oh. Yeah. And and watched the guy get up out of the back of a pickup. And he just barely could move, and I could tell he was in bunch of pain. And uh I can't remember remember the guy that brought him to the hospital. I will after a while. Yeah, when you get ready to leave.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:49

The guy got up and walked in the emergency room and died three days later. And he was out before y'all you grew up out there cutting barrels. Making feeders out of 'em. And uh this guy that I can't think of his name lived up there across the street from Ray Hopkins. And he drove up out there on this guy cutting about him and his wife. Drove up on this guy cutting his barrels and just talking to him, you know. Married, just fresh married. And his name, his last name was Ham. Why I can remember that, I don't know. And he was just talking to him, visting. He says, What are you doing? He said, Well, I'm cutting these barrels. Make some feeders out of them. He says, What's been in those barrels? He said, Well, I don't know. He said, You don't need to be cutting on them barrels if you don't know what's been in them. And it made that boy mad. So he w just walked over there, lit a torch and just touched that barrel and it blew up. And he s he sucked a fire down his throat is what killed him. Burned him. And he laid down there in that far end, and I listened to him scream for three days.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:17

Oh hell with that. Yeah. What year was that, you think? Early 70s, probably.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:27

Shot a hole in my leg, I think, no. Correct. Yeah. Uh so the angel. I admitted uh uh before I went to Alaska or after. Sixties. Yeah. Early sixties.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:48

So you got three sons, nine grandkids, yeah. Uh and four fixed to be five great grandkids. So that's twenty-one.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:58

There you go. That ain't near as many as Johnny D. Henry.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:02

No, shit, no.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:05

I think his he's up in his thirties.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:11

Yeah, he uh well let's talk about uh shooting yourself in the leg.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:16

Yeah, how'd that happen? I was working for on the missile site over uh what's that name of that town across the river from Corno? El Doreta. El Doreta. East of El Dre, and the missile site when they put the missile site in here.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:39

The sallows?

SPEAKER_05 1:04:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:41

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:42

There was a there was a sallow out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:45

Yeah. Yeah. There was I forget how many nine, I think nine bats around Alchist Air Force Base. I worked on that one over at El Dread. There's another over at O east of O'Dell. Yeah, I know where that one is.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:59

Yeah. But Are they empty now?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:03

Yeah. You think? No. They told me one day I'd I'd worked for three or four months. I just got from back from Alaska so that was 62. And they told me that day, one day I went in and I said he said, uh, Friday's gonna be your last day. So we're going to do an riff, it's just a reduction in force of government talk. And uh so use last heart to use the first fire, that's the way that works. So I'm all sad and stuff, so I worked that day. It was probably on Tuesday or something. And came home and uh somewhere or another got a hand on a bottle of maybe tequila. And me and Larry Haynes and Robert Hughes and Sarah Hughes was riding around in my car. And I had a 22 Magnum that I had bought in Alaska. So I decided I was, you know, pretty drunk. So it was a quick draw. Larry was driving my car. I said, stop here, I'm gonna shoot that sign. So I got out a quick draw. And I grabbed that I cocked a hammer back first. I grabbed that pistol. 22 magnet was about a eight-inch barrel on it. It went off as soon as I pulled slapped that gun, I it went off. And I heard it felt it slap my leg. I said, Oh hell. So I got back in the car. Larry said, Did you shoot yourself? I said, So I pulled out my bridges. I said, there's the hole right there.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:57

Where'd it come out at?

Beer Money, Back Roads, And Goodbyes

SPEAKER_05 1:07:00

About that far from where it went in.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:02

Bounced off the bone?

SPEAKER_05 1:07:04

No, I didn't touch the bone. Oh, just it had a hollow point in it. If it hit the bone, it would just 22 bags was pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:15

Holler point, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:17

So I brought me to the hospital. I stayed at the hospital twenty-one days because the doctor wanted to clean it the inside out. He said, if I don't, you'll have trouble with his leg in twenty years or something. Twenty days. Never had no trouble with it. I was nine I still I think I was nineteen. Might have might have turned twenty by then.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:42

He had to clean clean all the way through the wound.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:44

Yeah. About that far. And the hole it went in is yeah uh it went in about the size of a match. A kitchen match. And came out a hole down here about three inches below it, smaller than that. And when it rotted out, it left a scar about two inches long.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

Well hell yeah, it rotted out because they never gave it a chance to heal. They was constantly cleaning it for 21 days.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:15

Yep. That's crazy. Twenty days is like, oh, we gotta make sure to clean that shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

We gotta hurt them every day for 20 days. Oh my god. Is that what they did? They were cleaned all the way through it for running some some kind of Did that shit not hurt?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:27

No. That's all they did was just kill it. Nothing ever n nothing about it ever hurt.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:35

Not even when I So you're just laid in the hospital for twenty almost a month, just with the little little bitty hole.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:41

Yeah, little bitty hole where it went in.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:48

Oh, what'd your what'd your dad say about that?

SPEAKER_05 1:08:53

You got to be the dumbest kids I ever saw. Oh man. Yeah. Yeah, the two or three months later after that, uh, me and Kent Butler riding around. We need some money for some beer. I had that gun that gun in the car. He said, I can sell that thing. I uh I know a guy that'll buy that pistol. So he sold it to a guy in Barney for $90. I think I give not much more than that for it. Bought it in New Alaska. So he sold it for $90. Sold my gun for $90. So you get some beer beer.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

Yeah. I think I've done that before. I probably sold something. Drank it up, smoked it up, something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:42

Yeah. Hard times when you're young, you gotta do what you gotta do. Stupid. It ain't no hard too. Well, it seemed hard. Like, damn, I ain't got no beer tonight. What are we gonna ride around and do? I mean, it's not like there were a lot of things to do in Chilakati, so you had to ride around and drink. I mean, that's just we did that. Oh, yeah. All the way into the nineties. Damn, we spent we spent most of every weekend by on our farm. But it changed after nothing changed for years. Yeah, but after the nineties, whenever uh Med came out, then you couldn't ride around in the back rows no more because they were out the cops were out patrolling the back roads. You know, you used to not really mess with the back roads. Yeah. 96, 97. Yeah. After that, boy, you could you go on a back road, you're getting pulled over. Like how much was beer when y'all were drinking beer? $7.30 a case for natural life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:39

That's five dollars and twenty-five cents when I was growing up. Yeah. I got to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:46

All right, Derry.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:48

Tonight we're gonna uh say goodbye for the B Easy podcast. And uh we will be talking to you soon. But until then, I'm Bucky.