Legends of the Old West - WHISKEY Ep. 1 | Virginia City: “Writers & Miners”

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

Virginia City, Nevada exploded onto the scene in the early 1860s with the discovery of the Comstock Lode, veins of gold and silver that were some of the richest in history. The boomtown attracted a young man who became one of the most famous authors in American literature: Mark Twain. Hear about Twain’s adventures and the early days of saloon life in the first of two collaborative episodes. In collaboration with the Whiskey Lore podcast from Travel Fuels Life. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Sam Clemens jumped at the chance to head west. It was 1861, he was 26 years old, and his older brother, Orion, had just been appointed secretary for the governor of Nevada Territory. Orion graciously offered to take Sam with him, and Sam was excited for the adventure. They made the trek from Missouri to Nevada. Orion settled into his job as the governor's secretary, and Sam settled into his new life as a miner.

After a year of unsuccessful prospecting, Sam decided to change direction. In July 1862, he secured a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City. And at that time, the United States was a tale of two countries. Out there in western Nevada,

the people were most directly affected by the mining industry, obviously. The newspaper was filled with stories of the happenings in the area. But in the east, the Civil War had been raging for more than a year, and it was about to take on new dimensions. Five days before Sam Clemens published his first article, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's men pushed Union General George McClellan's army to the breaking point. By July 11, five days after Sam Clemens wrote his first article, President Abraham Lincoln decided he was done with McClellan. He replaced McClellan with General Henry Halleck, who became commander of the Union forces in the East.

That same day, Lincoln made General Ulysses S. Grant the commander of all the forces in the West. The next day, July 12, 1862, Congress authorized the Medal of Honor for bravery in battle. All of that, and much more, happened less than a week after Sam Clemens began his career as a writer. It wasn't his first career choice, but it was his last. And like many writers of the age, he didn't use his real name for his articles. His byline featured a pen name that would soon be known around the world. Mark Twain. And it all started in Virginia City. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, And organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify.

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taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-M now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash Realm. Welcome to part one of a two-part series that combines history and whiskey in the Old West. You know how popular saloons were in the West,

and you know I'm a whiskey lover, so I've teamed up with my friend Drew Hanisch to try something interesting here. Drew produces a podcast called Whiskey Lore, and he travels all over the world visiting distilleries and learning their stories, so he's basically living my dream life. And right now, and sporadically throughout 2021,

we're going to bring you pairs of episodes that tell fun stories about the histories of towns in the West and their saloon culture. The first two episodes are about Virginia City, Nevada, a town many of you have asked about. I'll start the episode and talk about the history, and then halfway through, Drew will take over and tell you some great stories about the popular saloons in town. So here we go. This is Virginia City, Part One, Writers and Miners.

The luck of the Irish was a fickle thing in western Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s. For Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin, it was fair to Midland, as my friends in Texas would say. For a quartet of men who came after Peter and Patrick, it was life-changing. Their luck turned them into some of the richest men in the world. But there are stories for the next episode. In this episode, I want to tell you what happened when Peter and Patrick met a swindler named Henry Comstock. The first reported deposits of gold in the area now known as Virginia City came in 1850. Mormon travelers made the discovery while they were hurrying to California to capitalize on the first major gold rush in North America.

Over the next couple years, a rough camp sprang up in that area of western Nevada. In the fall of 1857, another notable deposit was discovered by two brothers who were also on the way to California to find their fortunes. Sadly, neither brother found fortune. One ended up driving a pickaxe into his own foot, which caused an infection that killed him. The other tried to make it to California late in the year, and he died from complications of frostbite after suffering extreme exposure in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And that's where Henry Comstock comes into the story. By all accounts, he was a drifter, a braggart, and something of a con man. He was prospecting in the same area as the two brothers,

and when he heard of their deaths, he took their cabin as his own, and he went looking for their mining claim. Comstock was said to have been too lazy to bake bread, so he continuously made flapjacks instead, and he earned the nickname Pancake because of it. it. In January 1859, shortly after Pancake Comstock settled into the cabin of the two dead brothers, James Finney discovered the first big one. His gold strike was one vein of the larger treasure that was eventually called the Comstock Lobe. You'll hear more about Finney in the second half of the episode with Drew and how he might be the namesake of Virginia City. The area around Finney in the second half of the episode withdrew and how he might be the namesake of Virginia City. The area around Finney's strike was soon called Gold Hill. As the weather warmed from winter to spring, miners increased their efforts. In the early days of summer, 1859, Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin found gold near the head of Six Mile Canyon. As word of their discovery spread, Henry Comstock had an idea. His strategy had worked once, so it could work again.

A few months ago, he'd claimed land that didn't belong to him. He did the same thing with Peter and Patrick. When Comstock learned of the discovery by the two Irishmen, he informed them that they were working his land. He said he'd already claimed it for what he called grazing purposes, even though he didn't own livestock of any kind. Rather than fight it out violently or legally, the Irishmen agreed to share the gold strike with Comstock. So with no physical effort of his own, Henry Comstock was now part owner of a vein of ore that would prove rich in the future. But neither Comstock nor Peter or

Patrick really capitalized on the strike. Peter and Patrick were both surface miners. They didn't have the resources to dig deep tunnels and haul the ore out of the ground with machinery. the resources to dig deep tunnels and haul the ore out of the ground with machinery. The Irishmen soon sold out and moved on. And so did Henry Comstock. In 1862, he sold his stake and bounced around Oregon and Montana before his story came to a depressing end. Eight years later, in 1870, he was broke and disillusioned, and he shot himself. Henry Comstock's only real contribution, if you even want to call it that, was that his name was somehow attached to one of the richest deposits of gold and silver in U.S. history. He probably talked about his part ownership in the claim so much

and gave himself so much credit for its discovery that people began calling it the Comstock load, and the name stuck. But before Henry Comstock and the Irishmen bowed out of the story, they stayed in the area long enough to see Virginia City rise out of nothing to become the hottest boomtown in the West. In the year Comstock left, 1862, the readers of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper were introduced to a new writer named Samuel Clemens, but they knew him as Mark Twain. By 1860, just one year after the series of gold strikes that led to the creation of Virginia City, thousands of people now lived in a tent city.

They flocked from all corners of the continent to get rich in the newest boomtown. And over the next two years, they kept flocking. By 1862, the tents had been replaced by buildings of wood, brick, and stone. There was clearly a sense of permanence, but like many boom towns, the city had grown so fast and so haphazardly that its layout was a chaotic mess. Here's what it was like, according to the July 1862 edition of the Daily Alta California newspaper. This burg is not handsome, nor picturesque, nor even comely, for there are no two streets of the same width, nor two parallel streets, and the lots and blocks are of every conceivable size and shape.

It was not laid out until after it was built. But for all that, the city is a wonder of the 19th century. For here are some handsome brick and hammered or rough-hewn stone buildings, great stocks of goods, first-rate hotels, some of the most profitable and extensive mining works in the world, and a real-line newspaper, the Enterprise. The same month the Daily Alta introduced its readers to Virginia City, the Enterprise introduced its readers to a new writer, Mark Twain, real name Sam Clements. Sam had arrived the year before, in 1861, with his older brother, O'Ryan. O'Ryan was the secretary for the territorial government,

and Sam had tried his hand at prospecting, like virtually everyone else. But Sam found little success, like most prospectors, and by the summer of 1862, he needed a job. He was 27 years old, and by his own count, his jobs up to that point included grocery clerk for a day, law school student for a week, blacksmith apprentice, bookseller, drugstore clerk, and finally, prospector. During Sam's first year in the mines around Virginia City, he'd sent letters to the editor of the Enterprise newspaper, and he claimed he was

constantly surprised the letters were published. And then, as he hit rock bottom as a minor, he received a great surprise. A letter arrived at the post office that offered him the job of city editor of the newspaper for $25 a week. It was incredible news and perfect timing. $25 a week. It was incredible news and perfect timing. But joy quickly gave way to worry. Sam was essentially caught between two fears. The fear of having to beg for money if he didn't take the job, and the fear of taking a job for which he had no experience. But as Sam wrote in his book Roughen It, under his soon-to-be-famous pen name Mark Twain, necessity is the mother of taking chances. So he took the chance and accepted the job.

When he met the owner of the paper, he received instructions for his new job. Go around town, ask all sorts of questions to all sorts of people, then write articles about the information learned. The direction seemed simple, but as Sam found out on his first day of work, they were not. He spent five hours wandering around town and asking questions of everyone he met. He was amazed to discover nobody knew anything. Through that experience, he learned his first lesson of journalism, how to make something out of nothing. Soon enough, he was reporting on genuinely substantial issues and using his trademark dry humor to make something out of relatively nothing.

Here's a short article, which is basically just a paragraph, in which he informs his readers about the sorrowful passing of produce. We learn from Hatchin brothers, who do a heavy business in the way of supplying this market with vegetables, that the rigorous weather accompanying the late storm was so severe on the mountains as to cause a loss of life in several instances. Two sacks of sweet potatoes were frozen to death on the summit, this side of Strawberry. The verdict rendered by the coroner's jury was strictly in accordance with the facts. Over the next two to three years, Mark Twain discovered that his true calling was the written word. Writing hadn't been his first calling, but it was his last. And as Virginia City grew, there was plenty to report on. Within six months of Twain's first article, the city was teeming with every type of person

imaginable. Somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people had flocked to a town that was the home of just 200 scattered miners a couple years earlier. By the time Twain's new career was in full bloom, this is how he described Virginia City. Fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theaters, hurdy-gurdy houses, wide-open gambling palaces, political powwows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a city engineer, a chief of the fire department with first, second, and third assistants, a chief of police, city marshal, and a large police force, two boards of mining brokers, a dozen breweries, and half a dozen jails and station houses in full operation, and some talk of building a church. From Twain's accounts and those of others, Virginia City experienced the same chaos and lawlessness that was typical in boom towns like Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City.

Gunfights seemed to be so common that it sounded like Twain casually shrugged off some of them with barely a mention in the paper. And of course, most of the riotous behavior was centered on the saloons. Twain probably wasn't exaggerating when he said there was a whiskey mill every 15 steps. It was said there were over 100 saloons in Virginia City during its heyday. And even though the population was huge for the time, the town wasn't that big. So it probably did feel like there was a saloon every 15 steps. And it sounds like every miner in there fell into one of two

categories. Those who were genuinely making money off their mines, and those who swore any day now they'd strike it rich. Those who were making money did so at an impressive rate. For the first six years of the initial boom, the mines around Virginia City pulled $50 million worth of ore out of the ground. The big winners of those mines spread their money around everywhere, and it trickled down to all walks of life, including newspaper editors. Twain said he didn't even bother collecting his salary, which was now up to $40 per week because he had so many other ways to make money in town. You'll hear another fantastic quote from Twain in the second half of this episode, but here's a quick example of how much money was floating around Virginia City in the early 1860s. This is one of Twain's personal experiences. 1860s. This is one of Twain's personal experiences. At one point, two friends came to visit him in Virginia City. They were both newspapermen, and he took them out on the town. They spent $237 on drinks and merriment in one night. That's about $80 per person, and that could be considered a lot

of money even today. Now consider that a high-end glass of whiskey cost 50 cents. I don't know about you, but with those prices and the strength of whiskey at that time, I'd be down for the count after spending about three bucks. But if you were a person of greater fortitude, which Mark Twain surely was, you would have had an epic bar crawl for $237. And as I've said, there were plenty of watering holes to choose from. Now to tell you more about them and saloon life in Virginia City, here's my friend Drew Hanisch. Well, thanks, Chris.

Now, as you've probably discovered in doing the Legends of the Old West podcast, there are so many of these oft-repeated tall tales, myths, and legends. And then you've got authors and scriptwriters kind of pushing those narratives forward. It can make finding the truth behind the legend a real challenge. As a seeker of the truth in whiskey-storied history, I find myself bumping into a lot of these same obstacles. The idea of combining whiskey and the Old West into one big research project may be bordering on madness. I think we're both up to it. What I was really happy about was that you chose Mark Twain, who was a well-known whiskey

enthusiast, as a starting point for our story on Virginia City. In so many ways, his dry wit and satire created a breeding ground for the lore that drives our imaginations and leads us to these wild impressions of what Virginia City was. His competition at the evening bolt, and while they weren't too shy about painting him as a pilferer of stories and a man of wild exaggerations, but his readers loved him. And so do we.

But it does beg the question of what Virginia City was really like. The stories framed during Twain's time were of a rough and rowdy, overcrowded city where a man gained his stature by either being a saloon proprietor or by killing a man. Yet after he left the paper in 1864, this rowdy behavior began to slow. The impressions of Virginia City mellowed into stories of a cosmopolitan city. Was this because the town was maturing after experiencing its wild boomtown days? Or did the departure of the territorial enterprise's most witty and imaginative reporter have something to do with it. Well, thanks to a devastating fire that took out more than half the town,

including the archives of the local newspapers, accounts by more tempered reporters have unfortunately been lost to the ages. So for well over a century, the history of saloon life in Virginia City was left up to the sometimes factual and sometimes satirical style of old Sam Clemens, as well as through movies and through a television show called Bonanza, which showed Virginia City as a typical western boomtown, featuring wooden buildings, boardwalks, dusty streets, and its single saloon, the Bucket of Blood. But as Chris points out, the record shows that this wasn't the real Virginia City at all. It wasn't a single dusty thoroughfare where everyone gathered at a single saloon. It was a bustling city bursting with thousands of people, by many accounts, at well over 100 saloons. So as a fan of whiskey and conveyor of whiskey stories,

it begs the question, what was real saloon life like in Virginia City? Well, thankfully, in 1997, a group of archaeologists began digging and researching around some of the locations of the city's more prominent and also notorious saloons. What they found paints a fascinating picture of both the 19th century drinking house, the very nature of Virginia City and her inhabitants. But before we learn more about the artifacts they uncovered, the saloons themselves, and the personalities of the saloon keepers that ran them, it might be a good idea for us to take a step back and get beyond those Hollywood impressions of the old West Saloon and try to paint a more accurate picture of how they developed, their stature in the community, and their

impact on the everyday lives of Westerners. To the miner of silver or gold in the American West, when a new vein of precious metals was discovered, there were two things you could be sure of. Plenty of tents around that would be filled with eager prospectors nervously waiting to stake their claim, and at least one very popular tent where an enterprising soon-to-be saloon proprietor would be ladling out spirits to the masses. And this primitive bartender, he had no need for fancy decorations or even a building. Just set up two barrels, run a board across them, get some tin crockery, and instantly you're in business. Heck, you didn't even need a tent, just serve straight from your wagon. Now for most miners, whiskey was part escape,

part social, and part survival. But for a certain drunk prospector from Virginia, whiskey was likely more important than even life itself. And that prospector's name was James Finnimore. But most people knew him as Old Virginia, or simply as Finney. His original claim, which was on the east side of Sun Mountain, which would later be renamed Mount Davidson, was the precursor to the discovery of what would later be called the Comstock Lode.

But for Old Virginie, he seemed a lot less interested in digging and much more interested in drinking. In fact, another prospector was easily able to wrestle Old Virginie's claim away from him simply by exchanging an old horse, some blankets, and a bottle of whiskey. If you think that infatuation with whiskey was sure to cause Finney even more trouble in the future, well, you'd be right. Because on June 20, 1861, an overly inebriated Finney ended up falling from his horse, got tangled in the stirrups and ropes, and was dragged to his death.

Yet, even for a drunkard, local legend suggests that he was so revered by the Comstock miners that they decided to name the Comstock's developing community Virginia City in his honor. But of course, no whiskey legend would be complete without another competing legend. This one states that old Virginie was heading home one night with the boys when he fell, smashed his bottle of whiskey, and proclaimed, I baptize this ground, Virginia Town. However Virginia City ended up getting its name, one thing is for certain, just like other boom towns of the West, tent cities would eventually need to evolve into some semblance of a town. As the claims started coming in, it was likely that the spirits-peddling entrepreneur would have acquired enough working capital from his early sales

to build one of the first permanent structures in the middle of town. In fact, he might even be able to afford stone or brick. Sitting in such a prized location, the first saloon could easily become the main hub of activity for a community. If you are new in town, head to the saloon and meet your new neighbors. Need a hot meal? Head to the saloon and meet your new neighbors. Need a hot meal? Head to the saloon. Seeking companionship? Try the saloon.

Need the sheriff? Probably standing at the bar. Need a doctor? Probably chatting with the sheriff over a whiskey while standing at the bar. Heck, even most stagecoaches used the town's primary saloon as a pick-up and drop-off point. And for anyone looking for advice, well, look no further than the savvy saloon keeper. As Mark Twain remarked in his book Roughing It, quote, For a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper occupied the same level in society. And it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest way to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at large was to stand behind the bar where

a clustered diamond pin and sell whiskey I'm not sure but that the saloon keeper held a slightly higher rank than any other member of society his opinion had weight it was his privilege to say how the election should go. No great movement could succeed without the countenance and direction of the saloon keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon keeper consented to serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen. As the town grew, the saloon would be a highly profitable enterprise, second only to brothels. But in many cases, the brothel and the saloon were actually on two different floors in the same building. Pointing to the matter-of-fact nature of this alliance, in Virginia City, when the old Greyhound

Saloon finally shuttered its doors, it put up its wares for sale in the newspaper, advertising everything you need to start your own saloon. Tables, bars, fixtures, billiards, chairs, stoves, beds, and bedding. And contrary to some old Hollywood portrayals, And contrary to some old Hollywood portrayals, saloons weren't just wood buildings slapped together with butterfly doors, dusty wood floors, a pine-top bar, and dusty old bottles, beer mugs, and shot glasses. Saloon owners had money. They also had a desire to encourage the patronage of their clientele, especially if they were competing

against a new upstart saloon across the street. In fact, many saloons provided free food to their patrons, featuring a menu that was filled with salted meats and other heavily salted delights. That would drive the customer's thirst and the saloon's profits. That would drive the customers' thirst and the saloons' profits. The front of the buildings would be ornate and inviting, with advertising banners that were meant to lure thirsty guests. Inside you would find thick rugs, wallpaper, and gas lights. Some of the more upscale saloons might even feature fancy chandeliers. Rather than the TVs of today, saloons in the 19th century would feature a tastefully painted life-size nude just above the bar. The bar itself would likely be made of beautiful oak, cherry wood, or mahogany.

Behind the bartender would hang an expensive glass mirror. Behind the bartender would hang an expensive glass mirror. In fact, if you head to the southwest corner of Lake Tahoe, the oldest bar in Nevada, the Thirst Parlor in Genoa, features a diamond dust speckled mirror that arrived there by steamship and train from Glasgow, Scotland. There'd be a bevy of entertainments to keep the guests mingling and drinking, distracted from their rough days in the mines. Standard accessory of any saloon was the piano player, later to be replaced by the fancy player pianos that would gain favor at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia.

Some saloons provided dancing partners for guests, and some would provide a little bit more than that. All manner of games would be played, not just card games, although poker and cribbage were quite popular back in the day. But there would also be dominoes, and in the case of Virginia City's Barbary Coast, a shooting gallery. Beer would be served for a nickel in glass mugs. The house whiskey would be put into a tumbler or shot glass and cost just about the same. The bartender would go over to a 53 gallon barrel behind the bar and tap it for you right on the spot. Or he might use those barrels to refill glass bottles that

he would hand to customers on the honor system. If you were lucky enough to encounter Kentucky bourbon, prices could be upwards of 50 cents a glass. But that was still no guarantee of quality. He never knew if that barrel had been watered down, diluted with grain neutral spirit, or colored with tobacco spit, burnt sugar, or molasses. But if you think those things sound bad, well, when it came to whiskey quality, those were minor issues. In a lot of cases, whiskey could be both damaging and deadly. You really had to trust your saloon keeper, or the local distiller, or those liquid drummers who had brought the whiskey from back east. If a rookie or a cheapskate distiller had left the initial part of the spirit run in

the finished product, customers would be drinking heavy doses of deadly methanol. It was this toxic poisoning that could lead to dizziness, blindness, and finally death. While the term blind drunk doesn't necessarily relate to this condition, it definitely can cause you to drink until you're blind. I once heard a moonshiner joke that if you don't want to die, then stop drinking when you can't see anymore. If a creative distiller thought his fresh batch of hooch was missing personality, all types of additives could be employed. Tarantula juice was a popular concoction around the Sierra Nevada region, and this so-called gin was made of turpentine and rosin with a nice dose of poisonous strychnine which was touted for its pleasurable effects. The only problem was that

as the pleasure subsided the consumer of the spirit would soon feel what seemed like a thousand little spiders eating at their skin. To overcome this, well-meaning bartenders would suggest a second shot of tarantula juice to be held over for the morning, and that to ease the spider bites. Maybe it was the hair of the spider that bit you rather than the dog. There were other notorious whiskeys in the old west, including Blue Ruin and Taos Lightning. Other names you would hear would be Snakewater, Skull Varnish, Rotgut, Coffin Varnish, and Tanglefoot. If you wanted to avoid whiskey altogether, saloons in more affluent towns would have things like California Wines or brandy, cognac, or champagne. In those recent archaeological digs around former saloons in Virginia City,

Piper's Old Corner Bar and the Boston Saloon both revealed remnants of stemware used for drinking upscale spirits and libations. Those same digs showed that the images that I painted of saloons and whiskey in the Old West were just a small portion of the diverse nature of saloons in Virginia City. What we start to see is that Virginia City wasn't your typical western frontier town. Unlike some of its rough and tumble counterparts, Virginia City grew to be a cosmopolitan oasis in the high desert. Its gold and silver hungry residents were drawn to the city from all over the world. There were Irish, Cornish, Europeans, There were Irish, Cornish, Europeans, Australians, African Americans, and Asians.

And in a time period that featured very anti-immigrant sentiments, Virginia City bucked the trends by showing little sign of segregation. In fact, the Chinese seemed to be the only ethnicity that had its own community. Now, there were definitely saloons that were owned and frequented by certain ethnic groups. But in terms of living, the Irish lived in the same neighborhood with the blacks, Hispanics, Germans, Cornish, and so on. There were good parts of town and rough parts of town, just like today's modern cities. And it was that that usually dictated the type of food, quality of libations, and the games you would find at each saloon. Drinking establishments would range from dives to well-respected upscale drinking houses. But it wouldn't be unusual to see the rich and well-to-do co-mingling with the miners, whose union-won $4-a-day wages made them feel they had the ability to punch above their weight.

As Chris will reveal in the next episode, wealth was about to get a whole lot greater, as the big bonanza was realized in the 1870s. And after he tells you the story of how Virginia City became the richest place in the world, I'll introduce you to two prominent saloon owners whose establishments were the highlights of the drinking and entertainment districts centered at Union and C Streets. We'll also talk about a major event that saw the end of a large majority of those 100-plus saloons, but an event that also brought us the Bucket of Blood. Next time on Legends of the Old West, as Drew said, we'll dive into the second mining boom in Virginia City.

That one made the first one look like barely a blip on the radar. So much money came out of the ground in the 1870s that it helped stabilize the U.S. economy during a panic, and it would have been enough to buy a small country. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. These stories were researched and written by Drew Hanisch and myself. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.

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