The Harland Highway - FLASHBACK #40

Episode Date: August 31, 2015

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Hello? Hello? Oh, this is so exciting. Welcome to the Harlan Highway. It sucked you in. You make us feel important. You are important. My name is Saki Tina, and I'm going to kill you.

Welcome to the Harlan Highway. Well, lookie there. They're way up above. It's a flock of birds, a big old flock of birds. What was the last time you've been flocked by a flock of birds? Nothing beats a good old flock, huh? Down at the beach. Good old flock at the beach.

It could be up at the cottage. Be a beautiful flock. you could see a flock right out your living room window you could have a good old fashion flock at the park you could flock you could see a flock from the back seat of your car you could have a flock on the lawn you could have a flock on the roof you could have a flock just about anywhere where's the where's the last time you had a good flock you see what i'm doing here i'm illustrating the use of letters and words and how just an

increment can make such a big difference right we're not allowed to say the f word but we are allowed to say flock, a flock of birds, flock of pigeons, people flocked to the stadium to see REO speedwagon sang. Do you imagine people flocking all the way to the stadium? Oh, they'd be flocking over fences, they'd be flocking through turnstiles, they'd be flocking right in front of ticket takers. They'd be flocking towards the stage. They'd just be flocking all over the place. Flock here, a flock there, everywhere, a flock, flock.

Old McDonald had a flock. Eye, Eye, oh, even. Yeah. It's funny how you could go on national TV or on public radio and talk all you want about the great flocks and how they migrate south every winter. Oh, yeah, saw a great flock this winter, yeah. Right in my living room.

Saw a great old flock. Pervert! Well, they flocked right by me. It's disgusting. Well, I can't help it if they're going to flock all around my house. It's just funny. It's just sounds. It's like a cow moose, right?

cow can go meh or a cow could go bea you know is it all that different sure tonally pitch wise little variables so take the word flock and the other f word how far off are they yet one of them's just perfectly acceptable you can say it anywhere any time and it's just it's not all that different It just sounds. I'm just so flocking confused. I don't even know what to say. But anyways, how the flock are you? Are you flocking good? I'm flocking good.

I hope you're flocking good. Welcome to the flocking Harlan flocking highway. There's just birds all around. You're probably giving me the bird right now. You're probably giving me a whole flock of middle fingers right now. Want me to shut up about flocking. Okay, I get it. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the podcast. If you have anything to say about language or obscenities or even flocking, you can call me and leave me a voicemail at 323-215-14-8-6. 3-23-3-215-14-8-6 and you can talk to me about anything if you leave me a good message, a funny message, something creative, something silly, something cool, I might just put it on the old Holland Highway. How about that? Do you like it when I taught like a little old Louisiana, old lady just sitting on a porch

drinking a tall, cool glass of lemonade. You, boy. Come have some lemonade with old mar fritters up here on the porch. Take your boots off and sit back in a rocking chair and just have some lemonade with old crock fritters. What the hell am I doing? How did I suddenly turn into a Cajun, Louisiana, old lady on a porch offering lemonade to some kid playing with toads out on the lawn?

And bring a toad, too, little fella. I have some nice, cold lemonade. Oh, mafritters freshly made lemonade. Oh, go flock yourself. Ooh. Anyways, you know what? Let's get off topic here. Let's just switch gears. I'm going to switch gears right now. Welcome to the Harland Highway. I'm putting it into gear. We were in first. I'm switching it into second right now. All right, Harland Highway listeners. Here's one of the most fun things to do in life, but also one of the most frustrating things to do in life. Having a shower with your significant. significant other. That's a lot of fun. It's intimate. It's playful. It's sexy. You're both

standing in there naked, right? Glistening from head to toe, scrubbing each other, lathering, foaming up, kissing and chuckling, the water cascading down on one of you. Yeah. That's never fun, right it's like showers are small they're made for one one person so you have to decide who gets the warm water cascading all over them and who has to stand there watching this looking like a wet soggy puppy out in the rain yeah because only one of you can get coated in that steamy hot water if you're a guy you feel bad because you should always be a gentleman to let the girl stand in the water but at the same time you're like screw that i want that water on me man so all of a sudden inadvertently we become hicks we become we become farm folk and here's what i mean in order to

keep the warm water on both you got to start doing a square dance you got to keep moving around and twirling around so that that you each walk under the water every few minutes every 20 seconds or so you've got to rotate. Oh, yeah, it's called the Shower Square Dance, man. Stand in the water, take your time, grab that soap and scrub and shine. Hey, she's been in there long enough. Pull her out and slap her duff. Hey, doce do and twirl back.

Grab the soap, scrub your crack. Hey, ho, did-de-de-do, dump-in-time. Yeah, that's the shower square dance when you're in there with someone else, man. whirl twirl twist and twirl jump around like a flying squirrel grab your partner by the hair smash their head into the wall hey no that's no that's wrong but uh anyways go to dance school learn out of square dance and i promise you your showers with your partner will be a lot smoother keep it clean right here on the harland highway hey dee dee dee dee dee Oh, now there is a lost art form, man. Square dancing. Does anyone even do it anymore?

How many of you in the course of your lifetime have been to a barn dance or a square dance or step dancing or anything like that? I've been there. I've been to barn dances. I've been to step dancing. I remember going to an old community center, a barn or something. I think it was out in Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada and all the kids are raised up there to clog and step dance and jump around like they're standing on hot coals.

And I got to tell you, man, just the fiddle music, maybe I'll take up fiddling. You know, everyone's always looking for something new to do. That'd be nice and pretentious. hey man i just bought a new harley how about you oh i'm taking some fiddling glasses what the hell i want to do that that buzz off go ride your harley but when you when you get into something like that like a small community especially back then when i was growing up man i can still remember at an old cold bottle of mountain dew in my hand and it was dust in the air and it was just like a scene from that

What was that movie that Harrison Ford did witness? Suddenly this big city cop is peeling onions and shucking corn with the Mennonites or whatever the hell they were, the Quakers. Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, sitting around peeling onions and slicing up carrots and whatnot. But I tell you what, man, you get in that barn and you got the, the dust and the hay. And people are, like, dressed fancy, but country folk fancy back in the day, you know? Country folk fancy back in the day was pulling out the nice overalls.

And the fresh straw hat. And the recently washed plaid shirt. And I don't know, there was a real downhomeness to it, man. There was a real sense of community. There's a real intimacy. There's a real real realness to it all. I have vivid memories of that as a kid. And I just don't know that you get that anymore, man.

I hope you do. I'm sure there's places somewhere where it still happens. But if you've never done it, if you've been a city folk, your whole life, and don't give me your attitude like, yeah, I'm going to go to a barn dance, sure. You know what? Lose the attitude, city folk. Because I'm a city folk, but I spend time in the country, too, and just shed the city folk toad for five minutes

and try and track down a small town where there's going to be a strawberry festival or a blueberry festival or a cranberry festival or a dingleberry festival. I don't care. Go out of your way this summer and find one of these little hick towns and check it out, man. Try and go to a farming community, you know, where they got corn and turnips and parsley and, you know, apples and stuff.

I don't, why do I laugh when I say parsley? I don't know. Somehow it didn't fit. But get in on it, man. It feels, it gives you that feeling of good old fashion America. It's vanishing. It's almost gone. People gather around their low riders and blast rap music and the tides they have a change.

Not the tides they are a change in. The tides they have a changed. Yeah. Things are changing. But check it out, man. And I don't even know if square dancing exists anymore, man. But if it does, it would be fun. I never square danced.

I'd heard it, but it would be. be fun. Maybe I'll go to dance school, learn out of square dance. Oh, I love dancing in shapes here on the Harland Highway. And now it's time for a summertime letter from the Harland Highway. Dear Hazel, the summer has been going fantastically out at the lake. The children have been playing and the weeping willows have been blowing in the sun as I sit here on the veranda sipping an icy cold glass of lemonade

I'm reminded of the days of our youth when you and I would play out in the heather and chase butterflies and dragonflies and lay on our backs and marvel at the clouds floating in the sky I miss those days I miss our childhood but things are better now things are so much better now that I've been out of jail

and free of all the charges penned against me no longer do I carry the weight of the triple homicides the explosions and the eating of human flesh... Okay, hold it. Hold it. That... where did this... No, I'm not reading that letter. And who's the British guy? I'm your official letter reader. No. Find a better. letter. That one got really

creepy. Shall I finish it? Yeah, as long as it's not creepy. Absolutely. All right, finish it up. The swans are swimming gracefully across the lake. As the sun sets, I'm reminded

of the time Mother brought down the Monopoly board and we all played into the wee hours of the night, laughing and giggling, sharing stories and spending time together. Oh, how I yearn for the days When the family was all assembled at the summer house

All of us smashing the heads of small baby porcupines With canoe paddles Throwing rocks at birds' nests And watching the babies fall to the ground Stepping on the fragile heads Listening to them pop As the stars... Hold it, hold it, what is...

Get them out of here. What's the matter? These letters, they're supposed to be summery, Summary and nice, and they just keep going weird. Shall I find some other letters? Yes. Get them out. I feel ill. And then we would put the puppies in the bag and throw them into the lake,

listening to their wines as they slowly submerged into the milky black... Get them out! Take the letters out of his hands. I'll never forget when father rolled the truck over Timmy and severed his legs. Get him out! And stop that cheesy music every time he reads. This stuff isn't pretty. Harlem Williams, have a great summer.

Try and ignore what you just heard. Here, on the Harland Highway. I'll never forget when mother woke up in bed between me and... Get out! He, he. Ooh, creepy. creepy guy how about you did you ever have uh that creepy guy in your neighborhood did you ever have the boo radley you know that creepy guy who lurked in his basement the the guy from

to kill a mockingbird i think every neighborhood had that one questionable guy and that one kind of creepy house um interestingly enough when i grew up we had that guy right next door. Like literally, his front door was probably about, I'd say about 24 feet from our front door. His name was Mr. Jim. That's all we knew him as. I never knew his last name. I never knew we just called him Mr. Jim. And he looked like the guy from the game operation, except he had glasses. He had glasses and bad teeth. And he was a little bit. pudgy, wasn't a big fat guy, but a little bit pudgy and hair on the sides and a bald head. And a real friendly guy. He came from Newfoundland, Newfoundland, Canada, okay? And his name

was Mr. Jim, and everyone in the neighborhood was scared of the guy. But me and my two older sisters, we just worshipped him. We love this guy. Because our parents were not the type of parents that like to spend money on us. They never took us out for treats. They never took us for fast food to get a pizza ordered in or Chinese food maybe once a year, if that, and that was like huge. I was like winning the lottery, right? But lo and behold, this guy next door who had an unkempt lawn, okay, his grass would

grow really high, you know, like you expected to wake up. the morning and see like the great herds of Africa grazing in his front yard, zebras and wildebeests and giraffes. But the guy had no garden, no shrubbery, nothing, just a flat slice of land with grass on it, growing thickly. You could clearly see the division between our front lawn and his front lawn because his was about four feet high and ours was very well manicured and green and nice. And there's no flowers, no acriments, no trim around the house. It was just the house was built and they got the keys and went inside and the curtains

were never open. And when you're a kid, you know, you don't know, you don't care, you don't question. I just thought the guy was a little odd, but he was friendly. And what happened is, you know, back when I was growing up, You didn't really think about pedophiles and child perverts and murderers and kidnappers and rapists and all that crap. You just kind of took everyone at face value and that stuff you didn't really hear about or think about, right? So my parents let us interact with this guy, this Mr. Jim, and we loved him. This guy, like I said, our parents took us nowhere.

So Mr. Jim would always, like, you know, every now and then, a few four or five times a year, drive us to Dairy Queen. And our parents were, yeah, go with Mr. Jim. And he was an adult, and we were kids, and we grew up in a very conservative house. We weren't even allowed to say the word shut up. We certainly could never comment if there was a flock of birds in the yard. Look at the flock, mommy. Pach! I just said flock.

You're going straight to hell, you little whippersnapper. Ah, flock you! So anyways, this guy would take us to Dairy Queen, and he was the first adult ever that kind of broke that barrier between kid talk and adult talk. And now that I'm talking about, I'm wondering to this day if maybe he influenced me with his sense of humor and his childness and his childness. and his childlike behavior that I adored. This was a guy that when we were driving to Dairy Queen would fart. A grown man farting.

We'd never heard such a thing as little kids. It just wasn't done, especially not in our house. And I got to tell you, man, we laughed till we couldn't breathe. I mean, we already couldn't breathe from the farts, but this guy had an old rickety car, Mr. Jimmobile, and he'd fart, and he'd sing, and he'd say silly little stupid poems. I was running down the sidewalk. I was out in a race.

I fell on the ground and cracked my wife's face and just crazy rhymes that made no sense. But as kids, we couldn't get enough of it, man. It was more of a treat than the Dairy Queen. And then we get to Dairy Queen, and Mr. Jim, who had no kids, no family. kind of a recluse. He was like our boo Radley. He would buy us anything we wanted. And we were very polite.

We were raised well. We weren't the type of kids that, you know, just made a smash and grab. We were very humble and very respectful and grateful for anything we got. So, you know, we'd go in and get one ice cream cone each or a Sunday. And this guy would just pay for us. and we'd drive home, stuff in our face with Dairy Queen, and he'd be farting and telling his jokes. And I don't know.

It was a riot, man. And nowadays, you've got a creepy guy in your neighborhood, and you ain't no Mr. Jim, okay? He's more like Mr. Dalmer or Mr. Bundy or Mr. John Wayne Gacy. It's just some, at some point somewhere, sometime everything just took a turn towards creepyville, man. I long for the days of Boo Radley and Mr. Jim and maybe even that kid from powder.

Remember that albino freak that lived in a root cellar and had pale skin and bent utensils with his brain? But no, you can't have a lovable freak anymore in your neighborhood. If there's a freak in your neighborhood, man, and you're, you got to lock your kids up. Letting them go to Dairy Queen with Mr. Jim nowadays. Are you kidding me? Cyanora, those kids ain't coming back.

Hire some police divers and look in the bottom of lake. I want to kill you. See if you can find your youngans. Oh, getting morbid here. Well, Mr. Jim, if you're listening, I don't even know if you're still alive, but thank you for the joy, thank you for the Dairy Queen, thank you for impacting our childhood.

And for all you kind of recluse, demented Boo Radley, Mr. Jim's out there. Reach out, reach out, and see, I can't even say it. Reach out and touch a kid in your neighborhood. The world's changed. I can't even, I feel weird even saying reach out. You know it ain't going to happen. It's just sad. It's just sad.

I think I'll go dress up like a ham and try and find Boo Radley and together we'll go kill a mockingbird here on the Harlan Highway. Oh, Mr. Jim. I don't know. Do we want this guy again? I don't think it went that well last time.

Okay. Hey, folks. Harlan Williams here on the Harlan Highway. And last week, we had a guy come in and read summertime letters over the air. I don't know. Do we have... Okay, well, here he is again. How are you today?

I'm doing excellent. Thank you. All right. Did you want to read one of these summer letters? Absolutely. It would be my pleasure. Okay. Just go ahead.

Dear Catherine, I'm sitting here at the summer home out on the porch, looking out at the lawn. Watching the birds and the butterflies play and the hot summer breeze. I've been here three days and a fortnight awaiting your return anxiously. Long do I miss our long walks in the sunset. Long do I miss our romantic interludes in the gazebo. And long do I miss when the pygmies ran out of the bushes and started beating you with sticks until your skin turned raspberry blue.

Hey, hey! Yes See, this is why I didn't like it last time What are you talking about? You started these flowery, nice summery letters And then suddenly they tailspin into these Violent Twisted, bizarre, ugly scenarios

Well, I'm just here to do my job You asked me to read summer letters And I know Okay, just finish I remember as we see sat on the bench down by the lake, the bulrushes whistling in the breeze. I could hear children playing in the background. And then their little giggles turned to screams as I heard them run.

Through the trap door I had put on the veranda and they fell into a bucket full of nails and pierced the... Whoa! Excuse me? What is that? A trap door? The kids fall through and land on nails? Well, that's what the letter says. Where are you getting these letters? May I continue?

Okay, go, fit, finish up. Thank you, I'd ask you not to interrupt. Just finish up. As another season draws to a close, I think of you, Stephanie. I think of your green hazel eyes, your lavender's skin, your beautiful crimson lips, and your long, flowing hair. I'll never forget as I watched you walk away, and I released a full-grown Bengal tiger

and it jumped on you and started ripping your entrails out of your... Hey! I'm almost finished. No, you're done. The tiger consumed your lower torso and... Stop it! Until nothing was left but the marrow in your skinny bone...

But stop it! Get them out of here! I've got another one. Out! This is ridiculous. Where'd you get this guy? I'm from London, England. 54 Chastire Street. M-feet. Get out. Harlan Williams, have a great summer.

Try and ignore that guy. Little Timmy fell off the well again. Out! Harlan Williams.