(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, we’re taking you back to summer’s past. We are going to ask the question and discuss, how do you survive a summer job? By talking about our own summer job experiences throughout the years. – But we’re not gonna be talking about it because we talked about it years ago, and we’re actually taking a short break, as we told you on the last episode, from weekly releases of new episodes. And we’re doing three throwback episodes this week, next week and the week after that. In the first conversation, we’re going all the way back to, this is episode 30? Of Ear Biscuits, so you may have missed this one. This is one of the ones that we threw in there, in between interviews. – Interviews with YouTubers, like profile pieces which is what Ear Biscuits was, but then we would just have some discussions that now is what, years later, Ear Biscuits has become. So I think you will be, if you haven’t listened to it, it’ll be exactly what you’ve come to expect from Ear Biscuits now. And if you have listened to it, I think it’d be good to go back and listen to it again because hey, you’re already here. – Yeah, you don’t even have to go back. – Before we do, we just wanna say hey, if you still want to come to Australia to see us, get on a plane. Or if you’re alright in Australia, just get on another form of transportation and see us. Tickets are still available, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane on July 27th, July 29th, and July 30th, respectively. And then, Tour of Mythicality is going to Ontario on November 8th, Atlantic City on November 9th, and November 10th we’re going to Connecticut, Foxwoods Resort Casino so– – Go to TourofMythicality.com where you can buy those tickets. They are still available, however, they are moving quickly. So get them while the gettin’ is good. – And now, enjoy a good old episode of Ear Biscuits, and a lot of summer jobs. – Yes. (upbeat music) – [Rhett] Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett. – [Link] 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? – [Rhett] Yeah, I can because I’m one of ’em. – [Link] And 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, Rhett and Link. – Well I feel like you can get away with this. – [Link] 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, it’s just us again. – [Rhett] 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. – [Rhett] Especially if you’re asking the questions and then answering them. – [Link] But we’re not above trying that. I’m not gonna say it’s not gonna come to that, but not today ’cause today 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 fact that a milestone is approaching, it’s that time of year again. – [Rhett] The summer solstice. – [Link] Summertime when the livin’s easy. – [Rhett] You know, the funny thing is, a lot of times people, you know, you say things like, summer’s here because you’ve done something like, 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 June 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. – [Link] Whether you’re in school or not. – [Rhett] Even if you’re in year-round school, okay? This summer solstice thing is overrated. That happens halfway through summer vacation. – [Link] And can I take a second just to say– – [Rhett] Take any seconds, take what you want. – [Link] 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. – [Rhett] Did somebody tell you they stopped learning? – [Link] That’s what they were saying, just now. The voices? – [Rhett] Oh, the voices in your head. – [Link] You didn’t hear ’em? – No. – Okay, so this is what we’ve decided to do, we’re gonna reminisce over our summer jobs, summer experiences when it relates to occupational job-ustry. – [Rhett] Well you know, I gotta say we have a great job now. Wouldn’t trade it for anything, love what we do, but it’s definitely, summer rolls around and what is it? It’s just more of the same. I mean, we just keep on truckin’. We keep making YouTube videos. We keep doing Ear Biscuits. We don’t have the on and off again schedule that you have before you become an adult, and it’s just there was 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 physcial signs that you were changing. 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 gotta go get a job. You gotta 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 gotta bring home the bacon, you know? For me it was just, you’ve gotta save up for a Nintendo game, personally. It was a very selfish pursuit when I first decided I’m gonna do this summer job thing. – [Link] Or pay for the gas for your car type of a scenario. – Yeah, but my first – I mean I did that. – [Rhett] Job was pre driving though. – [Link] It was? – [Rhett] Oh yeah. I’m almost sure yours was. – [Link] Well if you’re talking about mowing lawns, yeah, that was my first job which was a summer job, but 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 Snapper Riding Lawn Mower. – [Rhett] Well that’s convenient because Armyboy52 asked on Twitter, “Is lawn mowing a good job “for a first job when young, Link?” – [Link] Absolutely, I mean there’s inherent hazards. I mean, there is a moving blade, for heaven’s sakes. So you shouldn’t be too young. You gotta know which side of the lawn mower to sit on. Not the bottom side. So you gotta be a certain age. Yeah, my poppa, Lincoln, he got me lawns around his neighborhood to mow. And he negotiated the price and everything for me. – I got you some lawns. – [Link] But I took his Snapper lawn mower, rode it across the street, now we’re cutting Ms. Alice’s lawn and then I would cut– – [Rhett] What are we talking about, how much for a lawn? – [Link] $15. – [Rhett] That was pretty good back in those days. – [Link] Yeah, like I said. I mean, when the chief of police negotiates your lawn mowing rate– – [Rhett] It was charitable, I’m sure though. – [Link] He’s packin’ heat. – [Rhett] Surely you weren’t doing that good of a job. – [Link] I was immaculate at this thing, man. The lawns were immaculate. I was immaculate. Everything was immaculate. – [Rhett] I mean, 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 and he was– – [Link] We had a small lawn. – [Rhett] He was trying to show me how to figure out where to mow next. He’s like, “Now okay, now see? “I mowed right here, and now I’m gonna 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?” (Link laughing) 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, kids, they just don’t see things like where the grass has been mowed, even though it seems so obvious. – [Link] To us. Is that why you were held a back a grade? (Rhett laughing) because you couldn’t see where the grass had– – I don’t recall being, I was held back for height, actually. No I was put forth, I skipped a grade because of height, not because of academic performance. – [Link] Okay, so the lies cancel themselves out. You neither went back or forwards in grades. But yeah, I mean, my business expanded quickly. I had to drive, this is before I had my driver’s license. I drove that lawn mower across Main Street, Lillington, to get to lawns on the other side of town. – [Rhett] I remember seeing you from time to time. – [Link] Most people would load the lawn mower up on the back of a truck and drive it the places. Naw, I mean, the lawn mower is a form of transportation. I’m just gonna take it. – It’s very slow. – [Link] So I’m going across like a– – [Rhett] Intersection. – [Link] Yeah, I was at our stoplight on a lawn mower, and every week– – and you’re like 12 years old. – [Link] Well, yeah. – [Rhett] I mean this is, it’s Lillington, North Carolina though. The rules are different, at least at the time. – [Link] And like I said, the chief of police negotiated all of these things for me. – [Rhett] He didn’t give you a police escort did he? – [Link] No, he didn’t, but I did have a siren on the lawn mower, I did not. – [Rhett] 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? – [Link] Yeah. – [Rhett] H&H. – [Rhett] Jerry Hartman’s company, outside of Buis Creek, North Carolina. – [Link] It was a clandestine operation, like he had a big warehouse behind his house, right? – [Rhett] No, it wasn’t behind his house, it was– – [Link] And a helipad. – [Rhett] It was on the way to Benson. It was past Coats, 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. I was just him and some other dude, who wasn’t his brother and then me for a few weeks. And 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. – [Link] But what did you do? – [Rhett] 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 on like the shelf of a elementary school in like 1978? – [Link] Yeah, and it’s like all hardened and you’re like, oh, what is this? – [Rhett] 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 is this rope wick that goes into the thing through some paper. – [Link] And then the liquid goes up the wick, then it permeates into the– – It per-per-me-mates. – permeates into the air. – [Rhett] It permamates into the air. – [Link] Did you mix the liquids too? – [Rhett] No, no, I had no contact with the liquids. I was a wick man (laughs). I was the wick man. I had to cut the rope and fold it, and stick it into these paper tops. – [Link] And then pour the liquid in there? – [Rhett] No, no. I was too young, I didn’t get the liquid. No, no, Rhett doesn’t get to touch the liquid. Rhett, he’s a wick man. He gets to touch the rope and the paper. – [Link] And you did this like eight hours a day, twisting wicks? Cuttin’ wicks? – [Rhett] There’s not even a twist. It’s a cut and a fold. And 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 ’em. And they’ll all be the same length. – [Link] But they won’t smell good. – [Rhett] Because I was a wick man. – [Link] Because you can’t touch the liquids. – [Rhett] This was the kind of job that I lost heart really quickly, early on, everyday. And I’d– – [Link] Was that a pun because it was Hartman & Hartman? (Rhett laughs) – [Rhett] I’d do a few, and then Jerry would come back there and he’d catch me just sort of daydreaming. I mean lots of daydreaming. – [Link] Like staring at the wall? – [Rhett] Oh yeah, I was a daydreamer buddy. And when you give a 14 year old the wick man job, I mean, you can’t expect too much, right? – [Link] He would come there and yell at you? – [Rhett] He’d be like, “Ahh, Rhett!” – [Link] Cut some wicks, brother! – [Rhett] “You’ve only done 17, huh? “Well, just so you know, we’re gonna need, “we’re gonna need a couple hundred more today.” – [Link] So did he fire you? Is that what I’m hearing? – [Rhett] No, it was a temporary position. I think I was actually raising money for like a trip or something. Like when we went to Trinidad or something. – [Link] Oh, really? – [Rhett] It could’ve been related to that. – So the money kind of went to charity? – [Rhett] Well, I mean, I used it for like a trip, you know, so I mean, yeah, I had a good time. But anyway, yeah that’s the first actual work I ever did for money. – [Link] 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 dad’s side of the family for one summer. 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. – [Rhett] Okay, that’s a real job. – [Link] Now I’m talking, and we called it barning tobacco because the process is, 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, blah, blah. – [Rhett] I think it’s important to set the stage for people where we grew up– – [Link] North Carolina. – [Rhett] In rural North Carolina. – [Link] Tobacco is the cash crop. – [Rhett] And it’s everywhere. I mean, on our way from my house, driving to high school was like a 10-mile trip, and you would pass 20 large fields with nothing but tobacco in ’em. Nothing but tobacco. Now that’s not the case since going back home, they’ve been replaced with soy beans and other things, but that was the deal. That was North Carolina. So there were tobacco fields everywhere. – [Link] Right, and I would drive over there at the crack of dawn. It’d 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 ’em on a trailer, they 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 ’em in this apparatus, like a rack, a metal rack, put the rack together and then pick this very heavy rack up. You had to pick up the rack with like a crane-type apparatus, like a small, electric-operated crane. I’d say weigh 500 pounds, one these things. Pretty dangerous. – [Rhett] And you’re how old? – [Link] Well I was 16 because I would drive. I would drive there. You’d put the tobacco in the racks and then you’d pick of the rack with the thing, and two people would feed it onto the shelf. Then you would slide the rack, pshh. 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 loaded all the tobacco in this oven – It’s like making beef jerky, but it’s tobacco. – [Link] Yeah, you would cure it, it goes in green, it comes out brown and cured. – [Rhett] Ready for cigarettes. – [Link] So then you could 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 gonna 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 look on my face of total stupidity that my Uncle Johnny, just he said, “Oh, he’s havin’ a brain fart again.” And I would wake up and everyone would be laughing and then I would pick up a thing a move it because it was just so mindless. – [Rhett] What were you thinking about, in those days? – [Link] I mean, I don’t remember, but anything but barning tobacco. I mean, anything to get out of there mentally. – [Rhett] And you didn’t? – [Link] I mean what did you think of when you stared at the wall in wick factory? – [Rhett] Oh, all kinds of things man, ideas. I was thinking about that screen play that we were trying to write, Gutless Wonders. You were probably think about the same thing, you just don’t remember. – [Link] And girlfriends, potentially. – [Rhett] You were thinking about Anna? – [Link] Yeah, it might a been a Sarah John phase. – [Rhett] Oh, thinking about Sarah John, huh? Really, pickin’ tobacco and thinking about Sarah John. – [Link] 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. – [Rhett] You’re kidding? I wonder how come I don’t remember this? – [Link] Tobacco sickness. – [Rhett] It’s basically like– – [Link] Vomiting. – [Rhett] If you had just smoked a bunch of cigarettes, having never smoked before. – [Link] It’s like my body smoked six packs a day. – [Rhett] You smoked cigarettes the way a frog would smoke cigarettes, like through the skin. – [Link] Right, it was vomiting. – [Rhett] Well that’s how frogs do tobacco, they just get up next to a tobacco leaf. – [Link] They do tobacco. That was a tough job. – [Rhett] But I think it’s, you know, you got to take part in like a cultural moment in history. – [Link] Yeah, it is pretty cool to think. – [Rhett] 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 that time. – [Link] It’s fallen out of vogue a little bit. – [Rhett] 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– – [Link] We’re talking 1994. – [Rhett] It just sounds archaic. It’s like yeah, I worked in tobacco fields. – [Link] 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. He only wore shorts, and like Teva sandals. – [Rhett] Those are great for picking tobacco. – [Link] And he made fun of me for being a soccer player. – [Rhett] Yeah, you’re a dork, you wear Umbros. – [Link] He was a football player, like big, linebacker type dude. He’d always make fun of me, he didn’t call me brain fart, he just called me soccer player. – Rhett Soccer player? It wasn’t more creative? He didn’t call you soccer boy, or anything? – [Link] Not that I recall. – [Rhett] You’re a soccer player. – [Link] 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. – [Rhett] Is Keith still around, somewhere? – [Link] He’s living. He’s fine. – [Rhett] He’s not an Ear Biscuits listener, I don’t think. – He’s not. I’m not the competitive type, and 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, a start line. He’s like, “Alright!” And he tells my cousin Ashley, he’s like, “Ashley, I want you to count down from three, “and then we’re gone go, and I’ma show him what’s what.” – [Rhett] And he’s Tevas, what do you have on? – [Link] Like– – [Rhett] Sambas? – [Link] 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 I was literally, if it wasn’t so hot out, I would’ve started sweating. My armpits, I was getting nervous. I was like, man, I guess I’m gonna try. And then she’s like, “Three, two, one!” And boom! I just take off, like foom! I’m just giving it all I got. And (laughs) I’m like (imitating footsteps). I’m like Usain Bolt, bo’ leaving the line. After about five– – [Rhett] Carl Lewis woulda probably been the right reference at the time. – [Link] Five steps, I’m like going full speed, and I just happen the 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. (Rhett laughing) – [Rhett] Oh gosh. And he’s the one who issued the challenge? (laughs) – [Link] Yeah, I just stopped. – [Rhett] How do you recover from that? – [Link] 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, out of pity for the guy. There’s a video going around. – [Rhett] Oh, I haven’t seen that. – [Link] Well that’s what happens. But anyway, you know, you had to things to invent ways to un-brain fart yourself. – [Rhett] Did he ever– – [Link] Didn’t say a word. – [Rhett] Talk about it? – [Link] Didn’t say a word. – [Rhett] He never challenged you again either? – [Link] Didn’t say a word when he got up, there was no conversation. We just went back to work. (Rhett laughing) I mean he was still a huge guy, I wasn’t gonna make fun of him. – [Rhett] Oh yeah, he was like, he gone say nothin’ to me about fallin’ down, I don’t care about his soccer. – [Link] You worked one summer– – [Rhett] I had a pretty epic job, I did. I had a couple of epic heat of the South jobs. – [Link] Pray tell. – [Rhett] 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, you know, a big wig 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. – [Link] Well Trent was cool ’cause he had everything. 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. – [Rhett] Chatrooms. – [Link] He was the only guy with this thing called the internet. And his own wide-screen TV in his room, and his own bathroom, in his own bedroom. – [Rhett] Well and I remember him saying, “I’m gonna 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 gonna make him do that much. I’m in on this. He’s probably gonna pay us great because he’s got all this money. So, I’m in on that. And then, I show up my first day, and I’m ready. We’re gonna build things. We’re gonna change the world. – [Link] Or do nothing and get paid. – [Rhett] 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 just finished building, “and you’re gonna clean out the crawl space.” So, let me just paint a picture here. – [Link] Like literally the space that you have to crawl in under a house? – Yes. – [Link] Hence, crawl space. – [Rhett] 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, 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? Now, 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 chaw juice in it. That’s tobacco juice. They just throw it into the foundation because they know that some dillweed 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. – [Link] So the foundation is just a convenient trash receptacle. I mean, they wouldn’t like micturate in there or anything. – [Rhett] I smelled urine from time to time, I did. But I gotta tell ya, I was already 6’5″ at the time. You know, I’m a little over 6’6″ now, 6’6″ and 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 gotta 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? – [Link] Yeah, dust boogers. – [Rhett] 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’ve been using the whole time, but they didn’t. And then I would roll out the plastic, the vapor barrier. – Well where was Trent? – [Rhett] That summer, Trent was off doing stuff on the rental properties. So that summer we didn’t spend a lot of time together. That was a difficult job, but the next summer rolls around, and I’m like, okay I’m gonna 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, “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, “the three of us are framing a home.” He was like yeah, okay so out there in Lillington– – [Link] This sounds above your pay grade. – [Rhett] Oh, you think? I had barely swung a hammer. 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 like a ranch-style home, two bedroom, smaller home and kind of about the size of house that you grew up in Buies Creek over there. – [Link] Two bedroom, car port situation. – That size home. And he says, “Okay, I’ve got the blueprints.” So, I don’t know how home building works now, but the way it worked– – [Link] You never even built with Legos as a kid. – [Rhett] No, well yeah, I did a little bit of Lego. – [Link] Tinkertoys? – [Rhett] Yeah, that kind of thing. Mr. Fred says, “Alright, 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 put a 2×4 on the ground, “and then you nail it together, and then you do this, “and you do this, and alright now, “let’s lift it up. “And now I’m gonna nail it into the foundation.” And the whole summer, everyday, we just showed up at this site. – [Link] And at what point did it all fall in on itself? – [Rhett] Well there was moment where we got to a place where the blueprints became a factor, when we got to a closet. And I was like– – [Link] Walk-in closet became a broom closet? – [Rhett] I was like, I don’t know what we did wrong, but this closet is about 12 inches deep (laughs). – [Link] Really, it was a broom closet. A decorative door. – [Rhett] One of the bedrooms ended up with a very shallow closet. I think that’s just par for the course. Something had to give, and literally, the closet gave. (Link laughing) 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 gonna be, they’re gonna put their shirts sideways, hang the shirts sideways. (Link laughing) – [Link] Six of ’em – [Rhett] 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. – [Link] 27, oh okay so, this house is still there. – [Rhett] Oh yeah! Someone is using the closet right now. – [Link] Someone’s cursing that closet everyday. – [Rhett] It’s out there and it was on a foundation out on some land that someone had. Only thing I remember is there was a fig tree, and we would eat the figs off of this fig tree. 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 and a– – Rhett built your house, and he’d like to come hangout this Christmas when he comes back home. Okay, we_al457 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 gonna 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. 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. And of course you had– – [Rhett] teacups. – [Link] It was kind of like teacups, but they couldn’t say that because, well– – [Rhett] Teacups were patented. – [Link] Walt Disney would run ’em out of business or something. So everyday you would come in and the supervisor would assign me to my ride. Are you gonna be the ladybugs with the four year olds? Are you gonna be on the imitation teacups, spinny things? They got like a spider spinny thing too. 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 is an operator there. And at that point, you can press the go button, and the stop button. – [Rhett] Safety mechanism. – [Link] Right, they just don’t want someone to press go and then walk away, so you gotta 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 awhile for it to come to rest because everything was spinning so fast. So there was an art to stopping the thing, subject to people looking like they were getting sick. – [Rhett] So there’s not a predetermined length of ride? – [Link] 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. – [Rhett] But cut it short, maybe? – [Link] But cut it short if somebody’s gonna vomit. So that was interesting. There was a challenge involved in that because people– – [Rhett] And they told you this on the orientation? – [Link] No, I learned this myself. – [Rhett] Oh, really. – [Link] I learned it the hard way. People vomited on my ride. And then you realize, I’m gonna start looking in these people’s faces whenever they (imitates whooshing) come around. And when the face, it 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. – [Rhett] Now, when someone vomited on the ride, are you personally responsible for cleaning it up, or is there like a dude, the vomit man? – [Link] Nope, it was me. And they had a– – [Rhett] A sawdust repository? – [Link] 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 of the pedal, and it’s still spinning. – [Rhett] Oh gosh. And then, when it gets on somebody else, they vomit. In the movies at least. – [Link] No 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 the sign, all the people in line go away. They don’t wanna 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. And it just so happened that there was a hotdog stand right next door to my ride which is stupid. They should put that on the other side, not only because people would eat and then get sick, but because it turns out that the diameter of the hotdog is slightly larger than the diameter of the drain holes in the bottom of the teacups. – [Rhett] Mmm. Mmm. – [Link] Meaning, I had to garden hose everything out, and then I was left with just nice, bite-size chunks of hotdog that I had– – That’s somebody who’s swallowing a hotdog pretty quickly, I mean. – [Link] That’s how you eat a hotdog. You just bite it, bite it, bite it, swallow, swallow, swallow. – [Rhett] I do, I do. – [Link] That’s what he did. – [Rhett] But I’m well trained. I mean, I can eat hotdogs really quickly, but. – [Link] I mean, I was spraying, the water pressure, I was really trying to get it to go in that drain so when I couldn’t get ’em to go through there, I had to scoop ’em out. – [Rhett] Rubber glove? – [Link] I don’t recall that. I don’t think we had rubber gloves. – [Rhett] Did you have a special shirt on? – [Link] I’m pretty sure I had a rubber glove. I had on like a tropical-themed shirt. – [Rhett] Oh, wow. – [Link] 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 hotdog 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 gotta use Windex and clean that out. – [Rhett] Oh, this is not a fun job. – [Link] So, and then you’re not talking to anybody. People don’t wanna talk to you, they just wanna get on the rides, and so it’s kind of this miserable existence – What about the cute girls? I mean, there’s cute girls at theme parks? – There weren’t that– – That’s when you gotta perk up a little bit. – [Link] 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 was like, “No, what, you seem like something’s wrong. “Have you received really bad news? “Is something going on personally “that you don’t wanna tell me about?” I’m like, no, no, no. And I didn’t wanna 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 was like, “Yeah, why don’t you just go home?” And I was like, well I live in North Carolina. She was like, “I mean just, no, for the day.” (Rhett laughing) So, I left and went back to where I staying. It was a walk of shame. I was kicked off of my ride. I came to work to next day, and I was like, I’ll have a better attitude, I apologized and everything, but that was absolutely embarrassing. My friends saw me and they were like, “Why are you off work?” – [Rhett] Got a bad attitude. – [Link] I had a bad attitude, I got kicked off of my ride. – [Rhett] Soccer Boy had a bad attitude today. (Link laughing) But did your attitude really improve? It seems to me like the kind of thing that– – For a couple of days. – you would’ve just brushed off, and just gone right back to it. – [Link] For a couple of days, 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. – [Rhett] The people, you want somebody’s who’s operating, you’re having a good time. – [Link] What, everyone else is having a good time, that’s the point, you’re so close to people having a good time. – [Rhett] But that’s the art, that’s the art of being in the amusement business. When I went to Disney World recently, there was a guy who was orienting everybody to one of the things, it was like the Haunted Mansion, or whatever. I know that he was saying exactly the same thing that he’s been saying all day, but– – [Link] It was fresh? – [Rhett] He seemed so into it. And I 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 wanna run into, not Soccer Boy. – [Link] 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 rollercoaster at Disney World now, if you had just follow through. – [Link] Yeah. (Rhett laughing) I blew it. But it’s perspective, you know? I didn’t have perspective. And it seems like the coolest job I could of had, I mean I can tell you about some of the other ones. – [Rhett] 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– – [Link] Be like Fred. – [Rhett] I’m gonna go back to H&H and I’m gonna be like, hey, Wick Man’s back. Wick Man’s back to end strong. Maybe there’ll be something like that, but assuming that we’re not gonna 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 that– – [Link] It’s what you make it. – [Rhett] There’s a 99.99% 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. You know, your career. And it’s gonna be the subject of stories, maybe a podcast that you have, years from now. – [Link] Do you have more? – [Rhett] Oh yeah. – Give me another one. – Yeah. My point was, you want me to save the point to the end? – [Link] I thought that was the point, sure, save the point to the end. Let’s just do like a teaser. – Teaser. Well, I was gonna say, real quickly, wait, we’ll come back because there’s another job that you had that you forgot about. 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. I was working for the Department of Transportation. – [Link] Oh, yeah. – [Rhett] So every summer while I was in school, in 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. As exciting as it sounds– – [Link] Just by virtue of being a civil engineering major? – [Rhett] 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, “tell him to apply for a job, but with us, “in our department.” – [Link] We’ll make his dreams come true. – [Rhett] “We have a number of “students from NC State University that come in “and help us out every summer, “in the Pavement Management Unit.” – [Link] Pavement Management, what does that mean? – [Rhett] 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, you know, a summer. I mean the guy, all he gotta 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. – [Link] Head-on collisions. – [Rhett] It’s either slow or stop, and you better know which on 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 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. – [Link] Of course. – [Rhett] 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. – [Link] You think? – [Rhett] But in 1998, I’m sure it was in computer somewhere, but I never saw the computer. All I saw were these huge, three foot by four foot 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. And It was a map that had been printed somewhere, but then what we were supposed to do is, we were getting updates. There would be red lines on the maps of new roads that had come in. – [Link] Like printed red lines? – [Rhett] No, somebody had drawn these new roads in, and I don’t know if these were then going to be incorporated into the new, somewhere on a computer, it was being done, it was being updated. – [Link] Like somebody hand-drew – [Rhett] Somebody had come and said, okay 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. Called ’em 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. – [Link] So if you missed one, did you have to go back and erase all the nodes and then renumber ’em? 4483, 4484. – [Rhett] It was so, first of all, it was the most boring thing. It was worse than Wick Man. It was worse than wicking the air fresheners. And there were 13 of us doing it. – [Link] All on one map? – Rhett No. So I do think that a few of the people in our division were doing some other things, but most of us– – [Link] Circling intersections and writing a number beside it. End of story. – Let me tell you, first of all, I worked there for three summers. And I probably got through four maps. – [Link] You’re kidding me? – [Rhett] And you know what I was doing the rest of the time? Talking. – Just shooting the breeze? – Shooting the breeze. Yes, just sitting there talking to these other people who were college students. – [Link] Were they cool people? – [Rhett] Yeah. – [Link] That’s not a bad job then. (Rhett spluttering) It doesn’t sound like a job at all. – [Rhett] I made some good friends. – [Link] Sounds like you were on a break! – [Rhett] But it just, I was struck, you know? Ever since this job, I’ve had kind of an informed opinion when I hear the, 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. – [Link] Didn’t you have your supervisor, was like, hey, circle some nodes, yo! – [Rhett] The supervisor would sleep. Under her desk. I’m not kidding. – [Link] Really? – [Rhett] I don’t know how often this happened, but there was a rumor going around and it had confirmed by several of the people that I worked with, that occasionally her door would close and there would be like– – [Link] So you never saw her? – [Rhett] But I knew her well enough to know, that it was not unexpected behavior. Apparently, that when her 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? – [Rhett] She’s laying down on the floor. She’s in a kind of a small office, you gotta kind of get under the desk there and sleep. – [Link] So there was a pervasive attitude, coming from the top down, a lackadaisical, let’s make this a break area? – [Rhett] And no one ever really came to check and see what we were doing. I was kind of– – Wasn’t there a really pretty girl that worked there? I remember, that’s all you told me about was there was a hot girl, circling nodes. You don’t remember? – [Rhett] Yeah I’m sure, yeah. There was a couple of girls that I liked to talk to. I liked to bring my map over next to their map. (Link laughing) – [Link] Hey baby, how’s that node circling going? – [Rhett] 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– – [Link] Water under the bridge, to use the civil engineering knowledge. – Another that happened was, is 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. There was a lot of cop cars, but it’s also just a lot of government cars. You’ll see, in North Carolina you’ll see these navy Crown Victoria cars with yellow tags. That’s like the government-issue car. Our division had a fleet of cars, and then what they were used for is they would send people out to different places, different intersections. – Nodes – And you’d count traffic. – [Link] Now that sounds like fun (laughs). – [Rhett] That’s a piece of data that goes into the system that let’s us know what road needs to be worked. Because if you’re like, okay, this certain section from node X to node Y. – [Link] Okay, you’re losing me. Did you ride in the Crown Victoria? – [Rhett] I’m just saying, people go out and count traffic with little clickers. – [Link] Did you do that? – [Rhett] 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 150 Pickup Trucks in our fleet, we have to log a certain number of miles on the vehicles. – Oh no. Please. – [Rhett] And so, they were like, go out and drive around the Beltline. – [Link] Really? – [Rhett] So I would get– – [Link] Just to rack miles on the odometer? – Just to put miles on. So I would just go out. I would take the Ford 150 or the Crown Vic, along with another guy, and we would just drive around the Beltline, around Raleigh. Yeah, again, just shootin’ the breeze. – [Link] Like it was a Nascar race. Really? – [Rhett] Yeah, just driving. I mean it’s not a bad job. – [Link] That’s a pretty good job. I was a professional driver for the DOT. – [Rhett] Your tax dollars at work. – [Link] I was an odometer spinner. What’s the job that you told me that I forgot about? – [Rhett] Chicken houses. – [Link] I didn’t work in the chicken houses. Like Uncle Johnny had some chicken houses and I worked around there, but here’s what it was. – [Rhett] But you told me about the chicken pit? – [Link] Oh yeah, they had it, I mean I was around them, but the tobacco fields were around there. And Cousin Keith was there, he liked to be mean to the chickens. That’s as far as I’m gonna go, okay? He thought it was funny, but it was cruel and 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. 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 what I had heard was, I knew I was assigned to work with him because Will was gone that summer. Will was like, “Hey, can you do my job with my family, “and make some scratch?” So first day, I went and met his, actually, his Uncle’s name was Keith. Different guy. A pig farmer. And I had heard that they mate the pigs. Well, the don’t mate the pigs, they inseminate the pigs, okay? – [Rhett] Yeah, for some reason you had to do it for them. – [Link] Yeah, you have to, you have to take matters into your own hands. – [Rhett] Literally. – [Link] So to speak. That’s all I was thinking about was, okay, if I work in this pig farm, am I gonna have to do this? I can’t do this. How am I gonna 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. – [Link] I meet him that day, and big, strapping man. Big beard, and he comes out front and he meets. Really nice guy. He’s like, “Link, thank you for taking Will’s “position here this summer while he’s away, “but I gotta 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 secure lands “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 four hours, and I would just fall asleep in the passenger seat. And we’d get out– – [Rhett] Extended brain fart. – Link With, 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 the private land, in order to keep the ATVs and the four wheelers out of private property. – [Rhett] Exciting stuff. – [Link] It was riveting. – [Rhett] You ever run into somebody on a four wheeler, who wanted in? – [Rhett] 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, over time, about 400 old televisions. On this private property. – Jackpot. – [Link] Back out there in the sticks, people would just make any old piece of land a landfill. And CP&L wanted to clean it up and the glass on the front of these televisions can get as much as an half-inch thick or more. But then they would dump ’em out, and so it would be this shattered glass that would be thick. And I had to pick it all up using trash picker uppers, and just with my hands. I cut my hands a lot, Rhett, on that one. But that was not a good job either. – [Rhett] But there was no epic, I went to the emergency room, I lost a finger? – [Link] No, as you can see, I still have all my fingers, but I didn’t have to mate pigs artificially. Anything’s better than that. – [Rhett] But you know what happened there? You were originally slated to be the man. The man-handler. – [Link] But he saw it in my eyes. – [Rhett] He saw it in your eyes, he’s like, can’t put this kid through this. – I can’t do it to him. – [Rhett] I’m gonna put him out on the trail. You know, 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. – [Link] You thinking about the The Grock? – [Rhett] Yeah. – [Link] 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, at Campbell University, in the middle of Buies Creek and there was a little grocery store called The Grock on the edge of town. It’s not there anymore. – It’s since been torn down. – 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. It was a Gilligan’s Island pinball machine there. And then we would go on our summer escapades out around Buies Creek for the rest of the day, but we got to know the guy. – [Rhett] And he was a very creepy, creepy dude. – [Link] Who ran The Grock. – [Rhett] Who ran The Grock, back then. He was probably 40 years old. – [Link] And he’s like, “Hey boys, you want a job?” – [Rhett] Well he looked like a character off of the Simpsons. You know, he’s kind of swarthy? – [Link] Yeah, like a pirate. – [Rhett] And actually he sounded like he wasn’t from there. – [Link] Oh, like this? Was he like this? Was it like this? – [Rhett] It was a little bit like this. It was like, I’m not from around here, I’m from the Simpsons, cartoon show. – Hey boys, would you like to make some scratch? – [Rhett] 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 H&H. This is first job ever, but there was no contract and it was probably a violation of child labor laws because we were probably 12, 13 years old. – [Link] Baseball cards were a big deal. They were on display out there, and I guess grade school and high school kids would come in for like different camps at Campbell and they would come over and by baseball cards, but in order to know if you had a whole set, you had to order them by number to be able to sell a complete set. And that’s what he said, “Well do you wanna order baseball cards?” Literally, just take piles of baseball cards and order them by number. 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.” – [Rhett] 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 that’s what were doing. And he put us in the back room. He said, “Just go back here.” He would throw all these baseball cards. It was like child labor type scenario. Totally illegal. – [Rhett] I mean honestly, – [Link] Spread all of these baseball cards on a pool table? – [Rhett] And now that I think about it, we could’ve been in danger. And you know, 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 has got us in the back room sorting baseball cards. – [Link] I mean, nothing ever happened that was inappropriate. – No. And he never came back there. – [Link] I mean there were some magazines stuffed in the pool table that gave us quite an education on the human anatomy. – [Rhett] Yeah, that seriously expanded our perspective. – [Link] But other than that, it was, hey, give me my dollar. Or my five dollars. – [Rhett] And we only did that for I’d say, a couple weeks or so. But that’s the only time we ever worked together until we reunited. – [Link] Yeah, that was our first entrepreneurial spirit, the seed was planted at that point. – [Rhett] We could’ve become expert baseball card, I was gonna say smugglers, but sorters, but we moved onto other things. – [Link] Now I should say that 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 artist, kind of a guy. He’s got multiple employees working for him now, but 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 would give directives like a mime. It’s like he would be telling me to do something and then all of sudden, all the words would get jumbled and he’s just be like, (spluttering). It wouldn’t be English. And he would start pointing and gesturing, and expected 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. – Just with hand signals. – [Rhett] And grunts. – [Link] And grunts. 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. – Oh really? – It was just very frustrating. So what has happened is I now do this, right? – [Rhett] All the time. – Link Not all the time. – [Rhett] No, I would say that it is not uncommon, especially, especially if there’s something physical, like we’re moving something, or building something. – [Link] And there’s like some sort of tension. – [Rhett] Yeah, and you’re just like, and you do the same thing, it’s mind blowing. – [Link] Yeah, it’s extremely frustrating for the– – [Rhett] 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. – [Link] But mentally, hand-wise, I’ve said a lot. – [Rhett] You inherited that. – [Link] Yeah, I mean and I don’t think I learned it. I do think it is a genetic thing. At a certain stress level– – A disorder is probably correct. – [Link] But the funny thing, I worked for him for all those summers. And it was fine, except for the pointing. And you know, I would eventually figure it out, and I would do the right thing. But when I was, 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 to bridge the gap between my 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 come back and help you? And I wasn’t a high school student, I wasn’t a college student, I was a grown man with a wife. And like I had 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. He can speak just like me, just like normal, but whenever it gets really frustrating, Dad has to go to the hand signal. And I remember this one time, being a full adult, if things got really frustrating, I went in the house and I took him the tile. And he’s like, “No, no, no, you gotta, “I really need this corner cut off. “and did you (spluttering)” And then 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. By this time, I’ve cut too much off, I gotta start over. I go back out for 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 kind of harsh. And I backed away slowly. Basically, ran outside, and I was gonna cut the tile again and I started crying. (Rhett laughing) My dad, I was a full grown adult. – [Rhett] Oh man! – [Link] Married. – [Rhett] Made you cry. – [Link] And I was so frustrated that I was crying in the front yard of this house, in Lillington. – [Rhett] Did you tell him? – [Link] 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. – [Rhett] Like painters do. – [Link] Like painters do. And we did have a conversation about and cleared the air. And it was a good experience. – [Rhett] Like Dad, I need you to use your words. Well that’s what we used to say. We say that to my children now. Use your words. – [Link] It was just so frustrating, that particular moment. And now that I think, I’m certain I contributed to the frustration, probably deserved most of it. – [Rhett] It was two signal talkers trying to communicate with each other. That’s probably what you don’t realize is that 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. – [Link] Yeah so, that’s the last time I’ve cried. It’s not. – I don’t believe that. – [Link] So that’s my defining summer job moment. And now you can finish your application that you were teasing to. – [Rhett] Well, I was gonna say, you’re doing this job. If I could go back and talk to myself, If I would do anything differently, I think I’d probably would’ve stood up and questioned a few things at the DOT. That’s one thing I might go back and do. And be like, I don’t know, 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 gonna happen with it. – [Link] Or cleaning up hotdog chunks. – [Rhett] I would just say, if there’s anyway at all possible that you can just be engaged. You know, I think the story here is that we were just kind of along for the ride, right? It was just like a brain fart waiting to happen. – [Link] So you’re like holding the brain fart? – [Rhett] A daydream waiting to happen. One of the things I’m trying to teach my kids now is I just remember how not present I was. And so, I was just kind of always off somewhere, and just didn’t care about much stuff. I think it’s just something you kind of have to come into, but I’m just 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 wanna 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. – [Link] Or you don’t want to be brought to tears as a 22 year old by your father. – [Rhett] 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 talking one step, don’t turn around, keep going. – Keep going. – [Rhett] Keep running. Run to Daddy’s house. Be the first one back for lunch. – [Link] And then point and laugh at him. (Rhett laughing) – [Rhett] Didn’t say that. – [Link] Like kick dirt in his face. – [Rhett] 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. – [Link] Or just, at least say, well a dollar fifty. – [Rhett] And don’t look at the magazines that are stuffed into the pool table pockets. Stay away from those. – [Link] Mmhmm, no good can come from that. – [Rhett] Okay (sighs). – [Link] What a lot of good came from this here Biscuit. I feel like I’ve reconnected with my youth and with my summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime feelins. – [Rhett] I’m thinking about getting a summer job on the side now, now that we talked about this. – [Link] Let’s do it man. I’ll sort some baseball cards. – [Rhett] 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. – [Link] Thanks for hanging out with us in this Ear Biscuit. Leave us a review on the iTunes, that’s helpful. Also, #EarBiscuits us, and let us know what you think about this particular episode. Tweet at us. Listen to you next week, or you to us. You know what I’m trying to say. (upbeat music) – [Rhett] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Bisuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show, Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being you mythical best.