The Midwestern Goodbye

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We were kind of talking here theHunter Biden testimony, the conversation about him
buying the gun, that then helied about not being a drug user or
having been. The paperwork was incorrectbased on his drug use. Let's just
say it that way. And thenhe said in his as he explained that,
you know, there was an allusionto he was pressured to buy something

(00:23):
and he was at a cell phonestore nearby, wandered into the gun shop
and then felt pressure to buy agun. The gun store owner, by
the way, then goes on thestand and basically says, well, he
walked right in and knew what hewas wanting and bought what he wanted.
It's a little bit of a differentstory. Yeah, So I guess my
question, Matt, have you everbeen in a situation where you felt pressured

(00:46):
to buy something in a store you'vewandered into, Like you just kind of
act like you don't you walk intothe store and you're not thinking like I'm
going to buy something, But thenyou felt when you started like you know,
all the you know, workers whosay can is there anything I can
to help you with? And yousay no, and then they still keep
talking to you. Was is therelike a moment or a store or a
story that you had that you feltlike, Okay, I better buy something

(01:08):
because I'm gonna either feel really bador who knows what this person might do
to me, which that seems tobe a little extreme, But do you
have any thoughts on that? Isthere a story you got? Well,
yeah, it's what's interesting. Ican certainly think hard enough and find one
where I was in their store.But the one that comes to mind is,

(01:29):
you know, sometimes you'll get adoor to door salesperson who just you
know, puts on the hard press, you know. And the one that
comes to mind to me was somethingthat happened that's kind of a funny story.
It was back when I was incollege, but back for the weekend
at my folks house in York,and these door to door vacuums sales team

(01:52):
they came by and they had thisfancy vacuum product that cleans your carpets.
And let me tell you, thosecarpets that we had back at the case
house. Now it's hard with floorsfor the most part, but those carpets
had a lot of happy memories tuckedinto those fibers. Happy memories or dirt
a little bit of both. Okay, now, these door to Doors,

(02:15):
this sales team, you know,they were very insistent on Okay, you're
not interested, but can I atleast you show you how this product works.
And so it's kind of like okay, you know, so they go
in and they're practicing their their productand they're showing it off a little bit,
and you get to that point whereyou're like, am I really gonna
let these guys go around and cleanthe carpets of our house here? And

(02:37):
they wanted to. They're not removingthe carpet, no, they're just cleaning
with this nice vacuum cleaner that waslike this high end vacuum cleaner that like
they wanted you to test this.This is not like you buying it.
They're like, let me show youwhat your carpet will look like if we
clean it. I had a momentmyself because I was kind of I was
the one who was home, andI was kind of the one leading the

(02:57):
conversation with them. How old areyou at this point? Oh? I
probably was like twenty, Okay,so you're you're a young adult. Yeah,
And I definitely had a moment whenI realized the longer they're here and
the more carpets they clean, theharder it's gonna be to kick them out
to get them out of this housewithout you buying a vacuum. And I
was like, maybe we should makethem a place mat at the table at
this point, you know, likethe boy, Yeah, No, that'd

(03:20):
be awkward. Is there two people? Should I ask them if they're hungry?
You know, like, I don'tknow, Like it was it was
a couple people, I want.I want to say it was like three
three people door to door sales,yeah, these it was one way.
I thought there was one at Yeah, And then a couple guys popped out
of the van. They got thisbig old vacuum. They start cleaning the
carpets and I'm like, well,yeah, I can see that your product
works, but no, I'm notpaying what uh four hundred easy payments of

(03:46):
nineteen ninety five, Like I youknow, that's too much. So it
got to the point where it waslike, all right, thank you for
what you've done here, but we'renot interested. And have were you home
alone? No? I uh,I think my mom was home and and
that was it. She just letshe let you handle this. Yeah,
she knew better. I think soI do. I think I thought we

(04:09):
could get some carpets cleaned out ofit. You know, Oh, okay,
so you were trying to use youwere trying to use these people.
You know, there's that fine line. You know, it's like, hey,
you want to clean my carpets,go for it, pal, Because
they were being pretty like I wouldn'tsay, eh, a little pushy.
They were kind of like they reallyjust wanted like their agenda was don't just
say no. Let us show youhow awesome this thing is and then say

(04:31):
no. And it's like, hey, fine, you know, come in
and clean some carpets then if that'swhat you really want to do. So
it did get to that point whereit was kind of like, did I
did I take this a little toofar? Yeah? You were, you
were you were surveying where the linewas right, And I got to a
point of uncomfortability where it was kindof like, yeah, I'm not obviously
like I'm a poor college student andmy family's not going to spend probably a

(04:55):
look at these carpets. Do youthink we care about vacuums? Now,
to be fair, those carpets werevacuumed all the time, by my mom
mostly, but by a lot ofhelping hands in our family. But now,
this was a nice vacuum. Itwas I would hope, hope,
so if it was four hundred paymentsof nineteen ninety five, right, But
I think he got a toaster atthe end of the deal. A toaster.

(05:16):
Yeah, maybe like a did youget to try as the toaster?
No, I may, I'm jokingabout the toaster. Oh okay. I
was like, oh, come on, they can't do you have to try
the toaster? But yeah, sothat's my memory of so, but you
didn't buy it. They did anyissue? Did they like, oh,
come on, oh come on,I just cleaned your carpet for you.
Come on, at least give mea tip. Yeah, I think there

(05:40):
was. That was I mean,that's the one that comes to mind is
the most guilty pressure applied to thesituation. I remember after they left,
just who that was a big oldsigh relief. I was just like,
Mom, I'm sorry you watched.I thought they were going to move in
for a second, we were nevergoing to get rid of these guys.
Did you watch a Naploleon Dynamite?Yeah, when Kip and Rico or going
around trying to sell tupperware. Ohyeah, that's some good stuff. That's

(06:03):
some good stuff. And then Kip'slike trying to test its strength and he
tries to run it over with thevan and then it just like snaps in
fifty pieces and he just drives away. This sales pitch is over. Oh
no, that movie is fantastic.Yes, okay, so mine, I

(06:26):
have a similar story. I wasin Branson, Branson, Missouri, uh,
doing my vacation just this past winter. Remember when I was gone for
a week doing that, Well,I did that. Matt and my wife
and I we were having I thinkwe were having a bad day. You
know, you go out there andyou go on vacation. Usually every vacation
we've gone to, usually there's oneday or one evening where you know,

(06:46):
we're just kind of sick of eachother. We've been around each other a
lot. One like we went toDisney, there was no such issue.
But usually, like there's like avacation, you're together for a week and
one gets annoyed with the other.We were having kind of a rough day,
so I just like, hey,you know what, we're just going
shopping. We had nothing planned andwe just like need to wander around.
And I didn't even want to likecreate conversation, right, we were just

(07:10):
kind of following each other around.And it's not like downtown Branson, but
it's kind of the downtown area.I think I can't remember what exactly they
called that area, but it's downnear where this river is. And you
go down there and there are abunch of little shops like these are locally
owned shops. It's a lot ofcharm, right, a lot of charm
with this. And there's a beefjerky store and they sell beef jerky and

(07:34):
it's like a ton of beef jerkyin it, right, And I pop
it up and I'm like, yeah, you know, we're just like walking
in almost every store, just likeeyeball and window shopping. You know,
we're not thinking we're going to buya whole lot. We're just kind of
wandering around looking at stuff, youknow what I mean. Yeah, And
that in of itself is a littlebit weird if you're not in a mall.
I feel like that's what malls werefor, that you could just like

(07:55):
kind of go in and just kindof like spend some time wandering around.
But for some reason. I openedthe door to this beef jerky shop and
there's no one in it except forthe one worker at the desk. And
it's a little sizey, like it'sbigger than the room we're in right now.
I mean, it wasn't just asmall little place and he had,
I mean, it's decked out inall sorts of different jerkys, like a

(08:16):
ton of jerkys. I'm like,Okay, this is already weird. I
already hate being the only people inhere. Me and my wife aren't really
talking that much because you know,we're not like enjoying the day with each
other right now. So I feeleven doubly awkward that I can't just like
pretend to be talking to her andtry to ignore this person. And there
is something about the stare, thedaggers from this person as I could feel

(08:41):
them. This wasn't like a likea teenager or a person in their young
early twenties. This was like afull fledged adult. And it's not like
they were pulling their phone out likescrolling their phone and like distracted. I
could feel them staring at us asI slowly surveyed their their work. Okay,
and again I'm just I'm sitting hereand I'm not trying to be a

(09:03):
jerk, but it's just like ajerk jerky, but it's just like I
could feel them staring at me,and they didn't even say anything, Matt,
They didn't say a word, butI felt like I have to grab
a bag of this and buy it, like I have to buy something.
I can't just feel them looking atme and staring at me and then like

(09:26):
walk out of the store with nothingin my hand. So I was subliminally
like pressured I feel like to buysomething. However, I did buy.
I think it was like the Sweetand Hot or sweet and spicy or sweet
heat or something. It was somethingthat is just like a little bit of
spice to it, and it wasdelicious. I was actually very glad that
I decided I ate that as asnack on the way back home, so

(09:48):
I ended up being happy I didthat. Nobody arrested me because I didn't
lie on any forms, but Iwill say I did feel to stare from
the person at the register, andit did make me because I couldn't like
pretend like I was speaking to mywife at the time, because we had
not had a good day and BasicallyI was like, oh, okay,
I'm just going to buy something andwe're gonna get out of here, and

(10:09):
so, yeah, fifteen bucks later. There you go. If you got
a story about something like this,you've been pressured to buy something, you
can call in. I'd love totalk to you about this at four h
two five five eight eleven ten fourh two five five eight eleven ten,
News Radio eleven ten kfab. Ilove to build fires in my fire pit.
But does it need to get toa certain temperature before making a fire

(10:30):
makes any sense? You want to, yeah, you want it to be
attle enough. You don't want tolike make a fire when it's seventy five
right now. Okay, so you'retalking fireplace inside your house? Oh no,
no outside in your Yeah, wellthat's a little bit different. I
like building the fire, but mywife is always like, you want to
build a fire now on June fifthwhen it's eighty degrees out, And I

(10:50):
have to be like, well,I guess technically it doesn't really make a
whole lot of sense. I thinkif you're just sitting buy it, not
doing anything, then that's one thing. But maybe you know, roast roll
some hot dogs, maybe make somes'mores. Yeah, then the fire served
a purpose, you know. Yeah, there you go. I'm also running
low on firewood. So if anybodyout there wants to donate some Douglas County

(11:11):
firewood to me, love to hearthat from you. I've come pick it
up from you if you want meto. Yeh it, it's okay.
Now is not the time. Butanyway, what I was talking about before
is like, hey, have youever been like in a store or been
pressured to buy something? Because that'swhat Hunter Biden said about the gun that

(11:31):
he bought. He's like he feltpressure to buy something, and I was
like, well, the guy whoowns the store said, that's not how
it happened at all, but itmade me feel like I actually feel like
I have been pressured to buy something. Well, we got Louop on the
line. Lou Oop, what's up, Hey, Henry, how you doing,
good man? What's up? I'menjoying your show as usual? Okay.

(11:54):
Nineteen seventy three. I'm a musician. So I get this gig in
Nevada, Story County, Nevada,and we're setting up and these very friendly
young ladies kept on asking if wewanted to buy the product, and I
kept saying, I'm here to playmusic, nothing else, and all all

(12:16):
through the performance they kept on hintingthat, you know, whatever they were
selling, they certainly wanted me tobuy. MM. So did you no?
Okay, you sayed strong Luwap.You were like, no, thank
you, Please leave me alone.I said, well, you know,
thank you very much, but I'mhere to play the music. Right,

(12:39):
Well, at least you had anotherreason to be there. Sometimes when you
walk into these stores that have noother reason to be there, that definitely
gives them a little bit of anopening and be like, hey, you
walked in man, like you're inmy dojo now. So one little adnam
with this Hunter Biden and the wholething going on in Washington, when are
we going to have some common senseand to stop people like Hunter Biden thinking

(13:01):
that they could just pull something outof their rear end as an excuse and
everyone's going to buy it. It'sjust getting to be ridiculous. If I
was listening in from the planet Mars, I think, well, I never
want to visit that planet because they'reall crazy. Hey, you know what,
Mars sounds kind of cool, Honestly, why don't we just go over
there, louap like all right,Heavid, Thank god. I enjoy you

(13:28):
guys every day. Be talking toyou soon. Thanks Loup, have a
good day, awesome and stuff.Four two five five eight eleven ten.
If you ever been pressured to buysomething, go ahead and call us four
oh two five five eight eleven ten. News Radio eleven ten KFA B.
Please please listen and thank you forlistening in advance. How's that there you
go? That's the right phrasing thatI was looking for him. We're talking
about the Hunter Biden situation because he'sin court right now. And he said,

(13:50):
basically, uh, there was thoughtin there was belief that he was
pressured. He was in a nearbycell phone store. He wandered into the
gun store, felt pressured buy thegun and now, and then of course
gets now charged with fill any guncharges here that he is dealing with.
The gun store owner was on thestand and said, yeah, he walked

(14:11):
right in and knew exactly what hewanted to buy. That's a very different
story. But it got me tothinking, you know, about being pressured
going into stores, because that's definitelyhappened to me a time or two.
Matt said, he didn't eve letto go to a sort of feel pressured
to buy something. You just stayat home. Yeah, they came to
my house with a vacuum. Doyou just let him right in? Yeah?
I did. That was your mistake. That was the first mistake.

(14:33):
Well, you can call in four, two, five, five, eight,
eleven ten with your thoughts or yourstory. Doug's on the phone line,
Doug, welcome to the show.What do you think about all this?
Well, for one thing, I'vebought a lot of youngs in my
lifetime, okay, and you neverfeel pressured because they can lose a license
if the paperwork's not filled out rightand they're not gonna sit there and they

(14:54):
can't even tell you how to fillout the paperwork. So if he put
on there and he definitely mark thatyourself, then she did something wrong,
all right. The problem is,can you remember when that young cop got
killed by It was a female,she got killed recently and someone else bought
him that gun. You know whathappened to that person? They just it

(15:18):
was found guilty, but no time, no restitution, no nothing else.
Right the guy who Now, wedo not we do not punish people for
doing things like that which we should. Yeah, well probably sorry, sorry,
Doug, were I here's my thoughton this is pretty similar. A

(15:41):
gun is just not a regular ordinaryobject, and I think too many people
treat it like it's an everyday ordinaryobject. There are specific laws in regulations
with this specific type of object thatis for sale. There are a lot
of regulations on how to sell it, the way you can sell it,
and like you said, the paperworkand the way that the paperwork has done.
It's not like the car dealer,who is you know, standing over

(16:03):
you, like walking you through everything, right, It's very different type of
thing that we're talking about here.But I'm with you. I think that
there needs to be a little bitmore of a concerted effort to let everyone
know that anybody who touches this weaponin the circle of people you are responsible
if this is irresponsibly owned, andI think that's important for people to know.

(16:25):
Yeah, Doug, no problem.Thank You never quite know if they
had something to say after, youknow, I say something, you know,
Oh sure, try to be conI've tried to be very cordial of
my phone calls. You know,a lot of people just like hang up
on the person I don't like doingthat, it makes me feel weird.
I hear that, you know,and I they do that in the movies.
You know, you ever noticed thatin the movies because the editing process,
they don't want to you know,you don't want to put hello and

(16:48):
goodbye's in your phone calls a lotof times and movies and it's a waste
of time, right, But itdoes kind of feel a little weird and
a little rude. Sometimes I'm justa yeah, I'm just a guy.
I'm a regular guy. If Ihaven't said that fifteen times during the show,
A solid five foot eleven and ahalf, a decent build, Like
I'm not a stick man, butyou know, I'm not mister Olympia over

(17:11):
here. I look like any otherregular guy, except I grew my hair
long. That's like the one thingyou could like probably notice about me.
I act like I'm a regular personon the radio too. I try to,
at least I would. I mean, I am you know what I'm
guilty of. I am. Iwent to college and I'm minored in the
Midwestern goodbye ah, which is it'swhere you can't stop the conversation even though

(17:36):
you've kind of been telling them goodbyefor like the last ten minutes. Oh
yeah, Like I'll be in heretalking to Scott or he's about something in
the morning because I get done withat the Moin show, and I'll come
in here and drop my, likesome of my stuff off for the afternoon
in the studio while he's still inhere at eleven and he's wrapping up his
stuff, and I'll start talking tohim about something, and then I can
tell that he's like trying to getback to what he's doing, and I

(17:57):
kind of open the door, butit takes me to like five minutes to
get out the door. Like Ijust keep like saying stuff even if I
don't need to. It's just weird. I don't know, it's I have
a hard time punctuating conversations, youknow what I mean. It's just it's
just like a thing that we havein the Midwest where you kind of just
want to make sure that everything isdone your as you know, nice as
possible. I had an incredible Ithink it was Monday evening. I had

(18:22):
an incredible situation like this. Iwas running with my dog PJ, and
I wanted to do four ish miles, so we ran down, we ran
through Zarbon Village. We ran throughElmwood Park. We stopped a few times.
I had a water backpack on,like one of those came up back
backpacks that you fell up with watersure, and I was carrying that around.
I gave him plenty of water.We took a seat and he got

(18:44):
to like chill out for a while. He had his shoes on so he
didn't tear his feet up on thehotter parts of the pavement, and we
just relaxed. We go running allthe time. Don't worry about him.
I knew he was still in goodshape, even though he was working pretty
hard. And we were going ata pretty decent pace. Most of the
time. We're doing a lot ofwalking. But you know what happened.
I was on my way home,and I mean, I'm running, I'm

(19:04):
running. You know, when you'rerunning, you're just like kind of get
into that zone, like you're justlike you're zoned in. And I was
zoned in. And I was runningback to my house, and I was
like a block and a half awayfrom home. And I don't mind seeing
people. I don't mind seeing peopleat all. Like I was running up

(19:25):
like I live on a hill,so you know, you got to run
up the hill. It's like onereally nice, big lash challenge. And
I run with my head down alot. So I was running with my
head down, and I have myearbuds in and I was listening to music.
And I got up near the topof my hill because that's what I'm
supposed to cross the street to godown another block to my house. And
I saw a woman who was therethat I hadn't seen before. I run

(19:48):
through there pretty frequently, but Ijust had never seen her before. And
she's, you know, talking acrossthe street to one of her neighbors across
the street, and I see themtalking and I just see her. She's
kind of standing on the sidewalk.So I'm thinking to myself, like I
I wonder if I should hop outinto the street for a little bit or
should I expect as I approach herthat she might move out of the way

(20:15):
eventually, Like I see her makeeye contact with me when I'm like a
house away, So I'm like,okay, she's going to move out of
the way for my dog and Ito like get past her. Well,
as i'm like level with her,I'm running again. I'm running. I'm
not walking with my dog. Iam running with him. We are running.
I have earbuds in. My headis down, like I'm just like
I kind of I'm one of thoseguys that I'll nod at people if they

(20:36):
see me running, but I'm notgonna like wave and try to start a
conversation, especially with strangers. That'snot generally how I operate. Well.
She kind of says something that Ican't hear because my earbuds are in,
but I can tell that she wantedto say something to me, and so
I stop. I'm like past herhouse, like by a couple of steps,
and she's like behind me now,and I take an earbud out.
I stop and I look and Isay what was that? And she said,

(20:57):
oh, what is that? Andshe pointed down underneath my dog and
there's like old dog poo that's onthe sidewalk next to her plants. And
I'm like, it looks like it'sa dog poo and she's like, oh,
and he's cleaned up. And Iwas like, well, this isn't
mine. I just got here.You just stopped me. And she's like
okay, yeah, but can youpick it up? And I did have

(21:18):
dog bags on me because a gooddog owner is gonna carry dog bags.
And I was like, I mean, I guess right, So like I
didn't hear what she initially said tostop me, but by the time I
had turned around, she had noticedthis dog poo and so she's like,
and again, I'm just a niceperson. I'm trying to be as nice
and cordial as possible. I don'twant anybody to have a bad day because
they had a bad interaction with me. Okay, that happens to me sometimes
I have a bad interaction with somebody. It can get in my head,

(21:41):
even if they mean nothing to me. I don't want to be that guy.
Right, Well, I remember runningout of time here. Let me
take a pause in the story.I'll let you know. I'm in the
process of pulling my poo bag out. Yeah, I will let you know
what. That interaction continued as Iexplain my Midwestern habits, as I struggle
with hanging up on callers to thisradio show that's on the way on news

(22:03):
radio eleven ten KFA B BAD fivefifty three. My name's Emery Songer,
and I was finishing up a storyreal quick. So neighbor lady goes ahead
and does the thing where you stopsomebody and tell them to pick up dog
poop that's not even yours. I'ma little taken aback, right. If
I wasn't a dog owner, I'dbe like, lady, you want me
to pick up the poop that wasobviously here before I got here? And

(22:27):
she made it kind of sound likeyou know. I gave her a kind
of a look, and I'm like, obviously, i'd run and take a
deep sigh. I don't want tobe a jerk, so I take out
my roll of dog bags. Iopen it up. Pj's sitting there just
like, man, we are almosthome. Can we just get home already?
And then I reached down and Ipicked this up. She asks about
PJ and what's on his feet?I explained why you wear shoes while I'm

(22:48):
picking up the dog pooh. She'slike, oh, he needs water,
and I'm like, ma'am, I'vegot my water right here. You know
what, I got water right here. He's gonna be fine. He's been
drinking water the whole time. Itry to be as nice as I could,
just being like, hey, this, you know, I grab the
pooh. It's obviously old, it'scold, it's like a rock, right,
And I just explained to her it'slike this is like two days old

(23:08):
probably, and she's like, oh, there's no way I was out here
with my plants. It was notthere before. I'm like, when,
ma'am, I'm not being confrontational.I'm just explaining this is old pooh and
this is this is this is Midwesternlife for you. And she has a
few more questions. I try reallynicely. She's like, well, I
haven't seen you here before. Hopefullyyou'll run past again. And I'm like,
hopefully I do, and hopefully whenwe see each other next time,

(23:33):
you don't ask me to pick upstrange dog poop that I've not seen before.
Right. Anyway, that's a Midwesterngoodbye if I've ever seen one.
Audios Talk to you two tomorrow onnews radio eleven ten KFAB