I cannot… I cannot believe this is still here. (groovy electronic music) Well you can’t tell a story about a small town in the south without talking about church. – So this parking lot used to be a field that we would, we’d play kickball in. Be pressured into going to the short stop and stealing things– – Hold up. I cannot… I cannot believe this is still here. This is the old air conditioning unit that I carved my freaking name into and it’s still there. Look. – [Link] Maybe I did it and I was trying to frame you. – No, I specifically remember sitting back here thinking, ’cause the bushes were a lot thicker. I remember sitting back here and thinking, oh if you kinda push this to the side, you can kinda make it function less efficiently but you can also leave your mark. – [Link] It looks like it says Matt plus Rhett– – Nah it said– – Equals– – [Rhett] I think it said Matt plus somebody– – Love. – I can’t believe this is still here. This is nuts. – [Link] I can’t believe you never got in trouble for it. – Oh yeah, ’cause you know who did it. Rhett. (chuckles) – It’s not that I was too smart to not do that, I was just too afraid, too afraid of God. – Oh. – Once upon a time, we went to a church– – Church. – Called Buies Creek First Baptist Church. – So the McLaughlin family, for some reason, I don’t know, my parents decided that our spot every single Sunday was going to be right here, which might I just observe that. You’re seeing everything from the side. Maybe Pastor Rogers had a great profile. – Well, Mom and Jimmy and me, our spot was over here. You remember this? I’d sit over here. – Water is a huge component of the book and that’s not just the river or the creek or the spring. – Mm-hmm. – But it’s also the way that water is so symbolic and so essential to the religious experience of people in the south. – At a Baptist church, you have a thing called a baptismal which is a– – Pool of water. – Basically a big bath tub full of water that when somebody’s baptized, you dunk ’em in the water. – We were both baptized in this baptismal. – Yeah I was 10 years old. – We got dunked in that water. We get in the water all the way. – Full immersion. – We go all the way under and come back up. These would be like this. They would be closed, right. So Pastor Rogers would go… This may just be in my mind that he would open like this. – Dearly beloved. We are gathered here today. – It’s not a wedding. – To watch people be dunked in water. So what would happen was– – You put your hand on your nose. – [Link] Put my hand on my nose. (Link grunts) – That’s it, that’s the action. – That’s it, and then you’re signed, sealed, delivered. So if you see the balcony, that’s where once our parents allowed us not to sit with them, that’s where we would sit with all the Campbell University college students. The cool spot. Let’s go up there. – The thing that we were really into doing was reaching in here to the, there’s a couple of things in here. Yeah the offering and the pew envelope which you could put your offering in. – Put a donation in there. – We’d write on those. Which I think those are perfect ’cause they’ve got a full blank back. – So they’d be singing songs and then the preacher would be giving a sermon and you’re supposed to be quiet, you’re supposed to be attentive. And maybe it looked like we were writing notes, like you would in a class. No but that’s a good point. – Yes yes yes. – But really we were just writing Deep Thoughts for comedic emphasis to each other. – We were really into Deep Thoughts, Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts on SNL and we would write a Deep Thought to each other and try to make each other laugh. – Once you start laughing but not allowing yourself to laugh, it just makes it worse and worse and worse. – We got a lot of laugh attacks. – We were about to explode with laugh attacks and during the sermon, your fifth grade teacher, Miss Leneer, would sit in the choir loft and give us the stink eye. – Yeah. – Stevie? – Yeah. – Can you go down and sit on the back row? (Stevie laughing) – What’s that supposed to– – And be, you know– – We want you to be Miss Leneer. – [Link] Keep an eye on us. – [Rhett] Yeah, that was her spot. – Okay, I’m done. I wouldn’t say that, I wouldn’t say anything, I would just go… Hand it over. Then I’d be thinking, funny? And then you would just kind, you would get, I think I got a lot of courtesy laughs. – Yeah, you did. – Is that’s what’s happening? – That’s what you’re about to get (laughs). – That’s exactly something I would write. – I often look forward to receiving letters because everyone who writes to me thinks I am a deer. I like to think of myself as a majestic buck with huge antlers that look like a hat rack, until I get run over by a semi. This is exactly the kinda thing that you would write. Not really that funny. (giggles) (Link chuckles) – Right. – Doesn’t really make sense. – Right. – [Rhett] Doesn’t really have a punchline. – Right. – Hopefully you can read my handwriting. I really can’t write. (Link chuckles) – That’s decent. – This is exactly the kind of thing that I would have written to you. – Yeah, I met a man in the park today. I threw a stick and he brought it to me. He chased squirrels. He peed on a bush. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that was a man. (Rhett chuckles) And then you would start laughing at your own joke. – That’s pretty good, that was good. – And then I would start laughing. But like it would be silent. – Silent like. (stifled laughing) – Like literally those have been noises we’d be making in church. – Maybe sometimes you might go huh. – Yeah like an audible like squeak. – Huh! – Huh! – And then we’d all of a sudden, we’d make eye contact with Miss Leneer and then we’d just start taking notes again. Oh we’re being studious. Sorry Miss Leneer. – [Rhett] Huh! (Rhett chuckles) – So we grew up going to the first Baptist church in town but there was a second Baptist church called Memorial Baptist right here on the right. A lot of southern towns literally had a church called the second Baptist church though. – We wanted to include not just saying, okay, well there was a first Baptist church and a second Baptist church but actually kind of include what that meant and what that sort of represents in the greater culture of the south because we’re dealing with a lot of themes of discipline and conformity and because church is such a vital part of what that is and what the expectations that sort of people in the south sort of place on other people, have a lot to do with church and we wanted to make sure that we talked about that somewhat in our book. You have to think that the church that you’re at is better than the church that you’re not at or else you’d be at the other church so it’s just human nature to kinda justify why you’re at this church and just throw some, you know, snide remarks around about the other church. – [Link] Memorial has a steeple. First Baptist, no steeple. – Yeah but don’t you really like the design of First Baptist better than the design of Memorial? – [Link] It’s more courthousey. – [Rhett] And the stained glass, you see any stained glass? – No. – I see barely any windows on this church. – You might mistake this as a Jehovah’s Witness. – [Rhett] It could be a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witness. – Kingdom Hall. – You don’t want people to get confused. – We were not huge troublemakers as kids. – We were a little mischievous. – We were just a little bored. – Okay this is the scene of the most scandalous thing we ever did in Buies Creek, Link. – And it was your fault. – Mm, okay, you may see it that way. I seem to– – Well that just means you’re allowed to be a leader. – I seem to remember you being the first one to throw a rock. – So we were bored one day and we went inside and made our way onto the roof to have some fun so– – And it turns out the roof is completely covered in little rocks which we then proceeded to throw onto passing cars. As you can see, they just make such an easy target. – I don’t know that we threw the rocks at traffic. – I don’t think– – We just threw them down. – Well, I can safely say that we did not contact any vehicles. – Yeah, of course not. – We didn’t hit any vehicles. I mean I was trying like crazy to but I was not able to make contact with any passing vehicles. – So when we got in the stairwell, we noticed something very inviting. – Can you imagine what two 14 year old boys would think when they saw that? – Go go go go go go go go. – Rhett Then we get up here, we oh– – Oh! Stepped on my foot. And then I would– – That was your foot? It felt like your hand. – [Link] It was my hand. – [Rhett] There’s a lock, dude. There was no lock in 1990, oh, 92, there was no lock up here. You’re kinda stepping directly on my foot right now. – [Link] Well it’s in the way, move your– – [Rhett] Just step on a different rung, man. Oh, put some pressure on a different foot. What the heck, man? Why you gotta be up here with me? – So I’m gonna take full credit for that lock being on there. That’s because of us. – Yes. One of the big themes of the book is discipline, right, and we kinda play around with that, discipline taken to a very sort of scary extreme and but one of the things, the way that the dynamic worked between us is that your mom would punish you according to what my parents were doing to me. The whole idea in the book that we explore with Rex and Leif receiving the same punishment which was initiated from Rex’s parents and then sort of handed out to both Rex and Leif, that was something that was very much a reality in our lives. – You got grounded for a week which meant I got grounded for a week. – But you didn’t really end up, what did that mean? What was being grounded? What were you kept from? – Hanging out with you on rooftops, throwing rocks I guess. – That wasn’t much of a punishment. The Buies Creek mascot used to be the Buies Creek demon. But I have on good authority that they have changed it to something else. Let’s see if I can see what the mascot is. Oh, there it is. It’s some sort of Trojan. It’s some sort of warrior. – [Link] A knight maybe? – [Rhett] The knights. The Buies Creek knights? – Not bad. – Okay. – I think it’s just a demon with a mask on. – Yeah, you take that mascot and definitely, there’s a demon. The novel takes place in between our eighth and ninth grade year and we were the last graduating eighth grade class ever. Now it’s just an elementary school that ends at fifth grade and you have to go to Harnett Central Middle. – Yeah. – In the book, we wanted to keep everything in the small town of Bleak Creek so we kinda did what this building used to serve all the way to 12th grade. You’d go all the way through high school. So in Bleak Creek, that’s the way that it works. – The Whitewood School in the novel is a reform school, alternative school, whatever you wanna call it, but it was also a boarding school. Once you went there in order to be reformed, you live there and you didn’t come out until the job was done. – In the book, The Whitewood School is very much a place that you go and you do not leave for the time that you are there. And a lot of other really ridiculous, dark stuff happens there that probably wouldn’t happen at a school in Buies Creek but it’s not Buies Creek, it’s Bleak Creek. – But there was this nebulous awareness that there was an alternative school over on the other side of Lillington that we’d never seen, that we didn’t know what happened there and you know– – All of a sudden there would be a kid– – Troublesome student– – There’d be a kid that wasn’t there all of a sudden, you were like, where’d Joey go? Oh, Joey’s at the alternative school this year, oh. You know one of my first fights was under that tree right there. – John Carson? – John Enzor. And you know what, I’m really a lover, not a fighter. I haven’t, I’ve never punched anybody in the face. I’ve only been in a couple of fights in my life. Maybe I’ve been in three fights in my life: John Enzor, John Carson and David Bus. And– – I’ve never been in a fight. – I punched John Carson and John Enzor, if your name is John, I’ll punch you in the gut. If your name is David, I’ll wrestle you on the ground. – So now we’re gonna have dinner. We’ve invited our families to meet us for some barbecue. – We’re going to the restaurant that was formerly known as Howard’s Barbecue, right on the river. Now known as Mermaid Point. (relaxed twangy music) One of the classic stories, Link and I were upstairs in my room just making a bunch of racket. I think you probably wanted to come up a few times and say something but you waited until it had really gotten to you. – Intolerable. (Rhett laughs) – But do you know the game that we were playing? – No. – I don’t know how this happened or why it happened but Link and I, we had that little Nerf ball in my bedroom– – Yes. – And we would sit across from each other with our legs spread and throw it at each other’s nuts. (Rhett’s mom laughs) – Small target. (all laughing) – I got a call from somebody telling me that somebody had bet you $5 that you wouldn’t bite the end of a formaldehyde worm. (Link chuckles) – Yeah. – In class. And you did. – Yeah. – And you got $5? – I got $5. And I– – But it was formaldehyde. – It was just the anus of the worm. – We tried to get permission to go on top of the administration building to show the site of the crime, where we threw the rocks down onto the road. What do you remember of that, from that story? – All I remember was Leonard Johnson was the vice president of business at the university and he called me and said that you and Link were on top of the building and you weren’t supposed to be up there and you were throwing rocks or something and he said, “What should I do?” And I said, “Whatever you would do to anybody else “who was trespassing on top of the building.” (Rhett laughs) And I hung up and I guess he just let you all go. – I think he knew that just telling you that was enough. – Yeah, I think he did. – Because when I got home, you said, “You got anything to tell me?” (all laughing) – What do you remember hearing about Rhett and I and the river? – You almost drowned or something, had to float down the river and kept something that helped somebody help get you out of the river. – I’m glad you remember that. – You know, we’re gonna take them to the river, we’re crossing the river. They’re all worried about snakes and drowning and all the things that can happen in the river. Do you think that they have anything to worry about with going across the river? – Well if they make it across, it’ll be okay. (Rhett chuckles) – Don’t get bit by a water moccasin. (all laughing) – Now, they say, Stevie, that water moccasins cannot bite you while you’re in the water– – [Man] Not true. – But my dad found out when he was a kid that that’s not true. – [Stevie] He got bit? – Well no, his friend jumped into a bed of ’em and died. – Woman Stevie’s face. – [Stevie] I was really scared of the water snakes, but not as scared as I am of you not grabbing your own copy of “The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek” at BleakCreek.com or wherever books are sold.