(19) "I Brought A Phillips 66 Screwdriver To A Phillips Problem-Early Jobs Before We Knew Why."

Ever have a job that smelled like hogs, paid in blisters, and still left you oddly proud? We go back to the work that raised us: gas station sprints to the pumps, oil can pyramids, crawling under a house to dig for an HVAC install, and long days stacking hay so tight a truck could lean and never spill. Along the way, there’s a one-armed coworker who solves a wheelbarrow problem with a rope and a nod, a widow who pays in Kool-Aid and a single piano hymn, and fathers who taught more by yelling than by guiding.

The thread tying these stories together isn’t nostalgia—it’s the ledger of effort and identity. One of us dodged chores and still got handed responsibility with the shop keys; the other paid rent as a teenager and bought his own clothes with farm wages. We weigh what money meant before we had any, and how praise from peers sometimes fills the silence where a parent’s approval should have been. The craft of work shows up in small, exact moments: knowing how to load a hay wagon that will not budge, spotting the right tool without a label, and finding out that repetition builds both strength and a strange kind of calm.

Then there’s the hard edge. We hauled heavy cans of grade C milk for cheese plants, lifted a hundred pounds to the truck bed over and over, and drove roads that made the load sway. The warning about a beam giving way seemed like tall talk until a driver on the other route died exactly that way. We don’t polish that memory, but we don’t let it erase what we gained either: a sense of grit, empathy for people who keep going, and a clearer view of how early jobs shape who we become.

If you’ve ever wondered why a compliment from decades ago still echoes or why certain tools feel like old friends, this one will hit home. Press play, share it with someone who’s hustled through a rough summer job, and tell us: what was your first real job and what did it leave you with? Subscribe, leave a review, and drop your story—we’ll read our favorites on a future show.

Please leave us your comments, text me, DM me, give me your thoughts.  what works and what doesn't land?  We want to improve.

thanks for listening

Joe

Transcript

Banter And A Rock Lyric Apology

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hey everybody, it's built down man and the Cardinal Giant. We're in episode 19. Very close to 20, Ed. I thought we'd already done 20, but we No, we haven't. We haven't done it yet. Uh I'm Joe Flush. This is my partner in crime, Edward Penn. Hey guys. Uh I gotta say, first of all, I want to apologize for one of the episodes that I just listened to. I think it was 16. I said Janice Joplin a bit of my heart. It's actually a piece of my heart. Take a little piece of my heart. Take a little piece of my heart. I know I said a bit of my heart. You know, I don't know what happens to me, Ed. Well, it's just crazy sometimes. I don't guess I caught it. And I'm afraid that Janice Joplin or any of her ilk will be mad at me, but maybe not. But anyway, not with my apology. That'll take care of it. Uh what else is going on?

News Tangent And Cat-In-Tree Debate

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Oh, I saw where uh the news was you know really important today. A guy was getting a cat out of a tree. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the war. You should talk about something way more interesting. Well, I don't know why they leaned into this, but a guy was going way up high in the tree to get this cat. And they were making him, you know, he's a hero. He's rescued however many cats he's rescued. How high in the tree was the cat, do you think? You know, I think it was two pinky the elephants.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

But at least that at least they hide a small, small skill bus high.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

It could be, yeah, it could have been a small bus high. Uh, but yeah, my my impression was, well, I guess that's good, but how do we know that the cat wanted to be rescued?

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Typically, when you get really, really close to them, I I found that this to be true. Uh, not that I've saved cats from from trees before, but I've witnessed it on TV. They really don't, they'll fight a little bit in when you get right up to them a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

And that kind of indicates maybe they don't want to go.

unknown 2:25

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And you know, why why do we feel like as human beings that we gotta be the one to make that decision? The cat got up there. Well, you think it's because we have bigger brains than the cat?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Do we really?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Well, it's funny, it's bigger for yeah, it's bigger, you know, the circumference is bigger, but I'm not sure we understand cats. And uh I you know, I was thinking, well, there's they might be food up there. Some birds could land, you know, maybe that's right. Maybe the cat has found the smorgasbord. It's his new normal. Yeah. But yeah, that was on the news. Anything you know of that that's on the news, yeah. The size of the war. I don't want to talk about the war.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Oh, thank thank God.

Are We Doing This For Money

SPEAKER_01 3:11

But uh I uh I was thinking about how much podcast money are we making so far?

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Well, I looked in my wallet right before I came over here. Don't ask me why, just to see if I had any money in it at all. I don't think we've made any money on this podcast. No, and you owe me some. Yeah, I owe you twenty dollars at least. Nope. You owe me you owe me fifty.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Fifty, okay. Yeah, because February and March. You want the cash? I want cash.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

What if I bought it to you in uh you know some other sort of uh remuneration?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

I had uh I had somebody uh uh sending me one of these things saying that look, they'd seen all my porn and all my stuff that I'd done on there, and they want to kind of uh give me a way out because they've recorded all of it and they've promised to delete it all. If I send them 1500 Monero, and I told them I said, you know, I was gonna pay you, but I'm all out of Monero. I wonder what the hell that is. I don't even have it.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Is it somebody pretending to be Spanish and don't know the word for it's sort of a combination of Moneda and De Nero, not not Roman, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Well, the truth is the podcast is probably never gonna make money, and I'm okay with that as long as I'm doing whatever the hell I want. No, you said you wanted to make big bucks with this. No, it was you. Oh, yeah. Uh have uh have you ever been motivated by money much?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Well, it's obvious that I haven't. I mean, I worked for a career for the Department of Revenue in Kentucky, so it was obvious I wasn't motivated. I was motivated by the challenge of it. No, that wasn't it either. So uh so that wasn't that it. Uh so no, I've never been motivated. Maybe I should have been.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

I you know, I don't think I have. I mean maybe we both should have been. I think there's reasons that I never really got motivated by money when I was a kid. Uh my parents just

Childhood Views On Work And Avoidance

SPEAKER_01 5:13

provided all the food, the lodging, the insurance, the gas. That was good. Yeah, yeah. And I you didn't have that extent. I didn't. I I had to pay rent at some point in time. That's that's bullshit, man. Yeah, I know. You can look at it, you're gonna have to be in therapy about that. You're gonna have to be in therapy. What the hell are you talking about? I've spent a lifetime there. But I remember when my my friend John Suter, who I just told you about last time, I remember when he got a job working at the little uh hardware store that was there. And I thought, why yeah, there was just a little, it was a little mom and pop kind of thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. When 350 people, there wasn't a lot of competition. But yeah, yeah, Johnny was going to work there, and I said, Why? Why would you do that? We got it made. Don't waste your hours or cartoons to see, and there's you know, all kinds of adventures around here.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

How old was he when he started working there?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

You know, I I'm gonna guess. I was gonna say I'm gonna say, but yeah, I'm gonna guess. I think probably twelve. Huh. And uh that wasn't unusual back then, you know, they throw a few bucks to people. But what work I did, I didn't like work. I was very uh I was against You're opposed to work, it seems like and you know, we grew up in a farm community, and uh but but dad was not a farmer. He did he worked his butt off everywhere. Uh I did not. And I remember going to the garden and and my grandparents' house and thinking, I don't like putting seeds in the ground. It was it was too much.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

I'm not even crazy about t picking the fruit or the vegetables after it's after the next one.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

No, no, I was lazy, and you know, we got asked to snap peas and stuff like that. Um and I think they did make a bit of a mistake in that I think had they thrown a little bit of money toward us, that would have motivated us. It wouldn't have been much. No, no. I mean, because when I did get jobs, it wasn't much. Yeah, but I worked at my dad's service station, and by work, I mean, I was a pump jockey running out, you know. We back then we had to kind of pranch out to the cars and stuff, even in Camelsburg. People weren't pumping their own gas back then. No, they were not. No. And uh there, you know, uh so that was my job, but dad would come in and give me other jobs like he wanted me to clean the floor and stuff like that. Who wants to do that? That's why he had a lot of nerve. That uh oil cans in the pyramids, you know? That's just because that was appealing to the customer's eye. Yeah, I guess. I guess I was aesthetic thing in the well, I did try putting them where I just stacked them one on top of the other. That's not a good idea. He didn't like the symmetry of that. It wasn't just the symmetry, it was he didn't like them falling on the ground. It wasn't the aesthetic, it was the practice. Yeah. Uh what I wish had happened with my dad, if I'd gone back, I wish he had been uh I wish he had wanted to teach me some stuff around there. Like, son, I you know, uh come here and you can see how I change the oil or change the tire and stuff like that. No, he kind of wanted me out of the way. But I I have one thing though, he he called for me one time, just and his uh way of operating was to yell, so he

Gas Station Chores And Dad’s Yelling

SPEAKER_01 9:00

yelled out at me and told me he needed a Phillips screwdriver. Jody? Yeah, yeah. And so I went in, I found one, brought it to him, it said Phillips 66 on this one. Seriously. And uh I didn't know, and he was not amused.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

I I suppose even uh even though you didn't use hammers probably in the service station business that would you have known the difference between a ball cane hammer and a claw hammer?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

I didn't know, no. It's a hammer, yeah, looked like a hammer to me. Uh but yeah, the dad's way of operating, and and of course I didn't get paid, but I I did do one thing as I got older that probably is I'm gonna paint myself in a better light. Uh dad loved going to the high school football and basketball games, and I didn't really give a crap. So he'd have me closing the station, you know, even as a kid. Uh he would leave and I had the keys, and I would handle any customers that came in and eventually close up. Uh gave you a sense of responsibility? You know, it it didn't I didn't mind it. Uh it probably wasn't a good idea. What about those people, those murderers that come in off the highway? Well, Camelsbury at that time was pretty sedate.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

It's not ever been the uh murder capital of the world.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Uh we got a lot of broken windows in the service states and stuff like that. And uh dad one time uh, you know, he'd get interested in trying to get a dog or something to guard it, and that never worked. And people that were coming in. And then I learned that uh your cash register, you always left them open with a bunch of pennies in there. So they would have something to steal once they got in.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

It wouldn't be much.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

But uh yeah, it was he didn't pay me, and then when later on when he went to the golf course, uh I also didn't get paid for the golf course. That I was doing uh more work. I was uh mowing the greens and I was uh putting out the water, you know, turning the water on.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

It's probably interesting and fun to you, I think. Well, or not.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

It should be, but uh I didn't handle the yelling all the time very good. I mean that that's his way of operating, and I understand as an adult, that's the model that was put before him.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

I think so. Because you never really asked him why he had to yell at you, though. No, I was afraid to be more yelling.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

And then I noticed at the golf course he yelled at everybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Uh a little side note, we had a guy working out there one time. We had a lot of guys working at the golf course making whatever they made, not much money. Probably close to minimum wage, I think. Yeah, probably less than minimum wage. But we had a guy in there that had one arm. He he was strong as an ox in that arm. Uh he walked everywhere. He didn't, you know, he didn't drive, didn't do anything. And uh one day Dad was pissed off about something, and he said, Marvin, go get me a wheelbarrow full of sand. And so Marvin makes his way out there, and we're we're just sitting waiting for him, and Dad said, What the hell did I just do? I sent a one-armed man to go get a wheelbarrow full of sand.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

He figured out how

Golf Course Stories And Lessons

SPEAKER_02 12:40

to do it, didn't he?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

He did. He came back, he popped up over the hill, he had a wheelbarrow full of sand, he had a rope around his neck. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I thought to myself, okay, I mean, it was a kind of a lesson as them figure it out. Yeah, you know. Figured out. But it was great. But, you know, again, I didn't get paid, but I I wasn't paying anything for food or but we were kids too. We were, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. Why so why were you paying uh your own rent and stuff?

SPEAKER_02 13:12

You know, to make me more of a responsible man. And uh and I don't know what that said about my sister because he made her pay her pay rent also. Um make her a more responsible woman, I suppose. But um, but yeah, I I even bought I bought all my own clothes too from the time that I could work on the farm. We lived in that a rural community. I think I've mentioned that before. From the time I could work on a farm, which was about 10, I started buying my Converse 10 shoes at Mr. Weeks.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Really?

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Yeah, I started buying anything that I wanted. I thought I had to have some bass moccasins. Do you remember the company Bass? No. They make bass moccasins and they make Oijans. Bass moccasins were a hand-sung top, and so were the Ouijans, but the moccasins were the ones. Everybody in my school wore bass moccasins. So I said, uh, you know, I'd like to have a pair of those, and I was in the sixth grade. And he said, Those shoes are too expensive. They're $24.95 at Phillips Shoes in downtown Lexington. And I said, I'm gonna make some money and buy them.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Okay, that explains something to you about your sense of fashion and all that. Well, it does a little bit, I guess, doesn't it? Yeah, because uh all of our things were uh whatever was cheap, whatever was the cheapest. Well, for us too, unless I bought it myself, you know. Yeah, but mom and dad didn't have any money, and I wasn't about to ask if for for stuff like that. And you weren't getting paid by your dad to do that. No, no. And and you know, I I mean, I thought that was okay. It seemed like a good deal. Seemed all right. I was still pissed though. I didn't want to do it. I'd much rather be home watching TV or going out with my friends.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yeah, going you didn't think you were being abused necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

No, I'd never no, and I don't think I was.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Hey, no, I really didn't think I was necessarily being abused. I just thought I want I guess every other family's pretty much like this, but I was making a dollar an hour hauling in hay and working in tobacco, chopping out tobacco with a hoe. So I was making good money, 50 cents to 75 cents to a dollar an hour.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Well, I guess you know, the first time I got paid for real was my teacher, uh Lawrence Hayden knew I talked about it before. Uh Lawrence uh hired me to help him put in a furnace. And uh I knew nothing about it was all just me being kind of learned how to do it, didn't you? Well, yeah, I did. And and uh but but the main reason I was there, well, I think I think the main reason was there, he was trying to be just kind. Yeah. Because I wasn't gonna be that grave of a worker, but he did, he had a problem getting under the house. He had claustrophobia really bad. Did you see yourself as an HVAC technician at that point? It sounds to me like you might could have. Well, I do remember that I kind of imagined how much money I might be making at the end of this thing. And I kept, and this is part of my OCD now. I kept all these records about when I started lunch to the minute and when I ended and all kinds of stuff like that. Um just to prove your worth at the end of the job. Yes, I did. And he was such a kind man. I'd I probably could have told him anything. Yeah. Uh he he gave me more than enough

Paying Rent Young And Buying Clothes

SPEAKER_01 16:30

to do that. And I appreciated that. And then and then I got a job uh working for craft foods.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Let's stop right there, folks. Okay. Let's go back to the putting in the furnace. So why don't you put in your own furnace now? Tell me why you don't do it. Is it just because you're lazy? You know, that you don't want to put anything from HVAC.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

I I tell you what I was best at in that in that job was I was really good at digging out dirt under the basement.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

That's pretty technical.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

He he would he would leave me for a long period of time, and and so while he was getting all the equipment and stuff that we were gonna need, I'm uh I'm under the house. I had no claustrophobia whatsoever, and I just dug dug dirt. So he was the brains, and you were the brawn for the for the he was the brains, and he was probably most of the bra, too. But yeah, I did that, and then you know, I guess the first one though was a paid job, it was like salary. What was your first one?

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Oh like well, I had two jobs. I I started out uh clearing out fence rugs um with a uh with a wheat hook. Some people call them a Kaiser blade. I call them a sling blade. It's a long hook, and it had a banana sort of thing on the end of it, and uh I called it a sling blade. Some people call it a Kaiser blade. But anyway, I used that uh wheat hook slash uh sling blade for for working in the fence roads, and I sort of had my own. You know, I used it the same one all the time.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Oh, you were you were a high tech. I didn't have my initials. Did you have to buy your own?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Well, uh I probably, but uh it could have had my initials in it. But you know, I wish I'd thought about doing that. That would have really made me happy, I think, at the time. Do you still have it? Uh no, I don't think so. Um but but I used several summers in a row, and I was pretty good at doing what I did except for the poison ivy that tended to be.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I wasn't I mean, I did of course I mowed yards. That was I think I think everybody did that. I didn't I mowed yards for a woman who uh she would always come out and complain about what I didn't get to or I didn't know that's close or not. And I I felt bad for her because her husband had been struck by lightning. And he lived a while after that happened, but she was pretty much on her own.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And uh uh so I would talk to her, she would bring Kool-Aid out.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

She liked that as much as the work.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yes, and she told um she told me that what she wanted to do more than anything was to learn to play a piano in there. You can't help her with that.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

I'm gonna tell you you could play the piano.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

No, no, pretty much. But my sister could, and my mother, and I forget how all that worked out, but she learned to play one song, and that's all she wanted. It was some gospel song. That's all she wanted. And she did that. Unfortunately, uh she took her own life. Yeah, it does. It does, but I think we gotta be honest about things about what you can do to help somebody for a while. You can help them. All we can do is help people for a short time, and uh then whatever happens to them happens.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

And I don't think any less ever for doing it, uh, people in pain do painful things, you know. I think that's true.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

I think that's true. Uh, but the first real paying job that I had that wasn't given to me by the lady up the road was there was there was a big uh pig farm next to the house that we lived in, and it made smell really good all our company smelled really good all summer and fall and spring. But anyway, uh they eventually became Double Stink Hog Farm, perhaps you heard of it. Oh, yeah. It's a big deal. They used to have rides out there, pumpkin patches

First Paid Gigs And Community Odd Jobs

SPEAKER_02 20:30

and stuff. But anyway, um uh uh Mr. Fister, Julius Pister, owned the property, and he asked one day, I I heard in the community that they needed someone to help in their truck garden. Well, I didn't know what a truck garden was, and no one uh our listeners probably except our age know what a truck garden is. But a truck garden was raising vegetables for groceries, so it it entailed me going out into the field, getting a I was nine or ten. I wasn't strong at all. I weighed about 57, 60 pounds probably. So I'd fill bushel baskets up and bring them back to the barn where there was a scale. And on that scale, I'd I'd fill the bags uh with potatoes and weigh them, and then uh and then uh I'd use a um I'd I'd fasten them at the top. Uh and but I'd do that all day long. And once I did that, I'd go back out and get more potatoes and I'd bring them back in, I'd sack them up, I'd weigh them and get them ready to send to grocery stores.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So I did that for I kind of do a political thing here. Do you know grocery? You know the word grocery is a very interesting word. I think I know that, but tell but tell me. Well well, groceries are more than one grocery.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

We just found that out.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Yeah. Is that is that what you heard from the Trump administration?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Oh, okay. That's enough of that. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

We're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah, we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

It was epiphany for him. Yeah, I know the word affordability is a word that he is thought someone made up.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

So there you go with that. Again, we'll not stay on that topic. Yeah, we'll stay on.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Uh I I guess the first real job that I had that I thought was uh I mean I had a real salary to it all the time was I worked health benefits? U no benefits. No. Well health detriments you might say. It was a very dangerous job working for craft foods. Uh they had we would go around to farms to collect large cans of uh milk at all these farms, and you know, we would get in the truck and drive, you know, four or five miles, get out, put twenty cans up on the truck. Tell us how big that can was. The can was big and they were heavy. The can was for large. It was uh I mean, seriously, there were about a hundred pounds and all that. Now, I could lift, even as a kid, I could, you know, lift lift a hundred pounds. When you got to have twenty of them that you do have to lift them up onto the truck? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Well, that was problematic.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

And uh, and so I did that uh I did that for a while, and actually then it became like easy. So I found out that repetition got me to where I could put those up. How far up did you have to lift those cases? Four or five feet? Three? I had to lift them up probably close to shoulder height.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

And uh and Freddie was great, man. He was he was a great guy, and we we traveled around and every day we'd go on out, and you know, little by little it was breaking my back down. Of course, even as a kid, he strongly uh but he was a kind man, and uh I have to tell you this there was there were two truck divers. By the way, this was grade C milk. Have you heard of grade C milk? I have now. I haven't before. Well, grade C

Truck Garden And Farm Work Realities

SPEAKER_01 24:00

milk uh would sound like it might be nasty. It does. No, it was worse than that. I mean, you'd go to the farms and the milk vat sometimes would be just covered with green plies. And and uh also some of the milk that we saw put in the cans uh were from cows that had mastitis. So it was a lot of blood and oh my gosh. So it was nasty, nasty. And why would they take that? Well, they were making cheese out of it. It was crafty.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

The craft company was making cheese out of it.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

Yep, and we did that, and I don't even think there is such a thing as anything other than grade A milk or anything. I certainly don't see how you could get by with that now, do you? I do not. No way. Um, but was it nasty? Yes. Was it dangerous? Yes. And uh there were two trucks. I was with Freddie, and there was another guy, I can't think of his name, that was in the other truck. But we we kind of we always covered the whole area, so we'd stop and talk to him and all that. And the guy told me one day, he said, you know, if if any of these beams ever break, that milk is gonna come down on the cab of that truck and kill you. I'm going, okay, that's good to know.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

So so how many levels were the cans? Did you have two, three levels?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

They were they were at least two levels. You know, you know the height of a can and then had to come shoulder length to get to post level. And so it was pretty high up. And some of these crooked uh places that we had to come, man, they were they were really dangerous. And uh you'd feel the truck kind of weave to one side and the other with all that heavy milk in there. Nothing went wrong for us.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Well, I'm glad we're talking about some of these early jobs. That it makes me um I it doesn't make me um necessarily uh respect you more, but yeah, it sort of does a little bit. Well we all all us kids were doing that kind of work back then in the 50s and 60s.

SPEAKER_01 26:07

Yeah, but uh unfortunately this kind of had a sad ending to it because uh the guy that drove the other truck went off the road, and he, as he predicted, the cab of the truck smashed and killed him.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

And uh that was my last summer doing that.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Let me tell you uh kind of a positive thing about some of the crushed by yeah, a feel-good thing that I'm trying to push in the clutch and change the gear just a little bit. Let me uh I want to talk about a job or jobs that I had that that in the long run there was some just it wasn't big pain, but there was some intrinsic value. Let me tell you what that intrinsic value was. I had a friend, Durban Wallace, who was two years older than me, and he lived in the neighborhood, Newtown, a little place outside of Georgetown, Kentucky. Uh our neighborhood was full of kids my age. Uh Durbin and I would work together, and I was 14 or 15 or 16, and I'd help him haul hay out of the field. And I'd stack it. He'd drive the tractor, of course, because he was the boss. He'd drive the tractor, and it'd either be pulling the wacken without the baler on the back of it, or the bales were on the in the field, and I had to pick somebody had to

Dangerous Milk Routes And Grade C Cheese

SPEAKER_02 27:20

pick them up and throw them to me. But um, I could load a rectangular uh load of hay that was perfect, that would not budge under any circumstances. And it was it was per and I I don't know how I learned how to do it. Maybe I watched him a couple of times, but one day I'm 14 or 15, and he's 16 or 17, and he said, you know, you're the best at loading hay on a flatbed truck of anybody. Now, for what that's worth, that was a big deal for me. Yeah, yeah. He said, You're the best. I've seen a lot of people load hay. You're the best I've ever seen. I'd like to see the poll. You can't I've ever seen. And here's another one. Same thing. We were housing debacle, and I happened to be on the bottom rail. And because I could I could reach down further than everybody else. So the bottom rail guy has to handle every stick. That means he's handing every stick up, including what he's what he's what he has to be responsible for. And I was up on the bottom rail, and it was in late August, early September, and Durbin was below me, and another young guy, uh, Ben Johnston, and uh, and I could barely see him because I was getting covered up with tobacco. Right. You probably know that. Yes. So I I bent down to get, I could reach it out of their hand before they could hand it to me. So I could reach it, they'd just be handing, sit standing there talking, and I could reach and get it. But anyway, Durbin said, and Ben Johnston at the time was younger than me, like four or five years, I guess. Um, and this was later after I got older, somewhere around 19 or 20, and they were talking about somebody who was good at bottom rail. And Durbin said, There's not anybody better than Eddie is right now doing this. Not anybody better than that. And for for me, I didn't get those compliments from my dad. And I think that was part of it. I didn't get them from my father.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah, I didn't I didn't get those kind of compliments either. I mean, uh I I'm not sure that I deserved any compliments on the I Well, I didn't even think I did. Well, yeah, but but I tried uh I tried housing tobacco, and that man, that was hard work. And of course, uh I think what uh my dad didn't want me doing it, and the reason, and we'll get into this on a different episode, but my dad uh was on the high tier, he fell three tiers, the thing broke. Oh, and and he knew that this building should have should have killed him. I mean that's but we'll save that one when we're talking about our dads. Yeah. But uh yeah, I think these uh I think these early jobs, I think they shape you. I think they really did.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

And I, you know, I hated it at the time because I was sweaty and hot all the dang time. But it I knew that I could do it, and it was good for me in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Well, I uh you and I think we're gonna have to do another episode about our current jobs, are the jobs that we've had drunk men jobs. But I I can tell you that that's a nice old uh trip for me, just bringing that stuff up. And you know, I I saw where Freddie passed away a few years ago, and most of these people that I work for, Lawrence passed away. They're long gone, aren't they? Oh, they're long gone. They're just in my head, you know. Yeah, sort of like the music's in in mine. Yeah, you got the you got the music. You got the music in you. I did, I did. Speaking of music. Yeah, let's go.