Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 35 Rhett & Link "Summer Jobs" - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: May 30, 2014

In this special Rhett & Link-only episode, the guys share some never-before-heard stories about a multitude of summer job experiences. From receiving the nickname "Mr. Brain Farts," gauging visitors' vomit potential on amusement park rides, building a house with no prior experience, and driving around aimlessly in circles in a government-owned truck, Rhett & Link commiserate with their listeners who have suffered through, or are about to embark upon, summer employment. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Thanks for joining us for this Ear Biscuit at the round table of dim lighting this week. Can you sense our guests here in our midst, silently waiting to be introduced? Yeah, I can. Well, there's... Because I'm one of them. I'm the other one. It's just us this week.

It's another digital respite from interviewing anyone besides ourselves. That's right, your guests are us. I feel like you can get away with this. Did I seem apologetic? I'm not apologizing to you, loyal listeners. I'm just trying to be creative in telling you that. We're it. This is us again.

But you can get away with this when there's two of you. If you interview yourself as an individual, then that seems pompous, arrogant. Self-absorbed by definition. Especially if you're asking the questions and then answering them. But we're not above trying that. I'm not going to say it's not going to come answering them. But we're not above trying that. I'm not going to say it's not going to come to that,

but not today, because today we're going to, we've got some of your questions, I think a few, and then we structured this episode to be more of a reminiscing episode based on the fact that a milestone is approaching. It's that time of year again. The summer solstice. Summer time, the living's easy.

You know, the funny thing is, is a lot of times people, you know, you say things like, summer's here because you've done something like your school's out or whatever.

And then there's somebody who's like, it's technically not summer yet. The summer solstice is not until Gen 21st or whatever. That's what it is this year. And I actually found myself looking that up a second ago to figure out, oh, when is summer? You know, summer is when

school gets out. Traditionally. Whether you're in school or not. Even if you're in year-round school, okay? This summer solstice thing is overrated. That happens halfway through summer vacation. And can I take a second just to say... Take any seconds. This summer solstice thing is overrated. That happens halfway through summer vacation. And can I take a second just to say... Take any seconds. Never stop learning.

I mean, just because school gets out or you're not in school anymore or your brain is filled to capacity, never stop learning. You know, it hurts my heart to hear you say that, that you stopped learning. Give me a break. Did somebody tell you they stopped learning? That's what they were saying just now.

The voices? Oh, the voices in your head. You didn't hear them? No. Okay, so this is what we've decided to do. We are going to reminisce over our summer jobs, summer experiences when it relates to occupational jobistry. Well, you know, I got to say we have a great job now. Wouldn't trade it for anything. Love what we do.

But it's definitely, you know, summer rolls around and what is it? It's just more of the same. I mean, we just keep on trucking. We keep making YouTube videos. We keep doing ear biscuits. We don't have the on and off again schedule that you have, you know, before you become an adult. And it's just, there was just something

about that schedule that you had. You had all these markers besides just a birthday every single year to mark your aging. I mean, sure, there were things happening with your body that may have embarrassed you a little bit and your voice was changing and cracking and those kinds of things.

There was all kinds of physical signs that you were changing. But you had like a new grade, right? You're like, oh, I'm in ninth grade now. I'm in high school, new experience. And then in between each year, you had summer vacation. And then at some point, somebody made the decision that, oh, you just can't be a kid anymore. You've got to go get a job.

You've got to make some money. Now, luckily for me, it wasn't like I was being sent out to make money for the family. I know a lot of people legitimately, you turn like 12 and they're like, you got to bring home the bacon, you know. For me, it was just, you've got to save up for a Nintendo game personally. It was a very selfish pursuit when I first decided I'm going to do this summer job thing. Or pay for the gas for your car type of a scenario. Yeah. I mean, I did that.

My first job was pre-driving though. It was? Oh, yeah. And I'm almost sure yours was. Well, if you're talking about mowing lawns, yeah, that was my first job, which was a summer job, but it kind of, you know,

it went into the spring, it went into the fall. So I don't call that technically a summer job, but I was definitely, had an entrepreneurial streak there, and it moved at about the pace of a snapper riding lawnmower. Well, that's convenient because Armyboy52 asked on Twitter, is lawnmowing a good job for a first job when young? Absolutely.

Link? Absolutely. I mean, there's inherent hazards. I mean, there's a moving blade, for heaven's sakes. So you shouldn't be too young. You got to know which side of the lawnmower to sit on, not the bottom side. So you got to be a certain age. And yeah, my papa, Lincoln, he got me lawns around his neighborhood to mow.

And he negotiated the price and everything for me. I got you some lawns. But I took his snapper lawnmower, rode it across the street, and I would cut Miss Alice's lawn, and then I would cut. What are we talking about? How much for a lawn? $15. That's pretty good back in those days.

Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I mean, when the chief of police negotiates your lawn mowing rate. It was charitable, I'm sure, though. He's packing heat. Surely you weren't doing that good of a job. I was immaculate at this thing, man. The lawns were immaculate. I was immaculate.

Everything was immaculate. I remember when my dad just tried to pass off mowing our lawn to me and my brother. My brother's older, so he was the first one to take over the job from my dad. But I remember my dad out there with me with a push mower. We didn't have a riding lawn mower. We had a push mower. We didn't have a riding lawn mower. We had a push mower.

We had a small lawn. He was trying to show me how to figure out where to mow next. He's like, okay, now see? I mowed right here, and now I'm going to mow the next strip, and I couldn't see the strip. I couldn't see where the grass had been mowed. He got so mad at me. He says, you can't see where the grass has been mowed?

You know, and it's just like, I think about how frustrated he was with me, and it helps me these days, as I relate to my kids, because I think, we just can't see, kids, they just don't see things like where the grass has been mowed, even though it seems so obvious. To us. Is that why you were held back a grade?

Because you couldn't see where the grass had been? I don't recall being, I was held back for height, actually. No, I was put fourth, I skipped a grade because of height, not because of academic performance. Okay, so the lies cancel themselves out. Yeah, right. You neither went back or forwards in grades. But yeah, I mean, I would...

My business expanded quickly. I had to drive... This was before I had my driver's license. I drove that lawnmower across Main Street, Lillington to get to lawns on the other side of town. I remember seeing you from time to time. Most people would load the lawnmower up on the back of a truck and drive it to the places. Nah, I mean, the lawnmower is a form of transportation.

It's very slow. I'm going to take it. So I'm going across like a- Intersection. Yeah, a big intersection. I was at a stoplight On a lawnmower Every week And you're like 12 years old Well, yeah

I mean, this is It's Lillington, North Carolina It's not The rules are different At least at the time And like I said The chief of police Negotiated all of these

Deals for me He didn't give you A police escort, did he? No, he didn't But I did have a siren On the On the lawnmower I did not

My first job I didn't get paid To mow the lawn for my family. I just did that on my own. But my first paid job was for Hartman & Hartman Chemical Company. Remember Hartman & Hartman? Yeah. H&H. Jerry Hartman.

Jerry Hartman's company. Yeah. Outside of Buies Creek, North Carolina. It was a clandestine operation. Like he had a big warehouse behind his house, right? No, it wasn't behind his house. And a helipad? It was on the way to Benson.

It was past Coates on 27 on the way to Benson. And he just had a big warehouse. And it was H&H. It was him and his brother, but I never saw his brother. It was just him and some other dude who wasn't his brother, and then me for a few weeks. This job didn't last long. It was just like an introduction to what a job could be. My mom dropped me off there because I think I was 14. But what did you do? Well, H&H products was, and maybe to this day, was known for their air fresheners. And when I say air fresheners, I mean like a bottle with some air freshener liquid in it and then a rope wick.

You know those old school type air fresheners that you find in like the shelf of an elementary school in like 1978? Yeah, and it's like all hardened and you're like, ew, what is this? Yeah, all it is is there's some perfume inside of a bottle, like a little, almost like a medicine bottle, a little brown bottle. And then there's this rope wick that goes into the thing through some paper. And then the liquid goes up the wick and then it permeates into the air. It permeates into the thing through some paper. And then the liquid goes up the wick, and then it permeates into the air. It permeates into the air. Did you mix the liquids, too? No, no.

I had no contact with the liquids. I was a wick man. I was the wick man. I had to cut the rope and fold it and stick it into these paper tops. And then pour the liquid in there. No, no. I was too young. I didn't get the liquid.

No, Rhett doesn't get to touch the liquid. He's a wick man. He gets to touch the rope and the paper. And you do this like eight hours a day? You're twisting wicks? Cutting wicks? There's not even a twist. It's just a cut and a fold.

To this day, I am really good at cutting equal-sized pieces of rope. If you ever need that, if there's a need around here, give me 14 two-inch long pieces of rope. I'll be back in 90 seconds, and I'll have them. And they'll all be the same length. But they won't smell good. Because I was a wick man. Because you can't touch the liquids.

But they won't smell good. Because I was a wick man. Because you can't touch the liquids. But this was the kind of job that I lost heart really quickly, early on every day. Was that a pun because it was Hartman and Hartman? I would do a few, and then Jerry would come back there, and he'd catch me just sort of daydreaming.

I mean, lots of daydreaming. Like staring at the wall? Oh, yeah, I was a daydreamer, buddy. And when you give a 14-year-old the WIC man job, I mean, you can't expect too much, right? He would come back there and yell at you? He'd be like, Ah, Retta!

Cut some WICs, brother! You've only done 17, huh? Well, you know, we're to need a couple hundred more today. So did he fire you? Is that what I'm hearing? No. It was a temporary position. I think I was actually raising money for a trip or something.

When we went to Trinidad or something. Oh, really? It could have been related to that. So the money kind of went to charity? Well, I mean, I used it for a trip. Okay. I had a good time. But anyway, that's the first actual work I ever did for money. Now, you talk about staring at the wall.

One of my first jobs, I became known as the kid with the brain farts. We didn't call it spacing out. I worked for my uncle actually my my dad started the family for one summer um well they always were farmers and then one summer my dad worked with them and that meant that i also worked with them at farming tobacco okay

that's a real job now i'm talking and we call it barning tobacco because the process is uh there's people who pick the bottom at appropriate times you end up picking all the leaves off the tobacco stalks but you do it over time when they're ready you start at the bottom the bigger ones blah blah blah i think it's important to set the stage for people where we grew up north carolina in rural north carolina tobacco is the cash crop and it's and it. I mean, on our way from my house, driving to high school, it was like a 10 mile trip and you would pass 20 large fields with nothing but tobacco in them. Nothing but tobacco. Now that's not the case. Since going back home, they've been replaced with soybeans and other things. But that was the deal. That was North Carolina.

So there were tobacco fields everywhere. Right. And I would drive over there at the crack of dawn, be like 5.30 in the morning because it got really hot. And you couldn't work in the heat of the day in these tobacco fields. But there would be a group of people that would pick the tobacco leaves, throw them on a trailer. They'd bring the trailer around to the barn. And then I would be at the barn. My uncle would be supervising.

My cousin would be there, Ashley. Jonathan, my half-brother, he was there. It was like a family affair. And then a bunch of employees, too, would be at the barn, and you would grab big pieces of big groups of these tobacco leaves, and you'd stack them in this apparatus that would like a rack a metal rack put the rack together and then pick this very heavy rack up i would say the you had to pick up the rack with like a a crane type apparatus like a small electric operated crane

i'd say it weighed 500 pounds one of these things pretty dangerous and you're how old um well i was 16 because i would drive i would drive there um and we would put the you know you'd put the tobacco in the racks and then you'd pick up the rack with the thing and two people would feed it onto the shelf and then we would then you would slide the rack push it all the way to the back of the barn, which is basically a metal box that had a fan at the back. And it would slowly cook the tobacco over time. It would cure the tobacco. So you load it all with tobacco. It's like making beef jerky, but it's tobacco.

Yeah. You would cure it. It goes in green. It comes out brown and cured. Ready for cigarettes. And then you can put it. It goes in green. It comes out brown and cured. Ready for cigarettes. And then you can put it in some cigs. But it was just so repetitive. And you would be waiting around for your particular place.

Okay, once this is stacked, I'm going to help you pick this up. So you have certain points in the process where you would engage. And then the rest of the time, my brain would disengage. So I had these extended brain farts there would be no smell but it would be this is look on my face of total stupidity that my uncle johnny just i said he's having a brain fart again and i would wake up and everyone would be laughing and then i would pick up the thing and move it because it was just so mind what were you thinking about those days i mean I mean, I don't remember, but anything but burning tobacco.

I mean, anything to get out of there mentally. And you didn't... I mean, what did you think of when you stared at the wall in the wick factory? Oh, all kinds of things, man. Ideas. I was thinking about that screenplay that we were trying to write, Gutless Wonders. You were probably thinking about the same thing.

You just don't remember. And girlfriends, wonders. You were probably thinking about the same thing. You just don't remember. And girlfriends, potentially. You were thinking about Anna. Yeah, it might have been a Sarah John phase. Oh, thinking about Sarah John, huh? Yeah, I think at that point. Really, picking tobacco and thinking about Sarah John. But it was just a mindless type thing that I became known as Mr. Brain Fart.

And then one day I got tobacco poisoning. If the tobacco's wet and it comes into contact with your skin for a prolonged period, the nicotine, and I don't know what else from the tobacco, starts to soak in through your skin. And I felt deathly sick for about a week. I couldn't get out of bed. You're kidding. How come I don't remember this? Tobacco sickness. It's basically like if you I couldn't get out of bed. You're kidding. How come I don't remember this? Tobacco sickness. It's basically like if you had to just smoked a bunch of cigarettes, having never smoked any before. It's like my body smoked six packs a day.

You smoked cigarettes the way a frog would smoke cigarettes. Right. Like through the skin. Right. It was vomiting. Well, that's how frogs do tobacco. They just get up next to a tobacco leaf. They do tobacco.

So, I mean, that was a tough job. But I think it's, you know, you got to take part in like a cultural moment in history. Yeah, it is pretty cool to think. You know, in which tobacco was being grown as a huge cash crop in North Carolina, being made into cigarettes that everyone around us was smoking. Well, by that point, a lot of people had stopped smoking by the time. It was falling out of vogue a little bit. And they were beginning to send a lot of it over to China

where everybody was smoking in China. That's what a lot of the farmers were doing. But it's just interesting that... We're talking 1994. It just sounds archaic. It's like, yeah, I worked in tobacco fields i'll never forget i mean you had to invent things to do in order to occupy yourself and so whenever we would take a break my cousin keith who was a lot older big guy big beard big belly big everything uh he

only wore shorts and like teva sandals. Those are great for picking tobacco. And he made fun of me for being a soccer player. Oh, yeah. You're a dork. You wear ombros. He was a football player, like big, like linebacker type dude. He always made fun of me. He didn't call me brain fart.

He just called me soccer player. Soccer player? It wasn't more creative? He didn't call you soccer boy or anything? Not that I recall. You're a soccer player. But he was like, and one day he was like, man, you think you need endurance and speed to run soccer? Man, me being a linebacker, I bet you right now I could beat you in a sprint to daddy's house.

Uncle Ross, his dad. Is Keith still around somewhere? He's living, but he's fine. He's not an Ear Biscuits listener, I don't think. And I'm not the competitive type, but I'm like, okay. And so we go out to the dirt road in front of the barn where we're barning tobacco, and he scrapes his foot and draws a line, start line. He's like, all right.

And he tells my cousin Ashley, he's like, Ashley, I want you to count down from three, and then we're going to go, and I'm going to show him what's what. And he's got on Tevas. What do you have on? Like – Sambas? Tennis shoes and shorts. I mean, it's 110 degrees.

And I'm kind of nervous because, like I said, I don't like to compete. And, like, I was literally, if it wasn't so hot, I would have started sweating my armpits. So I was getting nervous. I was like, man, I guess I'm going to try. And she's like, three, two, one. And boom, I just take off. Like boom, I'm just giving it all I got.

And I'm like, I'm like Usain Bolt, Bo, leaving the line. But after about five. Carl Lewis would have probably been the right reference at the time. Five steps. I'm like going full speed and I just happen to look over my shoulder. And as I look over there, Keith is taking his first step. And he's buried his Teva in the sand and fallen flat on his face. Like, first step.

Oh, gosh. And he's the one who issued the challenge. Yeah. I just stopped. How do you recover from that? Mercy. It's like that MMA fight that's going viral now where the guy was beating him so bad that he just tapped himself out of pity for the guy.

There's a video going around. Well, that's what happens. Anyway, you know, you had to do things to invent ways to un-brainfart yourself. Did he ever talk about it? Didn't say a word. He never challenged you again either. Didn't say a word when he got up. There was no conversation.

We just went back to work. I mean, he was still a huge guy. I wasn't gonna make fun of him. Oh, yeah. He was like, he ain't gonna say nothing to me about falling down. I don't care. Soccer boy. Soccer player over there. You worked one summer. I had a pretty epic job.

I did. I had a couple of epic, you know, heat of the South jobs. Pray tell. The summer after my sophomore year in high school, I started working for Trent's dad, Frankie Hamilton, construction. And, you know, Frankie was a man who owned a lot of properties and was building a lot of homes. He had a construction business and then he had a lot of rental properties. He was sort of a bigwig in the Lillington area.

And, of course, we were good friends with his son, Trent, one of our best friends. Did all kinds of stuff with Trent. Well, Trent was cool because he had everything. Oh, yeah. I mean, Frankie being so well-off as a home builder, Trent was like the first guy with the souped-up computer, with the internet. Chat rooms. He was the only guy with this thing called the internet.

Right. And his own widescreen TV in his room, and his own bathroom in his own bedroom. Well, and I remember him saying, you know, I'm going to be working for my dad this summer, and I was thinking, this seems like a good deal. You got Trent working for his dad. You know he's not going to make him do that much. I was thinking, this seems like a good deal. You got, you know, Trent working for his dad, you know, he's not going to make him do that much. I'm in on this. He's probably going to pay us great because he's got all this money. So I'm in on that. And then, um, I show up my first day and, uh, I'm, I'm ready. You know, we're going to, we're going to build things. We're going to

change the world. And, uh. Or do nothing and get paid. No, I say, so what's my job? And they say, you're going to be the guy who goes to our homes that we've just finished building, and you're going to clean out the crawl space. So let me just paint a picture here. Like literally the space that you have to crawl in under a house Yes, hence crawl space. Yeah, so in north carolina very few people have basements and I don't know what it's like where you come from But in north carolina and most of the south you have the foundation of your house

And you've got this two to four foot area Underneath the house, right, as the house is being built, the construction workers usually just throw whatever it is that they have on their person when they finish their meal from McDonald's or they finish their Pepsi bottle with a bunch of chal juice in it, that's tobacco juice. They just throw it into the foundation because they know that some dill weed named Rhett

is going to be personally responsible for picking up every single piece of trash and then putting plastic down underneath the whole house. So the foundation is just a convenient trash receptacle. I mean, they wouldn't like micturate in there or anything. I smelled urine from time to time. I did. But I got to tell you, I was already 6'5 at the time.

So, you know, I'm a little over 6'6 now, 6'6 and a half. I was already 6'5 by the time I was 16 years old. This is a large person to be going up under houses, and they were like, you got to watch for snakes under there because the snakes, the black snakes and the copperheads will get up under there. Never saw a snake, but spent the summer squeezing around in this cave-like place underneath houses. Totally dirty at the end of the day.

It's one of those days where every single day I came home I had those dirt boogers. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, dust boogers. You just been next to this dirt all day. I would get all this nasty trash, all the stuff that the construction workers had just thrown into the foundation. I would package it

up and put it into the convenient dumpster that was still on the site that they could have been using the whole time, but they didn't. Oh, how nice. And then I would roll out the plastic, the vapor barrier. Well, where was Trent? That summer, Trent was off doing stuff on the rental properties. So that summer, we didn't spend a lot of time together. Okay.

That was a difficult job. But the next summer rolls around, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to go back and work for Frankie. I don't remember all the details, but I know that I had worked it out with Trent that I wasn't going to do that same job. And Trent said, no, you know what we're doing this summer? Me and you and Mr. Fred are building a house.

I'm like, what? He says, yeah, me and you, two 17 year olds and Mr. Fred, a 65 year old man are building, the three of us are framing a home. He was like, yeah. Okay. So out there in Lillington, there was above your pay grade. Oh, you think I had barely swung a hammer. And so I'm not, it almost seems like I'm making this up, but I'm not making it up. So we show up and there's a foundation and this is a, like a ranch style home, a two bedroom, smaller home. And kind of about like the size of the house that you grew up in, in, in Buies Creek over there. So like, you know, that size. Two bedroom carport situation. That size home. And he says, okay, I've got the blueprints.

So this is how, I don't know how home building works now, but the way it works. You never even built with Legos as a kid. No, well, I did a little bit of Lego. Tinker toys? Yeah, that kind of thing. Mr. Fred says, all right, here are the blueprints. There's the wood. Let's go. right, here are the blueprints. There's the wood.

Let's go. And we look at the blueprints and we start building the walls. He's like, here's how you build a wall. You take, you put a two by four on the ground and then you nail it together and then you do this and you do this and all right, now let's lift it up. And now I'm going to nail it into the foundation. And the whole summer, every day, we just showed up at this site.

And at what point did it all fall in on itself? Well, there was one moment where we got to a place where the blueprints became a factor. When we got to a closet, and I was like- Walk-in closet became a broom closet? I was like, I don't know what we did wrong, but this closet is about 12 inches deep.

Really? It was a broom closet. Yeah. A decorative door. One of the bedrooms ended up with a very shallow closet. And, you know, I think that's just par for the course. Something had to give, and literally the closet gave. At one point, we got to the end of the room, and we had put it all together,

and it's like after that, you're like, well, I guess it's just going to be, they're going to have to have some, they're going to put the shirts sideways, hang the shirts sideways. Six of them. And I don't know if Mr. Fred ever went back and kind of made up for that. But yeah, it was on the way to Western Harnett on the road that your mom lives on now. 27. Okay, so this house is still there. Oh, yeah. The house is... Someone is using the closet right now.

Someone's cursing that closet every day. And it's out there, and it was a foundation out on some land that someone had, and the only thing I remember is there was a fig tree, and we would eat the figs off of this fig tree. Huh. So if you live between Lillington, North Carolina, and Western Harnett High School on 27, and there's a fig tree in your backyard and you have a one foot deep closet

in one of the bedrooms in your home. I built that house. Me and an old man. Rhett built your house and he'd like to come hang out this Christmas when he comes back home. Okay. Uh, we underscore AL four 57 asks,

did you or Rhett ever get fired from a summer job? No, but I came pretty close. And this job that I had is going to sound like potentially a really fun, maybe one of the best summer jobs. I'd like to have that job. But I'll tell you right now, it turned out to be one of the most difficult, I'll just say it, worst jobs I've ever had. And I worked in tobacco for a summer. In college, I spent one summer in Santa Cruz, California, and I worked at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk as an amusement park ride operator. as an amusement park ride operator.

There were different sections to the park, and I got assigned to a section that had some kiddie rides, but it had a couple of those spinny rides. Tea cups. It was kind of like tea cups, but they couldn't say that because, well... Tea cups are patented. Walt Disney would run them out of business or something. Walt Disney would like, you know, run them out of business or something. So every day you would come in and the supervisor would assign me to my ride.

Are you going to be on the ladybugs with the four-year-olds? Are you going to be on the imitation teacup spinny things? Kind of like a spider spinny thing to it. One memorable day, I was assigned to this spin ride. And the way that it works is you have to put your foot on a foot pedal in order to prove to the ride that there's an operator there. And at that point, you can press the go button and the stop button. Safety mechanism. Right. They just don't want someone to press go and then walk away.

So you got to stay on that. But the way that you would stop it, actually there wasn't a stop button, you would take your foot off of the thing, and then you take your foot off the pedal, and it would take a while for it to come to rest because everything was spinning so fast. And so there was an art to stopping the thing subject to people looking like they were getting sick. So there's not a predetermined length of ride. There is a predetermined length of ride, but people are prone to get sick because they're so dizzy,

and then you have to try to make the ride as long as possible. But cut it short, maybe. Cut it short if somebody's going to vomit. So that was interesting. There was a challenge involved in that because people... And they told you this on the orientation? No, I learned this myself. Oh, really?

I learned it the hard way. People vomited on my ride. And then you realize, I'm going to start looking at these people's faces whenever they come around. And when the face turns blue and the cheeks are getting big, I better learn to anticipate that to take my foot off of the pedal with enough time for it to stop so they can get off and vomit in the bushes. Now, when someone vomited on the ride, are you personally responsible for cleaning it up,

or is there like a dude, the vomit man? Nope, it was me. And they had a rolled up garden hose so this dude is vomiting i can't stop the ride people start vomiting you take your foot off the pedal and it's still spinning oh gosh and then when he gets on somebody else they vomit no in the movies at least this particular no this particular time just that one guy i think the girl when it stopped she got off ran and vomited in the bushes but least. No, this particular time, just that one guy. I think the girl, when it stopped, she got off, ran, and vomited in the bushes.

But I have to say, okay. I turn to everyone waiting in line. I'm like, I'm sorry. This ride is now closed. I put up the sign. All the people in the line go away. They don't want to get on the ride anyway at this point. And then I have to get the garden hose

and just start hosing down everything. Hosing the vomit off of everything. Oh, gosh. And it just so happened that there was a hot dog stand right next door to my ride, which is stupid. They should put that on the other side. Not only because people were eating and get sick, but because it turns out that the diameter of the hot dog is slightly larger than the diameter of the drain holes in the bottom of the teacups.

Meaning I had to garden hose everything out, and then I was left with just nice bite-sized chunks of hot dog. That's somebody who's swallowing a hot dog pretty quickly. That's how you eat a hot dog. You just bite it, bite it, bite it, swallow, swallow, swallow. I do. That's what he did. Butowing a hot dog pretty quickly. I mean... That's how you eat a hot dog. You just bite it, bite it, bite it, swallow, swallow, swallow. I do, I do. That's what he did. But I'm well-trained.

I mean, I can eat hot dogs really quickly. I mean, I was spraying the water pressure. Like, I was really trying to get it to go down in that drainage hole, and I couldn't get him to go through that. I had to scoop him out. Rubber glove? I don't recall that.

I don't think we had rubber gloves. Did you have a special shirt on? I'm pretty sure I had a rubber glove. I had on like a tropical themed shirt. Oh, wow. Scooping out with a glove, I'll say. I have to have thought I had a glove. I have to think I had a glove. Scooping out hot dog remnants.

Now that's bad. And then the next day you get assigned to the little ladybugs and four-year-olds are peeing and you got to use Windex and clean that out. Oh, this is not a fun job. So, and then you're not talking to anybody. People don't want to talk to you. They just want to get on the rides. And so it's kind of this miserable existence.

I mean, there's cute girls at theme parks. That's when you got to perk up a little bit. I guess I was in brain fart mode, but I was miserable. I hated it. I would just stare off into the distance, and one day my supervisor comes up to me, and she's like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah. She's like, no, you seem like something's wrong.

Have you received really bad news? Is something going on personally that you don't want to tell me about? I'm like, no, no, no. And I didn't want to tell her that I absolutely hate my job. And she was like, well, it just seems to me

that you absolutely hate your job. Why don't you just go home? And I was like, what? She's like, yeah, why don't you just go home? And I was like, well, I live in North Carolina. She's like, I mean, just no,

for the day. So like I left just go home? And I was like, well, I live in North Carolina. She's like, I mean, just, no, for the day. So, like, I left and went back to where I was staying. And it was like, it was a walk of shame. I was kicked off of my ride, and I had to, I came to work the next day, and I was like, I'll have a bad attitude. I apologized and everything. But that was absolutely embarrassing. Like, I had, my friends, some of them were like, why are you off work?

I was like, well. Got a bad attitude. I had a bad attitude. I got, some of them, they're like, why are you off work? I was like, well, I had a bad attitude. I had a bad attitude. I got kicked off of my ride. Soccer boy had a bad attitude today. But did your attitude really improve? It seems to me like the kind of thing that you would have just brushed off and just gone right back to it. For a couple of days,

I really tried. I really tried. But I mean, a couple more days of pee, a couple more days of vomit, I mean, I really tried. I really tried. But I mean, you know, a couple more days of pee, a couple more days of vomit. I mean, it just wasn't for me. Well, you know, the people, you want somebody who's operating, you're having a good time, you know.

Everyone else is having a good time. That's the point. You're so close to people having a good time. But that's the art. That's the art of being in the amusement business. You know, when I went to Disney World recently recently there was a guy who was orienting everybody to one of the things it was like the haunted mansion or whatever and i know that he was saying exactly the same thing that he's been saying all day but it was fresh he seemed so into it and i was was like, you know what? That guy made me feel like he just said this just to us in this group. That's the kind of person you want to run into, not soccer

boy. Yeah. It's one of my biggest regrets in life. I mean, it's perspective. Well, you know what? You could be operating a big time roller coaster at Disney World now if you had to just follow through. Yeah. I blew it. But it's perspective, you know? I didn't have perspective.

And it seems like the coolest job I could have had. I mean, I could tell you about some of the other ones. But I think that that is, assuming that we are not going to have summer jobs anymore, I mean, maybe after retirement, there'll be like a, I'm going to go back. Be like Fred. I'm going to go back to H&H, and I, they'll be like, I'm going to go back. Be like Fred. I'm going to go back to H&H and I'm going to be like,

hey, Wickman's back. Wickman's back to end strong. Maybe there'll be something like that. But assuming that we're not going to have summer jobs again, maybe many of you who are out there listening, maybe you're about to start

your summer job. I think the thing is, is that. It's what you make it. There's a 99.9% chance that the job that you're about to go do this summer will have absolutely nothing to do with the job that you're going to do in your life, your career. And it's going to be the subject of stories, maybe a podcast that you have years from now. Do you have more? Oh, yeah.

Give me another one. Well, my point was, you want me to save the point to the end? I thought that was the point. Sure, save the point to the end. Let's just do like a teaser. Well, I was going to say real quickly, we'll come back

because there's another job that you had that you forgot about. Okay. That we'll come back to. But I'd say my first job where I was in corporate America, so to speak, even though it wasn't really corporate, it was a government job, was working for the Department of Transportation.

Oh, yeah. So every summer while I was in school at NC State University, my summer job was to work at the DOT. So the Department of Transportation, it's a big government organization in every state. And in North Carolina, there were a number of divisions, but I was in the pavement management division. It's exciting as it sounds. Just by virtue of being a civil engineering major. It's exciting as it sounds.

Just by virtue of being a civil engineering major. Well, actually what ended up happening is my dad ran into the guy who was the head of this division at some golfing event or something. And he was like, oh, yeah, my son's majoring in civil engineering. He was like, well, tell him to apply for a job with us in our department. We'll make his dreams come true. We have a number of students from NC State University that come in and help us out every summer in the pavement management unit. Pavement management. So what does that mean? Well, first, I was hoping that it meant I got to be the guy who held the slow stop sign out on the street because every time I see that guy, I wish I could do his job just for a summer. I mean, all you got to do, talk about brain farts. I mean, this is a job where you are very

tempted to have brain farts, but brain farts could lead to people dying. Head-on collisions. It's either slow or stop, and you better know which one it is. But it wasn't an outside job. I never wore an orange vest. I never wore a hard hat. It was an office job. It was a desk job in a cubicle. And what the pavement management division was responsible for was determining which sections of road throughout the state needed maintenance. Of course. It's basically just determining priority of roads, right? And so there's a few things that contributed to priority. How many people travel on this road, how bad the conditions are. Really, that's the main two things, right? How bad is it and how important is the road? So I don't know why this wasn't something

that, I mean, I'm sure today this is the kind of thing that they just have the map of all of North Carolina in a computer you think but in uh 1998 I'm sure it wasn't a computer somewhere but I never saw the computer all I saw were these huge three foot by fourfoot maps of the entire state. Now, I'm not kidding. Three feet by four feet. This is a large map that barely fits onto a desk. Yeah.

And it was a map that had been printed somewhere, but then what we were supposed to do is we were getting updates to, there would be red lines on the maps of like new roads that had come in like printed red lines yeah no somebody had drawn like these new roads in and i don't know if these were then going to be incorporated into like the new somewhere on a computer it was being done it was being updated like somebody hand drew somebody had come in and said like here's a new road that's been plotted or built. And then, of course, there would be all the other roads. And then our job was just to go to intersections and circle

them and then number them, call them nodes. So the way that you reference any section of road in North Carolina is you say it is node 4483 to 4482. That's a section of road. And so that's classified as a section of road, and then it's prioritized. So if you missed one, did you have to go back and erase all the nodes and then renumber them, 4483, 4484? It was so, it was so,

first of all, it was the most boring thing. It was worse than WIC man. It was worse than WICing the air fresheners. And there were 13 of us doing it. All on one map? No. So I do think that a few of the people in our division were doing some other things, but most of us.

Circling intersections and writing a number beside it. Let me tell you. End of story. First of all, I worked there for three summers, and I probably got through four maps. You're kidding me. You know what I was doing the rest of the time? Talking.

Just shooting a breeze? Just shooting a breeze. Yes. Just sitting there talking to these other people who were college students. Were they cool people? Yeah. That's not a bad job then.

No. It doesn't sound like a job at all. I made some good friends. Sounds like you were on a break. But it just, I was struck. Ever since this job, I've had kind of an informed opinion when I hear that, not to get political, but when I hear that the government is attacking a problem or is trying to work on a problem, I always think,

was it like the Department of Transportation? Because I worked there and it was the most inefficient operation I've ever been involved with. I mean, didn't your supervisor was like, hey, circle some nodes, yo. The supervisor would sleep. Really? Under her desk. The supervisor would sleep. Really?

Under her desk. I'm not kidding. Really? I don't know how often this happened, but there was a rumor going around, and it had been confirmed by several of the people that I work with that occasionally her door would close. And they would be like...

So you never saw her... But I knew her well enough to know that this was not unexpected behavior. Apparently, when the door was closed and it was quiet in there and the light was off, it meant that she was sleeping under the desk. They said one time we went in there and she was like- Like she was hiding? No, she's just sleeping. She's laying down on the floor.

I mean, she's in kind of a small office and you can kind of get under the desk there and sleep. and you can kind of get under the desk there and sleep. So there was a pervasive attitude, kind of from the top down, a lackadaisical, let's make this a break area. And no one ever really came to check and see what we were doing. Wasn't there a really pretty girl that worked there? I remember that's all you told me about,

was there was like a hot girl circling nodes. Hmm. You don't remember that? I'm sure, yeah. I mean, there was a couple of girls that I liked to talk to. I liked to bring my map over next to their map. Hey, baby, how's that node circling going? But yeah, I was amazed.

And I'll say this too. I'm probably getting people into trouble, but this has been 15 years ago, so it's probably all different people. Another thing that happened was— Water under the bridge, to use a civil engineering analogy. Another thing that happened was they said, okay, we have this fleet of cars. Crown Victorias, by the way, one of my favorite vehicles of all time. And your typical government-issue car that has a lot of cop cars, but it's also just a lot of government cars. In North Carolina, you see these Navy Crown Victoria cars with yellow tags. That's like the government-issue car.

Well, our division had a fleet of cars, and what they were used for is they would send people out to different places, different intersections, and you count traffic. That's how you... Now that sounds like fun. That's a piece of data that goes into the system that lets us know what road needs to be worked on. Because if you're like, okay,

this certain section from node X to node Y... Okay, you're losing me. Did you ride in the Crown of Victoria? I'm just saying, people go out and count traffic with little clickers. Did you do that? No, I did not count traffic. But what they said is,

in order to justify us keeping a certain number of Crown Vics or Ford F-150 pickup trucks in our fleet, we have to log a certain number of miles on the vehicles. Please. And so they were like,

go out and drive around the Beltline. Really? So I would get- Just to rack miles on the odometer. So I would just go out, I would take the Ford F-150 or the Crown Vic along with another guy, and we would just drive around the Beltline, around Raleigh. We just- Yeah, again, just shooting the breeze.

Like it was a NASCAR race. Yeah. Really? Yeah, just driving. I. Like it was a NASCAR race. Yeah. Really? Yeah, just driving. I mean, it's not a bad job. That's a pretty good job. Professional... I was a professional driver for the DOT.

Your tax dollars at work. I was an odometer spinner. What's the job that you told me that I forgot about? Chicken houses. Well, I didn't work in the chicken houses. I worked around... Like, Uncle Johnny had some chicken houses, and I worked around there. Oh.

But here's what it was. But you told me about the chicken pit. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was around them, but the tobacco fields were around there. Oh, that was a... And Cousin Kiesel is there, and he liked to be mean to the chickens. That's as far as I'm going to go, okay? He thought it was funny, but it was cruel.

And it was, I'd rather not bring it up or continue to talk about it. But there was one summer when I didn't work for my family and I worked for Will Thomas's family. Oh, yeah. And they had a lot of pig houses. What are they called? Pig farm. And it was these big, long, you know, barns full of pigs. And it was these big, long, you know, barns full of pigs.

And what I had heard was I knew I was assigned to work with him because Will was gone that summer. So Will's like, hey, can you do my job with my family and make some scratch? And so first day I went and met his, actually, his uncle's name was Keith. Different guy. Pig farmer. And I had heard that, you know, they make the pigs. Well, they don't make the pigs. They inseminate the pigs, okay?

For some reason, you have to do it for them. Yeah, you have to, like, you have to take matters into your own hands. Literally. So to speak. And that's all I was thinking about was, okay, if I work in this pig farm, am I going to have to do this? I can't do this. I'm out. How am I going to tell Will's Uncle Keith that I just can't, I cannot do this. I can't be here for this.

And I get up there. Give the pig some privacy. I meet him that day. Big strapping man, big beard. And he comes out front and he meets a really nice guy. He's like, Link, thank you for taking Will's position here this summer while he's away. But I got to break it to you. We don't need you here at the pig farm.

And my heart like leaps for joy he's like I need you to go with my brother to to secure lands for so that the ATVs don't get on the Carolina Power and Light property so for the rest of the summer I rode around

and we would drive for like 4 hours and I would just fall asleep in the passenger seat and we'd get out. Extended brain fart. Yeah, with this cable, cabling that was about two inches in diameter and we would cut it with torches, wrap it around trees where people were taking four-wheelers into the woods on a private land in order to keep the ATVs and the four-wheelers out of private property. Exciting stuff. It was riveting. Did you ever run into somebody on a four-wheeler who wanted in? No, we didn't have any altercations, but we had to go down one time and clean up all this trash off of the land. And someone had dumped literally about, over time, about 400 old televisions on this private

property. I mean, back out there in the sticks, people would just make any old piece of land a landfill. Oh, yeah. And CPL wanted to clean it up. And the glass on the front of these televisions can get as much as an like half inch thick or more and but then they would dump them out so it would be this shattered glass that would be thick and i had to pick it all up using like trash picker uppers and uh just with my hands cut my hands a lot right on that one. But that was not a good job either. Oh, but you didn't, but there's no like epic,

I went to the emergency room, I lost a finger. No, as you can see, I still have all my fingers. But I didn't have to mate pigs artificially. So anything's better than that. You know what happened there? You were originally slated to be the man the man the man handler but he saw it in my eyes he's like i can't put this kid i'm gonna put him out on the trail um you know uh there is one other job that is the only job that i can think of on all of our summer jobs that we actually did together. You think about the grok? Yeah.

Now, so this was probably our first job ever because basically before we got summer jobs in the summer, we were on opposite ends of Buies Creek. We would ride our bikes to the middle of town in Campbell University in the middle of Buies Creek, and there was a little grocery store called the Grok on the edge of town. It's not there anymore. It's been torn down.

But that was kind of our halfway point, roughly our meeting spot when riding our bikes to meet up. We'd meet there. We'd play pinball. There was a Gilligan's Island pinball machine there. And then we'd go on our summer escapades out around Buies Creek for the rest of the day. But we got to know the guy.

And he was a very creepy, creepy dude. Who ran the Grok. Who ran the Grok back then. He's probably 40 years old. Yeah, he's like, hey, boys, you on a job? Well, he looked like a character off of The Simpsons. You know, he's kind of swarthy. Yeah, like a pirate.

And actually, he sounded like he wasn't from around there. Oh, it was like this? Was he like this? No. Was he like this? It was a little bit like this. It was like, I'm not from around here. I'm from the Simpsons.

Hey, boys, would you like to make some scratch? He was Krusty the Clown. No. And he did say, hey, guys, I'll pay you to sort baseball cards. And I do think this is pre-HNH. I think this is the first job ever, but there's no contract and it was probably a violation of child labor laws

because we were probably 12, 13 years old. Baseball cards were a big deal. They were on display out there and people, all the, I guess like grade school and high school kids would come in for like different camps at Campbell and they would come over and buy baseball cards

but in order to know if you had a whole set you had to you had to order them by number to be able to sell a complete set and that's what he said do you want to order baseball cards literally just take piles of baseball cards

and order them by number up until I mean a set could have 150 cards and then you would start over and build a new set so he could sell it. He's like, I'll give you a dollar an hour. A dollar an hour each.

It wasn't 50 cents each. It was a dollar an hour each. And we said yes. We did it. We never told our parents that we, that's what we were doing, and he put us in the back room. He said, just go back here,

and he would throw in the back room. He said, just go back here. And we'd like, he would throw all these baseball cards. It was like child labor type scenario, man. Totally illegal. I mean, honestly. Spread all these baseball cards on a pool table. Now that I think about it, we could have been in danger. And, you know, we didn't, no adults knew where we were.

We were just like, this guy that we buy Clearly Canadian from and play the pinball machine in this little weird grocery store, he's got us in the back room sorting baseball cards. I mean, nothing ever happened. No, and he never came back there. I mean, there were some magazines stuffed in the pool table that gave us quite an education on the human anatomy. Yeah, that seriously expanded our perspective. But other than that, I mean, it was,

hey, give me my dollar or my $5. And we only did that for, I'd say, a couple of weeks or so. But, you know, that's the only time we ever worked together until we reunited. Yeah, that was our first The entrepreneurial spirit The seed was planted at that point We could have become expert baseball cards

I was going to say smugglers But sorters But we moved on to other things Now I should say My dominant summer job I have to tell this one Just because this is the one I did the most. My dad, he did work on the tobacco farm that one summer, but for most of his life, even now,

he is a house painter and a carpenter and tile artiste, kind of a guy. He's got multiple employees working for him now, but for many summers, I was expected to be his right hand man, so I was always painting with my dad, and it was always very frustrating, because my dad would do this thing to where he wouldn't, he would give directives like a mime. Like, it's like, he would be telling me to do something, and then all of a sudden, all the words would get jumbled up,

and he'd just be like, and then it wouldn't be English, and he would start pointing and gesturing and expecting me to understand, I want you to take this specific color, mix it with this specific color, go up this ladder, and only paint the front of the trim.

He would communicate all of that. With hand signals. With hand signals. And grunts. And grunts, just because, and I don't know why. And I don't think he realized it was happening. It seemed very obvious to him what he was communicating, and I would, it's just very frustrating.

Okay. And so what has happened is I now do this, right? All the time. Not all the time. No, I would say that it is not, especially if there's something physical, like we're moving something or building something. And there's like some sort of tension. Yeah, and you're just like, and you do the same thing. It's mind-blowing.

Yeah, and it's extremely frustrating for the... Mumbling, grunting, and moving of hands, and then extreme frustration when I or anybody else who's in the room doesn't know what you're talking about. And I'm like, hold on, you haven't said anything. But mentally, hand-wise, I've said a lot. You inherited that. Yeah, I mean, and I don't think I learned it.

I do think it is a genetic thing at a certain stress level. Disorders, probably. Correct. At a certain stress level. But, you know, the funny thing, I worked for him for all those summers, and it was fine except for the point. You know, I would eventually figure it out, and I would do the right thing. But when I was in, let's see, after I was married,

there was like this career transition thing happening. There was this one summer where for a few months, I wasn't working as an engineer. And eventually they hired me back as a contractor kind of to like bridge the gap between my like career transition. But there was a point there where I called up my dad and i was like dad i just don't have anything to do can i can i come back and help you and i wasn't i wasn't a high school student i wasn't a college student i was a grown

man with a wife and like i just left an engineering job and I'm back working with my dad, painting houses. And he was doing some more intricate tile work then. So he would teach me how to do the tile work. So I would go outside and cut the tiles to fit. And of course he would tell me how to cut the tiles using only hand gestures. I mean, he's not a mute. I mean, he can speak just like me, just like normal. But but whenever it gets really frustrating it has to go to the hand signals and i remember this one time

you know um being a full adult things got really frustrating i would i went in the house and i took him the the tile and and he's like no no no you got it i really need this corner cut off and the pointing happens and then so i go back out and i take a little bit more off and then i go back in there and it's still not right and by this time i've cut too much off i gotta start over i go back out for a third time and then i go back in there and i don't remember what he said the third time it wasn't a hand signal but there was something that was said and then I just I had had it like I could not get this piece of tile cut how he wanted it no amount of hand signals or words could help me understand what I needed to do and I don't remember exactly what he said but it was like the it was kind of

harsh and I backed away slowly, basically ran outside, and I was going to cut the tile again, and I started crying. My dad, I was a full-grown adult. Oh, man. Married. Made you cry. And I was so frustrated that I was, like, crying

in the front yard of this house in Lillington. Did you tell him? I don't remember exactly what happened. We did talk about it afterward, but it was that awkward moment of like, I'm so upset, I'm crying, and then I'm so embarrassed, I'm crying, and then, boy, this is funny. And I was kind of laughing at myself.

And then, you know, we stopped for a break, and we're eating our oatmeal cookies and drinking our Mountain Dew like we always do. Like painters do. Like painters do. And we did have a conversation about it and cleared the air and it was a good experience. I need you to use your words. It's like, well, that's what we used to say. We say that to my children now.

Use your words. It was just so frustrating in that particular moment. And I'm certain that I contributed to the frustration. Probably deserved most of it. Those two signal talkers trying to communicate with each other. It's probably what you don't realize is that you were also, you were like three minutes into a signal-only conversation. There's not a whole lot that can be communicated

unless you actually know American Sign Language or any other sign language. Yes, I mean, that's the last time I've cried. I don't believe that. So that's my defining summer job moment. And now you can finish your application that you were teasing to. Well, I was going to say,

you know, you're doing this job. If I could go back and talk to myself, I would do anything differently. I think I probably would have stood up and questioned

a few things in the DOT. That's one thing I might go back and do and be like, hold on, should we be driving the cars around the Beltline and maybe we should be working more efficiently? But you're doing something like folding a rope

and making a wick or standing there waiting for tobacco to be shipped to China or whatever's going to happen with it. Or cleaning up hot dog chunks. I would just say, if there's any way at all possible that you can just be engaged, I think the story here is that neither one of,

we were just kind of along for the ride, right? It was just like a brain fart waiting to happen. So you're like holding the brain fart? A daydream waiting to happen. One of the things i'm trying to teach my kids now is just i just remember how like not present i was and so i was just kind of always off somewhere and just didn't care about much stuff and maybe it's just i think it's just something you have to kind of come into but but I'm just trying to, I'm trying to somehow impart,

just be in the moment, you know? Like if you have an opportunity to do something, just do it and do it right and do it well and take some pride in it because you don't want to get sent home from the boardwalk, you know?

You don't want Jerry Hartman to come in there and question how many wicks you've been through. Or you don't want to be brought to tears as a 22-year-old by your father. Right, and if your cousin Keith challenges you to a race, don't hesitate. Run the race.

And when he falls down on his face after taking one step, don't turn around. Keep going. Keep going. Keep running. Run to daddy's house. Be the first one back for lunch. And then point and laugh at him.

I didn't say that. Like kick dirt in his face. If some dirt accidentally gets on his face as you're running like Carl Lewis to daddy's house, so be it. I don't really know what my application is, but it's just, you know. And if an older, swarthy gentleman

asks you to sort baseball cards for a dollar an hour in the back room of a creepy grocery store, say no. Or at least say, well, $1.50. And don't look at the magazines that are stuffed into the pool table pockets. Stay away from those. No good can come from that.

Okay. But a lot of good came from this here biscuit. I feel like I've reconnected with my youth and with my summertime, summertime, some, some, summertime feelings. I'm thinking about getting a summer job on the side now, now that we've talked about this. Let's do it, man. I'll sort some baseball cards.

If I had to go back and do one of those jobs. I'd build another house. I'd like to go back and do that again. I'd get the closet right this time. Thanks for hanging out with us in this Ear Biscuit. Leave us a review on the iTunes. That's helpful. Also, hashtag Ear Biscuits us.

And let us know what you think about this particular episode. Tweet at us if you want us to talk about something else. Yeah, you want us to talk about something else. We'd be glad to do that. This one is kind of reminiscing a little bit, but if there's just something you guys want to know about, there's something industry-related or whatever, we're willing to talk about it. And next week, we'll have another Ear Biscuit interview, just like we do every Friday. Thank you for being a loyal listener.

Yeah, with a person who is not us. So be there for that. Yep, listen to you next week. Or you to us. You know what I'm trying to say.