Mike Lynch #17 | Fourth Street Live - 4th Street Live Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:57):
Yeah. Oh, whoa, You know, so I said
it's none of my business. You know what?
I know the whole thing. You know, whatever.
Are we going, John? All right.
Well, so did you grow up here inReno?
Grown up everywhere. Gotcha, I get it.
Where where were you from originally?

(01:17):
Originally from New Haven, CT. My mom's from New Haven.
Really, she is. Yeah, she might know my dad.
She went to Worcester, but she was only there for a minute, you
know what I mean? So.
My dad was elected official politician in New Haven pretty
much his entire life. Yeah, I think there's some kind

(01:38):
of Navy base there. Well, what's it called?
Newport. It's something.
Submarine. So my SO her dad outside my
grandfather was a nuclear sub guy.
And so that's why they lived in Connecticut and they were born
there. And then she just moved
everywhere, you know, because ofthat, you know what I mean?
But yeah. Well my my dad was an alcoholic.

(02:00):
Fuck yeah. Irish Catholic.
Fuck yeah. I met.
Triple whammy. Yeah, which I was going to ask
you if that language was permissible because it might
just come out. Yeah, you're good.
Just don't smoke crack on. Stage.
That's it. Never have done.
Never have done any of that. Yeah, you're good, but.
You're missing out, Mike. No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding. I think I was second grade and I

(02:26):
mean my childhood was with my father being a politician.
I mean, I met Ted Kennedy numerous times.
I met Bobby Kennedy when I was akid.
My father, these Irish Catholic events, he was, he was the Grand
Marshall of the New Haven Saint Patrick's Day Parade.
I mean, there's like how many people go to that?
That's like all a Washoe County,385,000 people attend the New

(02:51):
Haven Saint Patrick's Day Parade.
It's huge. So I'm like, you know, a little
kid. It's like carnival, what's this?
But one night, I mean, there, there were Christmases and my
birthday's on Christmas. Yeah, I don't know about that.
It's been a few of them down here on 4th Street by myself.

(03:11):
Yeah, but. Me too.
Christmases and birthdays, you know.
Yeah, it's like walking with nowhere to go, man.
Yeah, exactly. It's like, yeah, everybody's
doing their family thing and I don't have a family.
I hear you. So my dad being the Irish
Catholic, out politicking, drinking with the boys all the

(03:31):
time and everybody knew him. I mean he, he just knew
everybody. And especially being in
politics, I mean, you walk into his house, you have pictures of
Hillary Clinton, you know, Bill Clinton because I think they
went to Yale. And I mean, tip O'Neill all

(03:52):
these old Irish people. And he's, so he's doing
fundraisers, you know, for the Democratic committees and
parties and all these different things.
And he was just never there. I, I play Little League.
I never saw him at a Little League game ever.
Never came their game, basketball, playing basketball
and stuff. Never saw him at a game ever.

(04:15):
He just wasn't around. So my mom was always kind of the
one, you know, raising me and stuff like that.
And she was really good when shewas younger like that.
But one night it was Christmas. I think we put up a Christmas
tree and we never decorated it. I guess my mom moved out or

(04:38):
something. I don't know where, where it
was. I was too young, but I was like,
aren't we going to decorate the tree like we normally do, You
know, as a mother, father, son. No, some.
It was like in March, my dad sitting there drinking his
whiskey and his beer and I'm playing with my army men on the
ground. And he said, Michael, he said,

(05:00):
go over in that closet and there's a present for you.
And I was like, what's the present for?
He goes, go get it, boy. OK, so I get this present and
I'm like, dad, what's this for? He said, it's your birthday
present. And I said, Dad, my birthday's
on Christmas, like this is March.
Is this the Saint Patrick's Day present or something?

(05:23):
He goes, open it up. So I open it up as a skateboard.
And I was like, oh, my God, you know, this is cool.
Like, you know, we lived on a hill and I thought, I'm going to
go out and kill myself on this thing, but it's just life was
going on like that. So my mother comes home one
night. My father's not home.
It's I don't know, it's dark. And she said, Michael, pack all

(05:45):
your stuff, let's go. And I'm like, where are we
going? She goes, come on, let's go get
your suitcase. Let's go in.
I'm like, I don't have much stuff.
I'm throwing it all in the suitcase, grabbing a few things.
She goes, come on, let's go, let's go.
We got to go. We got to go, I walk outside and
there's a huge silver bread van looking thing and there's this
guy up in the steering wheel andshe goes come on, get in, get

(06:07):
in. And I'm like OK, I get in and I
got a mattress put down, furniture and stuff all packed
in there. And I'm like what?
What's going on? Where we gone?
She goes we're going on a trip, let's go.
And I'm like who is this dude I've never seen before?
We end up in Reno, NV. Drove all the way across

(06:31):
country. She moves out here to Reno.
This guy ends up being my stepdad I guess.
They got married and he was originally from hungry.
Escaped in the revolution in 56.He was a bad ass and a welder,
could Weld anything, could Weld lead.

(06:51):
I mean he was like really reallygood.
But anyways, we moved to Reno, ended up out, I think it was on
Stoker. They used to have some log cabin
things out there by where Harkerand Harker used to be.
And we lived in that for a while.
And I went to a little school somewhere in the Northwest.
I don't know, short period of time.

(07:13):
Next thing I know, we're living in Getchel, Nevada.
Getchel. Getchel.
Yeah, let me see if I can see ifI know where it is.
Like, I've never heard of that town.
Is it still around? Yes, where's it at?
You know where Golconda is. Off of 50.
It's off of 80. You go outside of Winnemucca,

(07:35):
you go up over the pass towards Battle Mountain and there's as
soon as you get up over the hilland go a few miles, there's a
little pit stop there called GetGolconda.
You turn north and go, but I think it's like 26 miles north
to Getchel. It was a gold mine, underground
gold mine at the time. So one room schoolhouse.

(07:57):
Now I came from a parochial school, raised Catholic, you're
going to Catholic school nuns, priests, the whole 9 yards.
It was like if I did something wrong, put your hands up on the
table, smack you with the ruler.You know it's they were tough.
It was like the military but stayed in Getchell 3rd grade and

(08:21):
I think and my mom said to me she was a Navy vet.
She's actually buried out in Fernley at the veterans cemetery
because she was a vet. She's passed away, my dad's
passed away. But she said I'm going to ship
you back to your father and I said I don't want to go back

(08:42):
there. She said for your education,
you're not going to get an education out here in A1 room
schoolhouse compared to what youwere getting in Connecticut.
You got to get an education stuff.
So I was like, I didn't have a choice.
They drove me to Reno, put me onan airplane.
Propellers back in those days, shipped me back to Connecticut.

(09:04):
I got off in, I think LaGuardia or JFKI, don't remember.
And there's my dad, stepmother and two kids, boy and a girl.
And I'm like, and I kind of had longer hair.
My dad was a Navy vet, got it. So he's like, what's with the
long hair? And I said.
Live in Nevada. Well, it's like, yeah, The

(09:25):
Beatles and, you know, the Stones.
Like, you know, it's kind of like going around, Yeah.
First thing we're doing with youis getting you a haircut.
There you go. Yeah, took me to the Barber the
next day and turn around and gota crew cut.
Gotcha. I'm like.
So did you go to College in Connecticut?
No. Where'd you go to college?
Here TMCC. No shit.

(09:45):
Yep. So I was in Connecticut for like
4 years and they didn't want me.I mean they had their own family
and stuff and I'm kind of the outcast.
So I'm running around with theseguys and stuff getting in
trouble. And they were, it ended up where

(10:07):
we broke into a cemetery and there was a building there and
we were knocking over gravestones and doing all kinds
of boy stuff, getting in trouble.
And we broke into this building and stuff and there was a safe
in there. We're all like, oh, shit money,

(10:30):
like, whoa. So the safe was open.
There was an urn I knocked over or someone knocked over the urn.
I didn't know what it was. Ashes go all over the floor.
My tennis shoes right in the middle of it.
So they got my footprint. Yeah.
So the cops, they couldn't figure out who did it right

(10:53):
then, I don't know, a couple months later, this three story
schoolhouse next to the rectory and whatever, where the nuns and
priests live was the school and the church and all that.
We broke out like 36 windows in the school, throwing right
through the window. Well, they saw us.
Somebody saw us. Cops come over to the house,

(11:16):
bring me in in front of my dad. And here he is, this famous
politician. Everybody in town knows him.
And they said you're either going up the river to juvenile
jail or you go back to the And Isaid, see you, I'll go to
Nevada. Yeah.
How old are you at this time? Well, grade. 1213 OK, OK,

(11:37):
Something like that. Yeah.
So put me on an airplane, shipped me back out here to
Nevada. My mother and stepfather moved
from Getchell to Gabs to Silver Peak.
Got it. Silver Peak's a cool place.
That's cool. I love it out.
There, I went to school there, finished the 8th grade and my
freshman year had to take a bus,you know, 56 miles to Tonopah my

(12:02):
freshman year. There's only like 8 or 10 of us
kids that were in high school, so most of them were older.
There was a few my age, but it was like, what am I doing here?
I think about halfway through myfreshman year, my mother moves
out and I'm like, where? Where'd mom go?

(12:25):
Where, What's she doing? What stepdad didn't want me.
He was, you know, drinking in the bar all the time and getting
in fights and all kinds of different issues with him.
So I finished my freshman yearly, puts me on a Greyhound
bus in Coal Dale and ships me. My mother moved to San Francisco

(12:45):
just like 1971. She was working for a patent
attorney in the Ferry Building, the end of Market Street, with
the big clock on it. So we lived in the Sunset, about
a block from Golden Gate Park. Now, in 1971 in Golden Gate
Park, Man. Hey you smoke all the weed you
want? San Francisco was wild.

(13:07):
Yeah, but I'm a kid. Yeah.
So there was a bar across the street, and when my freshman
year I was hanging out with these Cowboys and Rudy Davis and
Dave Manhire, which Dave still lives.
Tone par. I don't know about you guys, but
if you have ever been down on your motorcycle, gotten hit

(13:28):
somebody, had no insurance, anything like that, you feel
like there's nobody around to help you out, but law Tigers
motorcycle attorneys is the way to go.
You need to get these guys. Just save them in your phone if
you have to. Law Tigers is there to help
bikers. It's bikers for bikers.
These guys ride motorcycles and they will take care of you.

(13:49):
They're personally handling claims and will be the biggest
advocate for anybody on two wheels.
Check out Law Tigers motorcycle attorneys and a sponsor of 4th
St. Live.
Thanks so much. This is Jacob, the host of the
4th St. Live podcast in my new book, The
Rail Runner, Inspired by my lifeon the railroad and being a

(14:10):
railroad contractor, is now for sale on Amazon and Barnes and
Noble. Please go check out my new story
if you're looking to escape reality for a few hours.
It's a great read. Support a local Reno author.
Thanks so much. Rudy's passed away.
That's another story. But Rudy was a real bad ass.
He was a Montana State wrestlingchampion.

(14:32):
He'd fight any. And a cowboy.
And his father was a cowboy. Got it worked for Ben Colvin on
the 40 Bar Ranch. So that's where I got into that.
But I'm living in San Francisco and these guys see me out there.
Hey, cowboy, come on over and have a beer with us.
And I'm like, you know, I'm not old enough to get in the bar.

(14:52):
Come on, cowboy, you know? Yeah, so they were like, 'cause
I was outside practicing my roping on a 5 gallon bucket and
they'd see me. So here I go over in.
San Francisco, you know, in the.Sunset, you know.
Even in 71 there was. Oh it.
Was not very many Cowboys. No, they're like, hey, Kel, you
know, So I go over there and start hanging out with these

(15:14):
guys and they serve me beer in the bar.
I'm like, and we're shooting pool and I'm like hanging out
with these guys. And they probably at least 30
years old or older. And one of the guys, his parents
owned a house right in Golden Gate Park.
I'm like, what? Yeah, like in the, it's right

(15:35):
where the lighthouse is down at the end of the park, there's a
house and invited me to this party and stuff.
And I'm like, so they're, you know, Grateful Dead and
everything's gone. You know, the music is gone.
They're all smoking dope and trying.
I go, no, no, that's OK. I don't do that stuff, you know.

(15:56):
So I'm having a beer and sittingthere, I'm like, oh, man, these
people are all crazy. Everywhere, everywhere.
I went all over Golden Gate Park.
And at that time they had a stable in Golden Gate Park, huge
barn corrals, everything. And I saw these hoof prints when
I was walking around one day. And I'm like, so I follow them,
end up at the stable and I'm like, what the hell?

(16:19):
So there's two Cowboys that workin there from Sonoma.
And I introduced myself. I started hanging out with these
guys. Yeah, saddling horses.
I'm not getting paid anything. I'm just hanging out with them.
So they rodeoed and stuff. And they said, hey, we're going
to a rodeo in Pacifica, you wantto come with us?
And I was like, sure. So they were old enough to

(16:42):
drive. We go up to Pacifica and they're
bucking out steers and I'd neverridden a bull or steer in my
life. And I, I rode this steer, I mean
rode him till he fell over. And they're like, get off, get
off. And I'm like, yeah, for dear
life. Told me to hang on.
Yeah, I'm hanging on. I didn't have any spurs on or

(17:03):
nothing. That's why I rode this thing.
And they said, man, you are good, you are good.
And I'm like, OK, yeah. So my mom, I told her.
I said, you know what? I'm so tired of you guys
shipping me around like a sack of spuds.
East Coast, West Coast, here, there.
You know, I'm going to go be a cowboy and live on a ranch.

(17:24):
Yeah. And she said, I will let you go,
but you have to promise me you'll finish high school.
I said OK for her. So I called Rudy and we had
landlines back then, you know? Yeah.
Cell phones, so no Internet, none of that stuff.
I call him up, and I was going to run away and he was going to

(17:47):
bring me food. And so then he talked to his
parents, who I'd never met, and they said, you can come live
with us. And I'm like, really?
He said, yeah. So I got on a Greyhound bus in
San Francisco, ended up in Goldfield, got off the bus with
my suitcase and there they were greeting.
Me in Goldfield, Nevada, Yeah. Cool and.

(18:09):
At hotels for sale? Let's go in together.
I remember when they were redoing all the mortar and stuff
on it. It's like, it's crazy.
It's like, it's like they want like a $2.00 for it or
something. Yeah, something crazy because
it's some fucking piece of. Shit.
Well they used to have a cat house in Tonopah, right?
Bobby's Buck. Up and then Angel's camp was
just South. South of it was Cottontail

(18:31):
Ranch. Oh fuck yeah.
Where you turn to go towards Lyda, you can go over towards
Big Pine. Well, what was the one?
It's it's Angel. Something Angel landing in
Beatty. Oh, maybe in Beatty.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't go down to Beatty too
much. Yeah.
You're not missing. Much.
But you know, I was just like, OK, so I moved in with him and

(18:54):
you know, he was, I mean, back then he was only making like 500
a month as a cowboy. It was real cowboy.
I mean it was, we had two dogs, well, more dogs than that.
We had like 3 or 4, but good cowdogs and stuff like that.
And I learned we didn't have corrals and all that kind of

(19:16):
stuff. We'd hold 100 plus head of cows
out in the middle of the desert with the dogs, two of us, me and
Doug, we'd rope them and brand them what they call.
We'd find four and five year oldslicks, never been been roped,
never been branded, nothing. Is that right still around?
It's I think the BLM, it was mostly all BLM permitted land

(19:39):
and I think Ben lost the permitsagainst thought had a lawsuit
with the government, all kinds of things and stuff like that.
He called me up one day, you're 20 something years ago.
And when he was suing them and wanted me to be a witness and I
said sure. And because we weren't trying to
destroy the land, we're trying to grow grass and you know,

(20:02):
we're raising cat and stuff. So I my job, I mean, I didn't
even wasn't old enough to even drive, but I was driving to the
roads, going out and fixing springs, get the water to the
cows, but the Burrows and the horses had trampled the pipes
down and the water wasn't getting to the troughs and it
was. Yeah, I'd work on him and fix

(20:24):
some stuff when I was a kid all by myself.
And so I was working for basically free.
Summertime came around and Ben said you want a job?
And I said, well, Mr. Colvin, I'm already working for you.
And he goes, yeah, but I want topay you during the summer.
I said, OK. I said, how much you going to

(20:47):
pay me, Mr. Colvin? And he said, $100 a month.
Fuck. And I went.
I'd never worked, you know, I mean, I'd work, but I never got
paid. So you just got 100% raise?
I was like $100 a month. Wow.
Yeah, yeah. So I'll never forget the first
paycheck I got. A month later comes Mr. Colvin.

(21:08):
We lived in trailers, and he comes out of his trailer and he
comes walking over to me and hasme an envelope.
And I said, what's this? He goes open it up, opened it up
and I'm looking at the check andit was like $89.00 and something
cents. And I'm like, I didn't know what
to say because he told me he wasgoing to give me $100 a month,

(21:29):
but my check wasn't $100. And I'm like Mr. He starts
walking to his trailer and I go,excuse me, Sir.
And he turns around and he goes,yeah.
And I said, well, Sir, you said you were going to give me $100,
but my check only says, like, $89.
He laughs. And he comes walking over and he

(21:50):
says, opens the check, you know,to the other side.
And he goes, you see this? If I guess I'll scare you, blah,
blah, blah. And I go, what?
What's that? Yeah.
And he goes, that's the government.
And I went, the government. What?
What are they getting my money for?
That didn't work. I did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why aren't you taking my money?
He said, don't worry, you'll figure it out.

(22:11):
He's laughing and turns around and walks off through his
trailer. Hilarious.
Yeah. The first check I ever got.
I'm like. What 20%?
That took, you know, all this money that they didn't work.
Yeah, I'm working. 20% in the 70s is crazy, yeah.
So you know, I'm like Cowboy andbut to give you an idea of how
wild the cows were and like JackBassett, who owns AD Bar and

(22:34):
Western Store here, he knows Benand.
Stuff. That's a fourth St. guy.
We need to get him Jack. Sponsor this show, man.
You know, I've talked to him forme.
I team roped with Jack a lot and.
We're we're all about forestry here.
You know, well, I helped him build his roping arena out at
Painted Rock, put up lights and everything so we could rope out

(22:55):
there and stuff, but that's another story.
But anyways did. Did you have?
When did the inclination for youto become an engineer happen?
Was it while you're roping? Was it way farther?
No, I I'm just trying to survive, you know, I'm like, I'm
my own. This family takes me in.
Well, then Dud and Joyce said you can't live here anymore.

(23:18):
You got to find another place tolive.
And I was just, Oh my God, I thought I was going to be here
forever. So there was a kid in Tonopah,
Tommy Thompson, and he was living with his aunt.
I think it's his aunt. And and she was a school teacher
in Tonopah and she, he talked tohim and said you can come live

(23:39):
with us. I never met them either.
They took me in. I moved from Goldfield to
Tonopah and was going into my think my junior year high school
and her being a school teacher, she's seen all my records and
all that kind of stuff. I wasn't a kid that applied

(24:00):
myself. I just wanted to get out of high
school, go to work, you know, take care of myself.
I and I've been an outlaw when Icall an outlaw my whole life.
If the crowd's going left, I go right.
I just don't follow the crowds and what everybody says.

(24:21):
And I'm just that's the way I'vebeen my whole life.
But I finish finish high school.They took me in.
I'm very grateful for these families that took me in that
didn't even know me and I and I can't how am I ever going to
repay them? I mean, it's like, what do I do?

(24:42):
So I finished high school, go towork for the Forest Service in
Tonopah, building fences up in the tabby range, temporary job.
Then I went to work for the highway department, Tonopah,
doing chip jobs and stuff on thehighway and stuff.
And I turn around and I said I'mnot going to get anywhere, you

(25:04):
know, with this job. So I end up quitting and moved
down to Blythe, CA where my stepdad was and was actually
farming cotton for I don't know,a month or two.
And I said this isn't my life, Ilike the ranch and I didn't like

(25:26):
the farming. So I ended up moving back to
Tonopah and I got pneumonia fromthe cotton dust.
No shit in my lungs. I ended up in Bishop, New Year's
Eve. I'll never forget it.
Everybody's out partying and I'min the hospital with pneumonia
and recovered from that. And there was these older guys

(25:52):
that, you know, I hung around with and haunted with and stuff
like that. That Bob Blancar, he's passed
away, but he took me duck hunting the first time.
I'd never haunted in my life. And we went over to Fish Lake
Valley and doing duck hunting and stuff.
And so he kind of became like a mentor and he worked for the
power company, had a nice house,had a nice truck.

(26:13):
And I said that's what I want todo.
I want to go to work for the power company.
So I went into the power companyat the Tonopah office.
It was Sierra Pacific Power at that time.
I went in there every single day, 8:00 in the morning.
The manager said, Mike, we don'thave any jobs.
I said, I'm coming in here everyday until you hire me.

(26:33):
And I did for like a month. And they said there's no jobs
like, yeah. And I said you're going to hire
me. I don't care if I got to clean
the streets or whatever. So he finally, the manager,
Maurice Vanpool was his name. He went in to come into my
office and I thought job gets onthe phone calls Reno and he said

(26:55):
they'll hire you. You got to move to Reno when I
went. Want to move the big city?
So I ended up moving up to Reno,went to work in the construction
department, probationary. We're rebuilding the flumes up
on the Truckee River for the hydro stuff.
And, you know, met these older guys and stuff.

(27:15):
And there was a guy by the name of Don Sprinkle.
He kind of took me under his wing and they called me Tonopah.
They wouldn't call me Mike Tonopah.
Come over here, You know, help me with this, Help me with that.
I was like, OK, so I met, you know, a lot of different people
through their family and stuff like that.
But I there was a ground man's position open in North Tahoe.

(27:42):
It was getting to be winter time.
Nobody wanted to go to North Tahoe in the winter.
I'll go moved up to North Tahoe.The office is in Tahoe Vista by
Kings Beach, and I got a little place to stay and went to work
and these older guys, they're most of them are all passed away

(28:02):
now. Told him I wanted to be a
lineman. So they told me I had to get
hooks and a belt and stuff. And I'm like, where do I get
them? And I got the hooks and belt and
they started teaching me how to climb trees first because we
used to run services through thetrees up in Tahoe.
Secondary services started doingthat.
Then it was lunchtime, they'd say come on get your hooks on,

(28:24):
going to turn around, teach you how to climb poles and stuff.
And next thing I know they're going go up there and hook that
service up. And I'm like OK so I I burn up a
few sets of clients and they laughed at me and stuff.
But they started teaching me an apprenticeship came open in Reno
and they hired like 4 apprentices at that time.

(28:48):
So I ended up moving back down to Reno and going through an
apprenticeship program and they were fast tracking us.
It was a three-year program backthen and they were trying to top
US out in 2 1/2 because they needed alignment.
So I started doing that and. So you learned everything you

(29:09):
know just by doing it first. Crazy.
On the job type training, they had books and stuff.
We had to go to classes, you know, on transformer connections
and pole climbing. We used to do up the Top Valley
Rd. and rubber gloving and stufflike that.
Once you get to where you can start doing hot work and all

(29:29):
that kind of stuff. Well, I met this gal at the Shy
Clown because I was hanging around with some of my rodeo
buddies because I started ridingbulls in high school.
It was more of a challenge and Ididn't, I didn't care if I lived
or died. It's like, who cares?

(29:50):
I'm by myself. I didn't care and I kind of
started riding bulls and the second bull I was ever on was at
the Sparks High School rodeo andI won the bull riding.
I was like, you know, big head on bull rider stuff.
And the clown came over to me. He was from Fallon, the

(30:12):
bullfighter, and he said, man, you rode that bull like and you,
you're a natural. So next bull I went to is in
Eureka, and I barely made it outof the shoot.
I thought, shoot, all I got to do is pull my rope and get on
him. And yeah, well, I learned, no,
it isn't the way it worked. But I ended up rodeoing amateur

(30:35):
high school and then amateur, and I was rookie of the year in
the state of Nevada. I gave the rookie of the year to
bareback riders, team rubber, bulldoggers, whatever.
But I had won the most money that year riding bulls.
And Jack Bassett sponsored his belt buckle right there. 1979

(30:57):
and 79. I rode in Reno Rodeo, too.
Well, because I was a local, so I could get in, but I almost
rode my bull there. I bucked off the last second.
But he was, he was a real good bull, too.
But anyways, that's another life, you know?
Yeah. And there's lots of things I've

(31:18):
kind of skipped over. I was in a car wreck when I was
18. There was a guy, a couple
friends of mine, I didn't have acard till I was like 18 or 19
years old. And I was walking down the
street and told Paul and they pulled up and they said, what
are you doing, Mike? I said nothing.
So what we're having, there's a big party going out, out at Warm

(31:40):
Springs. And I said, yeah, yeah, I heard
about it. And this guy, Lester Pope, was
dating this girl lived out there, Christy Makeley.
They said, well, come on, you want to go with us?
I said, well, what the hell? So we'd gone to the liquor store
and got a bunch of beer and whiskey and stuff, and I was
sitting in the back seat drinking whiskey.
We got out the Warm Springs. There's all kinds of people and

(32:03):
music and dancing and everything.
Lester's driving about 140 on the way out there.
And I've been out there the weekbefore and there's cows all over
the road. Back in those days, there was no
fences. It was all open range and I
said, lest you could see the little black dots, you know, I'm
like, so we went out there, got all drunked up heading back to

(32:27):
Tonopah and there was a couple other crews out there from
Tonopah too, and we took off andwe got past.
Last thing I remember, I passed out, my head went against the
window going past Tommy Colvin'sranch.
I call it Five Mile. Next thing I know, I woke up

(32:50):
sitting in the middle of a sagebrush out in the middle of
the desert by myself, and I was looking around like, what the
hell am I doing out here? Where am I?
Well, it was 810 hours later after the car wreck happened
when I guess I wandered off out in the desert and Lester was

(33:13):
killed instantly and the guy in the back seat, like Northern was
killed instantly and I survived.I didn't break a bone and it was
like I couldn't raise my arm up and my belt buckle was gone from
and my knee was all tore out andI didn't know it but the whole
back of my shirt was gone. And I was sitting in the middle

(33:36):
of the stage Bush looking aroundgoing I and the shadows were
real long and I thought it was getting to be night time but it
was actually morning. So I stood up and looked around
like I thought I was outside of Tonopah.
And anyways, I said well, I got to go over towards those
mountains over there to get the Tonopah.

(33:58):
So I started walking. I got up top of this mountain.
Look down there was a road and Ithought it was Radar Rd. but it
was what is it 50? I think they call it six or
something, going towards Ely, out towards Warm Springs.
And I looked at it and I'm. So I start walk down to the
road. I couldn't keep my eyes open.

(34:21):
And I was like, what? Where am I?
And I'd hear my cowboy boots clicking on the pavement.
Then I'd be in the dirt and I'd be on the other side of the road
and I'd go, OK, I got to lean tothe right and I'd walk and walk
and walk more dirt, stop. But now I'm on the right side.
And I started thinking, am I dead?
Yeah, what in the hell is going on here?

(34:42):
And so I walked up to a signpost, a little reflector on
it, and I punched it. And I said, well, I don't know
what it's like being dead. Maybe you can feel things.
Maybe you can walk around like aspirit and be dead.
Little while later, car comes byout in the desert, you can hear

(35:03):
that motor coming for miles. And I'm like car's coming, car's
coming. So like I said, I couldn't raise
my arm up and he higher than my shoulder.
So I'm sitting there like this waving my arm, waving my arm.
That engine never slowed down. That car went by me, just

(35:24):
disappeared, sound gone. And I went, well this is strange
what is going on? So I was walking and I started
going what happened to what am Idoing out here and where am I?
And I said, oh, Tommy Colvin's ranch is that was Ben Colvin's
cousin said, I'll just get over there and I'll go to Colvin's

(35:45):
ranch and see if there's anybodyaround.
So I'm walking, walking, walking.
And you get to the hill and thenyou can see all the way across
this big valley and I hear another car coming.
Same thing. Car went right by me like it was
nothing. Wouldn't slow down, nothing.
And I'm like, am I dead? So walking, walking, walking.

(36:11):
Next thing I know, I hear a different sound of it.
And so I thought it was a truck could hear that decent sound.
I'm like looking try and open myeyes and look.
And I said, I'm going to stand right in the middle of the road
and if I'm dead, it'll just run me over.
Can't kill me again. And I hadn't processed, you

(36:31):
know, it was like, what happened?
And everything was like blanked out.
So finally I started thinking, man, was I in a car wreck?
You know what? What is going on?
What am I doing out here? And here comes this.
I stood right in the middle of the road waving my arms.
And I hear the air brakes come on.

(36:52):
Yeah. And I, I kind of look up and
open my eyes. It was a school bus.
And the drivers, like, leaning over the wheel looking at me
like I didn't know what I had blood all over my face.
I didn't know it was all scratched up and stuff.
Hell, I was picking sagebrush out of my head for a month,
stuck in my head. But I'm looking at him and

(37:14):
there's these kids looking at meand I'm like.
So I walk around to the door andhe was hesitant for a while to
open the door. He opens the door and I said,
Sir, I need a ride to Tony Paul.I think I've been in a car wreck
and he just clear, kids, come on, get it, get in here.

(37:35):
So I get up in there, sit right behind him and we start going.
We're heading towards Tonopah. 1015 minutes later, he's
flashing his lights. Highway patrolman's coming out.
Look for me because they heard they picked up the bodies, the
car, the whole 9 yards. And they said where's Mike
Lynch? And the cops are all like, we

(37:58):
didn't find anybody else. They said, well, he was in the
car with him so that they were coming back out to look for me.
So cop stops, bus driver stops, they load me in the car.
The cop puts a seat belt on me. And so I'm like, like, slow this

(38:18):
damn thing down, dude. Like I think I've been in one
wreck enough. He doesn't say a word to me,
drives me straight to the hospital and you know, I knew
people that were working in the hospital and stuff, but they
wouldn't talk. Did you know that they were gone
by that time? No, my mind is like going what
I'm trying to piece everything together.
But anyways I knew people in there and I started asking them

(38:42):
like what what happened what's going on?
Nobody had tell me nothing. Well they told me later they
didn't want me to go in the shop, stuff like that.
And I was like, so it's like 4 days, they're checking me out
for internal bleeding and all this other kind of stuff.
And they said I would have brokemy ankle but my cowboy boots
turned around. Saved me.
There you go. My belt buckle was in my pocket.

(39:06):
Why? Yeah.
I have no idea. Yeah, I have no idea.
All these different things that have happened.
That was the third rollover I'vebeen in.
The first two were kind of slow speeds.
We just rolled, and I was never driving.
I didn't even have a driver's license.
It's always with someone else. Typically.
We're always drinking, you know,it was like, yeah, so.

(39:31):
Cowboy stuff, yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
It's like, you know, the drinking thing, working
construction, you know, work meant to work for the power
company and the stuff. And then I was down here in
Reno, we go to the shy clown andI'm meet this good looking girl.
She comes walking over to me andsays hey cowboy, you want to

(39:52):
dance? My 2 buddies are like looking at
me like shit Mike you better go dance with her.
You know what I'm like? She was really really good
looking and I was like OK so we went up and I said I don't
really know how to dance and shesaid I'll teach you.
Well little did I know she used to be married to Monty Bald.

(40:14):
Baldwin family owned the Shy Clown and the back then they
owned all the grocery stores called Warehouse Market, but
apparently they had gotten divorced.
And she was world champion, bareback rider and tall Italian,
long Auburn hair. Lot of people in Reno might know
her name's Roxanne Gava. Her folks owned a hotel

(40:38):
restaurant here on 4th St. yearsand years ago.
And I'm like, what's she doing picking on me?
I'm like, I don't have any money, just barely getting by.
And we end up getting married and I don't know, it lasted
maybe a year, got divorced and Idon't know, a year or two later

(41:03):
we ended up getting married again or.
Well, that makes sense. I'm like, shoot me in the head,
what the Hell's the matter? But I mean, she's, she's a
really good looking gal. I'm Yeah.
Redheads I get. It well, they asked her to post
for the centerfold for Penthousemagazine.
Yeah, sounds great. Yeah.
I'm like, did you do it? She goes, no.
And I'm like, why didn't you do it?

(41:23):
You know, all this money and stuff.
And she goes, I didn't want everybody staring at my body.
You know, I was like, all right,yeah, good for you.
But I'm working at the power company and going through my
apprenticeship and, you know, get divorced and my head's
messed up. So I'm out drinking all the time

(41:44):
and trying to drown all my thoughts, you know, in the
bottom of a whiskey barrel. And I found out years later,
I've looked in hundreds of them and there's no answers down
there in the bottom of that whiskey barrel.
But that's what I was doing. So I was afraid I was going to
kill myself or kill someone elseworking for the power company.

(42:07):
I quit and ended up going to work for Brown and Root down in
Tone, Nepal. They were building the
molybdenum mine down there. Worked for them running heavy
equipment. Ended up we finished that job,
moved to Sulphur Springs, TX andwe're doing a mining project

(42:29):
down there, stripping off topsoil, getting to the coal and
to death. Three or four months.
Used to go over to Commerce Texas and that's East Texas
State University I think and raninto a bunch of bull riders and
stuff out of Mesquite was BS with all those boys and stuff
like that. And and that job was kind of

(42:51):
finishing up and they said, hey,we see you got electrical
experience. And I said, well, lineman, but
I'm not an electrician. Narrow back.
And they're like, well, there's a job in Wyoming and there was
no work back then. There was like Reno was
depressed. I mean there was just no work.
So I went to Little America thatlived in a man camp in Rock

(43:14):
Springs. Did that for about 6 months in
the middle of winter. Oh my God it froze my ass off.
Was that were you? Working at the soda ash plants?
Yep. OK.
What were you doing at the soda ash plants?
Doing electrical work, wiring inpanels and stuff like that and.
Was there railroad tracks there then?
Do you remember? Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Yeah, Yeah. I think they were building it

(43:34):
actually to, you know, transportthe.
The soda ash. Yeah, soda ash out of there.
They're building in the Spur or whatever.
Yep, to the mind at that time. Yeah, that's, it's one of those.
It's got like the the deepest underground mine or something up
there. Yeah.
It it was great. 1500 feet. But you know, I'd worked union
with at the power company and stuff like that when I'm working

(43:56):
for Brown and Root, they're all non union.
And but I met a lot of guys fromall over the country that were
same thing working, you know, trying to make a living for
their families and stuff. And I ended up my ex-wife
Roxanne and family had moved to Fresno.
They kept their house here in Reno and bought 1 down in Fresno

(44:18):
and stuff. And we kind of talked and stuff
and got back together. So I ended up living in Fresno
and was trying to go to work forPG&E and water if you want.
Thank you. Took a test with PG&E but they
didn't hire me. And I ended up working over in

(44:39):
Kalinga in the oil patch, doing,you know, distribution work, you
know, wiring Transformers. I was actually there when they
had the earthquake in Kalinga. Devastated, leveled about half
the town. Yeah, that was crazy.
Well, I want to ask you this. You have an insight to something

(44:59):
that's important to my generation, right?
My generation doesn't fucking know, right?
What to believe. We don't trust the government
largely, you know what I mean? And something I went and wanted
to ask you about is, you know, we got new shows out like land
man. I don't know if you seen land
man, you know what I mean. You come from an, you're an

(45:21):
electrical engineer. How many patents do you have?
Well, I didn't finish my electrical engineering degree.
Well, you engineer shit for electrical stuff.
You're an electric to us. You're an electrical engineer,
man, you know, but yeah. Yeah, I was offered.
I tramped all over the country, mostly in California building
power lines, went and took, I had to retake the test to be a

(45:45):
journeyman line, Right, right, right.
So 12:45 is the local and I was working in Klingon and I went up
to Walnut Creek and took the written test.
And then they gave me like tyingknots and all these different
things and they said you pass. And I said right on, because
I've been through all the classes and all the stuff when I

(46:07):
was working at the power companyhere.
So I had Nick, what they call an8 ticket.
Got it. So I could go to work anywhere
in the country. Yeah.
Worked at a 1245, yeah. And worked on a 500 line we
built for San Diego Gas Electricall along the whole Mexican
border. Got it.

(46:27):
Flew everything in helicopters. And I'd never done any of that
work. Like San Ysidro, that area.
It was from National City, ChulaVista to the Colorado River.
Got it. So when I first went up there, I
was living up in Live Oak Springs.
It's kind of close to Tuccotti, Mexico.
Yeah, stuff. And, you know, start hanging out
with all these guys and learningtransmission work and learn how

(46:50):
to work under a helicopter and stuff like that.
But kind of the Fast forward, I tramped and tramped all over,
worked everywhere from the Mexican border to the Oregon
border, all over PG and E's property.
Lai really liked working in LA. The line work and stuff was

(47:11):
really good. It was a lot of experience and
working with guys from all over the country and Canada and stuff
and I learned a lot. And the business Rep for 12:45
was Kurt Peterson. He was a journeyman lineman.
He has three sons that are all lineman and they're originally
from Montana. Kurt kind of took me under his

(47:33):
wing and taught me a lot. And every job I went out on
cleared out on, he wanted me to be the shop steward.
And I was like me, you know, like he goes, Yep, I want you
to. So I'd be the shop steward.
If Kurt turned around and asked you to do something, you did it.
He was everybody back then knew Kurt Peterson.

(47:57):
He was, he had a memory like an elephant.
It's just amazing. And his work experience, he, you
know, worked in his alignment and so he knew.
And so I, I had a lot of respectfor him.
I mean, he invited me to his house up in Palmdale, Lancaster.
And I went up there for the weekend.
And his wife's name was Rose, and that was my grandmother's

(48:17):
name. So I remembered that forever.
But he had a kind of little cottage Outback, and I'd stayed
there and hung out with him for the whole weekend.
You know, he didn't have to do those.
So I, I've just been blessed with meeting lots of good, kind
people. Yeah.
And, you know, they, they took care of me.

(48:39):
They treated me good. And I, I, I can't ever thank
them enough for all these different people in the lineman
that I worked with and stuff that, you know, I've never done
it. And they knew it and they taught
me even when I was a journeyman lineman, there's, I've never met
a journeyman lineman or anybody in the world that's done

(49:00):
everything. Yeah, they just don't exist.
Yeah, I mean, I've worked with great engineers, have never
climbed a pole. Right, exactly.
And that's my point is it's it'sthe same as the railroad, you
know what I mean? It's like on the railroad,
there's engineers on the railroad too, right?
You know what I mean? But the guys that really know
are the ones that started swinging the sledgehammer first,

(49:23):
you know what I mean? So that's I, I'm the GM now, so
I don't do that, but but I did, you know what I mean?
And. You got the field experience.
So, and I still have to travel like that.
So it's, it's 100% to me. I'm, I'm, I'm always going to
listen to the guy who did my jobfirst.

(49:43):
You know what I mean? Well, you learn, yeah, the
experience and, you know, the, the older guys turn around and,
you know, take you under their wing and stuff like that.
And I, I, I've learned so much from the old timers.
I remember them saying, one guy pulled me over and said if you
come up on a job and you've never done this, you let

(50:04):
everybody know, yeah, don't BS everybody.
Don't put bullshit into people That's you're going to get
yourself. You'll die.
Yeah, somebody will get hurt. Yeah.
Somebody's going to get hurt, yeah, so you're better off
turning around, he said. There's no such thing as a dumb
question. You don't know.
If you don't know, tell people. So.
So let me ask you this the world's trying to move electric,

(50:27):
right? What tell me?
So a question I've been curious about, because if there's debate
our, our, our infrastructure, not just in Nevada, but in the
United States cannot sustain worldwide, right?
Cannot, cannot sustain a totallyelectric infrastructure.

(50:49):
Is that correct? It's being stressed, yeah, big
time, right. And especially with all the data
centers and different things or,you know, requiring more
electricity, more juice, you know, and the systems aren't
going to be able to handle it. So even the government, the DOE,
is looking at the reliability ofthe systems that are currently

(51:13):
in place. And a lot of them, as we all
know, are old, right? And when these things have been
50 years, you know, and things are wearing out.
Why? Why is nuclear power so taboo?
Well. I think you.
Know, and I mean, I know the obvious.
I know Chernobyl, you know what I'm saying?
And I know that it's but I also know, right?

(51:37):
And, but I've been to the plant in Aberdeen, WA, I've seen the
reactors, I've seen and I know that those are probably the
exception of the rule, but it just seems so taboo to talk
about. But is it not the most
sustainable? I don't really know on the
generation side that much, like coal and the solar and the wind.

(51:59):
But I remember in the 70s out inLemon Valley, right, they
started building houses out thatway, and they were putting solar
panels on roofs. And I was like, yeah, this was
new. Yeah.
How are they going to laugh? Make sense to me?
Well, just just, I don't know a lot about all of it.

(52:22):
I just hear bits and pieces. Holy, you know more than any of
us, that's for sure. Well, you know what I mean.
It may be a little, yeah. But you know, Valme coal-fired,
you know, Churchill, you know, coal and stuff.
They got to import the coal. Where's coal come from?
The mining. And, you know, but it's being
produced here in the United States.
But there's pollution issues, stuff like that.

(52:44):
And what happens if they run outof coal?
What happens if we run out of oil?
There's all these questions all the time.
How much oil as well? There's another big discovery in
Alaska or Saudi Arabia, I mean. I work at all the coal plants in
Wyoming as well, just north of Gillette.
Gillette. Yeah, I work at all.
All set of what is it? There's 10 now, you know what I

(53:04):
mean? And but what's crazy is I know
where all those go. They all go to Arizona, you know
what I mean? And it's it just doesn't make
sense. And they go to the Apache
generating stations in Apache, Arizona, and they're burning
coal for power in Arizona that that powers Phoenix and Vegas,
parts of Vegas, you know what I mean?

(53:25):
It's the infrastructure that doesn't seem sustainable to me,
you know what I mean? But.
Transmission lines, right, You know, they can generate it up
there, but you know, transporting it through the
power lines, the big transmission lines and stuff
like that. I mean, to build those and
maintain them and stuff like that.

(53:46):
It it cost a lot of money. So now they're talking about,
from what I've read through, I triple E, it's the Institute of
electrical electronic engineers.They're looking at more mini
type nuclear stations and stuff.It's not these great big things.
You agree with that? Do you think that that's the?
Way I think there's feasibility and I think with everything I

(54:08):
remember when they were talking about hydrogen powered cars and
you know all these other runs on.
Water Man. Nuclear type, it was trying to
think I went to a conference andI triple E conference 30 years
ago. And yeah, Maryland, Baltimore
somewhere, and there was a presentations done about the

(54:31):
different types of, you know, nuclear type power and hydrogen
and different things. And it's interesting because
there's always research, right? I mean, going on with power all
the time. What's the most the best thing?
Solar. You know, we got the sun.
Yeah, well, it's generating. Yeah.
But build those things out here in the middle of the desert.

(54:53):
You know how many birds those things fry?
That too, yeah. Thousands and thousands and
thousands of birds. They fly in.
The heat is so great, it just cooks them.
Yeah, they drop dead. And I'm like.
Here's the crazy part about thistalk.
Is it it's, it's really, it's not a, what do you call it?

(55:13):
It's not a, a part to me. It's not partisan, right?
It's just like, I want the best for whatever I'm going to leave
behind for my kids, right? You know what I mean?
And that's, that's all I think about, but it's crazy because
the solar push doesn't make sense to me.
And, and something I want to talk to you about too, is I, I
work on all the, the, I work allthe windmill manufacturing

(55:38):
plants in Colorado and there's one in Windsor, Co.
There's another one down South somewhere in Southern
California. I, I work at a couple of them.
It's funny seeing those things get built and put up and I
travel with all those solar people or we're sorry with all

(55:58):
those windmill people, right. And we were talking one time and
you know, they were, they were telling me what they need to do.
And they were like, oh, well, weneed to, we're, we're going out
and we're we're refilling the oil in the wind turbines.
I said what the fuck are you talking?
People don't know. People don't know that they have

(56:20):
50 gallon oil drums that get free serviced.
I don't know if it's lubrication, I'm guessing you
know what I mean? And twice a year and like and
they have leaks, oil, oil leaks just like as oil.
So what the fuck are we talking about?
You know what I mean? It doesn't make sense.
This is the shit that I'm telling you.
That's why I don't trust the fucking government.
Is I don't hear all the information all the time.

(56:44):
And it's that way from Washington, DC down to our, even
our local governments and stuff.We don't know the whole story,
you know. I agree.
That there's probably a problem with output or whatever, but I
just, I just, I've, I've always wanted to ask somebody that

(57:05):
knows more than me what their stance is on it.
You know what I mean? What's the solutions?
Yeah. I mean, I grew up, we didn't
have Internet and we're still landlines, you know, little cord
going to the wall, dial the number and stuff.
Never send up a smoke signal. You know, it's like if you
wanted to turn around, talk to somebody, you went and talked to

(57:25):
them, you know, or you wrote a letter to somebody, put a stamp
on it and mailed it to him and stuff.
He didn't have this, all this social media and stuff.
I mean, I got friends that went to Vietnam.
I think there's five guys I knowthat joined the Marines right
out of high school and those recruiters.

(57:46):
And I'm I'm a big proponent of our military.
Don't get me wrong. Anybody that serves, I go, man,
you know what? Thank you.
Thank you for your service and stuff.
I don't remember how many of thefive, I think there's at least
three or four became lifers and they're in the Marine Corps and

(58:06):
Marines are out. Come on, man, You know your
buddies joining us up. And I said, yeah, but I don't
want to end up in the Brig. And they're looking at me like.
You already know you're going tobreak the fucking rules.
Well, why am I going to end up in the Brig?
And I said, look, I said if you say to me, hey, you piece of
shit, you know, Grunt, get your ass up that hill, I'm going to
look at you and say get your mother to go up damn hill, I

(58:28):
ain't going up there. But if you said to me politely,
Mike, we got to take this hill, I'd be the first one.
Up there you go, yeah. I will do anything for anybody.
That's why you never joined a motorcycle club, Mike.
Well. Yeah, I don't know.
It's. Like when did you when did you
get your first Harley? I think I was 18.

(58:49):
No shit in Tonopah. 50 years ago.
Great. Do you remember what it was?
Yeah, it was a sportster. Sportster Yeah.
And I chopped and I chopped it so it had the what motor was in
it, do you remember? I don't remember.
I had a BMWI, had a Triumph, butsold those.
And then there was a guy in Tonopah, Richard Zeibel, they

(59:11):
called him Zeke the Freak. He turned around and built like
hot rods and stuff, chopped topsand.
Is he still there? I think he's passed.
Away. Is that shop still there?
Because there's somebody that sells motorcycles right outside
in Tonopah. Yeah.
Right by the giggles, Giggle Springs or whatever, you know.
Trying to think of his name. You know what I'm?
Talking about, I'm drawn, I get.There's hot rods and bikes out

(59:33):
there all the. Time COVID, I get COVID brain or
you're good, open heart surgery brain or whatever you call it.
Like all of a sudden it's like Ican see him.
And yeah, his father was actually a school teacher at
Tonopah. I saw a real O2, O1, excuse me,
O2O1T Sport sitting out there. I'm like, how the fuck does this
guy have those things, man? Yeah, it was.

(59:53):
Cool. Richard had a motorcycle and he
worked for the fire department stuff and I used to just, I
don't know, it interested me thethe artistic side of, you know,
how we're doing this. And so back then, the bikes
were, you know, long. Long front ends, hard tails, all

(01:00:13):
that kind of stuff. And so it's.
Awful. Just kidding.
I loved it. I still love them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, we took a stock bike
and Richard turned around and did all the welding and raked
the neck and turned around and, you know, we chopped it, put a
hard tail on it and no. Brakes.
Yeah, there was no front brake. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You turned around and wrote withthe rear brake.

(01:00:35):
That's it. Yeah, drag bars on it, but it
was a Denver front end. Denver Springer front end.
Yeah, but I thought they were from Denver, Co.
Denver rumbling. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know about Denver Mullins.
People will come here from my charters and they'll go see
those, will drive by Denver Choppers and they're like, holy
fuck, he's right here in Reno, you know what I mean?

(01:00:57):
Yeah. I actually moved him from Vegas
up here. No, I'll.
Tell you that story. OK.
All right. You know, I'm like running
around, you know, I'm like chopper and stuff and had drag
bars and painted it and I had todo the bondoing and the neck,
you know, bonded all. And he's teaching me about, you

(01:01:17):
know, semi Chrome and polishing the engine and stuff, making it
look like Chrome. I just spent hours hanging out
at his shop and helping him. Whatever it meant.
It was just interesting to me. And he was a nice guy and
treating me decent and rode thatthing around towing a pause.
It was like riding a horse. Yeah, it was, you know, the wind

(01:01:38):
in your face and. No brakes.
Yeah, Yeah. Whoa, whoa.
It was just it was very interesting that whole culture
and stuff. And I'd seen, you know,
motorcycle guys from the East Coast to the West Coast and, you
know, living in San Francisco and stuff and seeing, you know,
guys running around their bikes.And I was always like, that

(01:02:01):
looks like me, you know, it justin my heart, cowboy and kind of
thing, the freedom, I got interested in it.
So I had to bike for year 2. And one day I was cruising down
the highway and a big semi came by me and I went, what am I
going to look like on the hood of the front of that Peterbilt?

(01:02:21):
I'm going to look like a bug, you know?
And I went better sell it. So I sold it.
I just moved up here to Reno anddidn't have one for years, but
knew the culture and stuff like that.
And years later married and havea daughter, school teacher.

(01:02:43):
She taught at Swope Science. I came driving in the driveway
and there's Harley sitting in a soft tail sitting and I'm going,
whose bike is that? Who's I'm looking around like
what the hell is Harley doing inmy driveway?
I walk in and they're sitting atthe table doing homework.
She was tutoring my daughter andI didn't want to say I was like,

(01:03:06):
oh, this is April. And, you know, she's, oh, hi,
nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah.
And you guys are, yeah, I'm tutoring your daughter and
stuff. And the wife was doing dishes or
something when I'm looking around, going.
So is that your motorcycle out there?
And she looks at me like, yeah, like, you got a problem with it?
You know, she's got an attitude.And I'm like, oh, no, I don't.

(01:03:26):
I don't have a problem. I just kind of surprised.
See, Woman Softail sitting in mydriveway and she goes, yeah,
said so you've been riding along.
Yeah. And she's like, yeah, quite a
while. Yeah, like, same thing.
Like, is there a problem here? And I go, no, no, no problems.
I just kind of go do my work. And I was selling real estate at

(01:03:49):
the time. And anyways, her husband rode
and stuff. And so they came to us and they
were having the candy dance. It's the same time the street
vibrations, said Mike. We want to take Catherine for a
ride on bikes down the candy dance.
We're going to go down there with you and the wife.
And I'm like, I don't know aboutthat.

(01:04:11):
She goes what? I said, look, I know all about
bikes. I got lots of friends that bikes
and people I know that are passed away and wrecks.
And she goes no, no, no. I said Catherine's like my
daughter's let me ride, let me ride.
So I caved. I said, but here's the deal.
I had a Yukon Denali. I said I'm going to be right on
your ass all the way to Gardenville, OK.

(01:04:34):
And they go, deal. Yeah, so I am.
I'm right on their ass all the way down there.
And they said, well, we're goingto VC.
You know the street vibrations after the camp.
I said not with my daughter. You're not right.
I said, I know what's going on up there.
I go no. So anyways, I follow them all
the way down there. My daughter is like, Dad, you

(01:04:55):
got to buy a motorcycle. Yeah, I'm like Catherine, I've
had them. And I had an old picture.
It was April. And what's her husband's name?
I just had said it. Ryan.
Ryan, April and Ryan. How cool is that?
They're the cause. And I said if my daughter turns
into a biker chick, I'm going tokill you people.

(01:05:15):
That's what better. I mean, tattoos and piercings.
I can see it all, you know, because tattoos were starting to
get really, you know, everybody's getting.
I'm like, what's the deal? I don't have any tattoos, but.
So that's why everybody thinks I'm a cop or something.
Yeah, yeah, OK, whatever. But week, week later goes by and

(01:05:36):
Catherine's like, Dad, you come on, you got to go buy a bike so
we can go riding. And I'm like, Catherine, you got
to explain it to me. Why should I buy a motorcycle?
They're dangerous. I said there's no airbags.
There's no nothing. You know, I said, she said it's
just when you're on the bike, there's like nothing around you.

(01:05:56):
You can see everything. And I'm like, Oh my God, yeah,
she's hooked. And then she said, and the wind
in your face. And I looked at her like, did
April tell you to tell me that? Like, Oh my God, she's hooked.
So go down to Reno, Harley, turnaround and bought a CVO street

(01:06:17):
light or something, right? I think it was a Road Glide, you
know, full bagger so she can't fall off the back and
everything. I'm like, where's the seat belt?
I'm strapping her. Daughter was right and.
We went all the way up Spooner, went all the way around Lake
Tahoe, just took our time cruising and it was like so much

(01:06:38):
fun and I just got back into it.I stopped being afraid of it
when I accepted that's probably how I'm going to go.
You know what I mean? Well.
I was like, I'm going to go bullriding or cowboy and or.
It's being a line, you know whatI mean?
Here's the thing that I just hadso many friends accidents, I

(01:06:58):
mean people been shot hunting byaccident, people passed away,
and I'm a religious guy, but I don't go to church.
I hear you. I mean, I was raised Catholic
and stuff then came out here andDoug and Joyce, the cowboy that
took me in, they were Christiansand they didn't push it on me
and everything, but every once in a while we'd be out in the

(01:07:20):
middle of desert riding. He'd say something and I'd be
like, yeah, yeah. So it took a couple years and I
accepted the Lord again. I went, yeah, I felt like there
was something missing in my lifeand stuff.
And I turned around and did thatand I went to church and I

(01:07:41):
thought I was going to be a minister.
I wanted to save the whole world.
But I said, how am I going to dothis?
I can't afford this. I'm trying to live, trying to
make a living, make my truck payment.
I feel like, well, you know, so I, I didn't go and I was scared,
but I also felt like there's a lot of hypocrites in church and

(01:08:04):
organized religion and stuff. And I have friends that are LDS
Mormons and they tried to convert me and stuff and I said
I know all about it. I don't need to.
Hear Mormon's got it half right.I'm like, you know, I just, I
don't know about this, you know,so.
Yeah, yeah. I went through a couple years of

(01:08:25):
turning around and really tryingto save all my friends, and
they're like, Mike, what the hell is wrong with you?
You know, from drinking at the bar, hanging out here and stuff.
And, you know, and then I kind of settled down and, yeah, said
I'll just keep it to myself. Yeah.
But when it's your time to go, Icall it, he's punching your
ticket. There ain't nothing you can do.

(01:08:46):
And so that's my thought on it and that's why I just try to not
create more wreckage in my life,right?
You know what I mean? So, but 100% that's what I
talked to every, you hear it every day when you're out riding
your motorcycle. Somebody will come up to you,
man. But I'd kill myself and I'm just
like, man, shut the fuck up. Because like that's, I probably

(01:09:08):
will too. And that's OK.
You're just scared and that's OK, you know what I mean?
But I, I know I'm going to go and it's OK.
I just don't worry about it, man.
How about just ride your motorcycle and see exactly what
your daughter was talking about,The beautiful things that you're
not going to experience sitting in a bubble in a car.
You know what I mean? But it's like I've.
Like being on a horse. It is, man.
And it's like I can. I've drove every inch of Nevada,

(01:09:33):
right? I've drove every single Rd. from
north to South. I've never, I've not, there's
not one place I've not been to in Nevada working on the
railroad. You know what I mean?
Except for don't even know wherethe fuck that is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've been everywhere.
Belmont, Belmont, ABS. Everywhere Manhattan.

(01:09:54):
Yeah, Manhattan down. What do you what do you call it?
Caliente, You know what I mean? Yeah, all that.
So I mean anywhere, any, anywhere that you have to drive
to go get to the railroad, you know what I mean?
Except for Area 51 in Groom Lake, Something I'm.
I'm waiting on someday, you knowwhat I mean?

(01:10:15):
So you know I. Got armed guards and stuff out
there. Yeah, I was like.
Yeah, So I went to Rachel and then they got they were like,
you can go to the gate and I'm like, who cares?
You know what I'm saying? So I wanted to see Rachel, but
what I was getting at is you cango to all these places in a car
until you do it on a motorcycle.It's totally.
Different. It's totally different.

(01:10:35):
It's just and also I can text. I could watch a fucking movie in
my car and probably be, you knowwhat I'm saying, But you have to
have your full, undivided attention, you know what I mean?
And who's the author? On a bike, yeah.
Who's the author, man? Who's the guy that wrote, Who's
the guy that followed the Hells Angels around?
Oh, Hunter S Hunter S Thompson writes about, writes a lot about

(01:10:59):
riding motorcycles and, and I feel like his depictions of
riding motorcycles is great. I haven't.
Read all his stuff. It's, yeah, it's more you have
to experience it. Right, you do, yeah.
I mean, people can talk about it, do movies about it, yeah,
all these different things. But you have to turn around and

(01:11:23):
it's like riding horse and cowboy.
And I can tell you all day long about riding bulls and stuff.
And I went to John Quintana's bull riding school in Redmond,
OR. Yeah, but until you do.
It until you do it and it's likeI said, you climb on the back of
an 1800 LB bull. Yeah, John told us.
He said it. You cannot ever picture yourself

(01:11:43):
getting bucked off. Never.
You can ride 1000 bulls in your head.
And he really taught a lot aboutmental stuff because you don't
climb on the back and say I'm going to get bucked off, you're
going to get bucked off. So he said the moment you feel
that you've lost that edge whereyou're invincible, quit because

(01:12:09):
this is a business, one mistake,you're done.
And I had, there was a kid, MickWhiteley, he was in like top 15
or 20 in the world. He's from Oregon.
I'd met him, really nice kid, could ride a bull too.
And he got killed down in the form rodeo in Englewood.
And I mean, it just like almost broke my heart.

(01:12:31):
I was like, this kid could have been a world champion and they
didn't have the vest and helmets.
And that was just kind of comingout when I wrote.
But a bull turned around, stepped on his chest, collapsed
his lungs. He's gone, you know?
But how many people do you know that have been on a motorcycle
and his car pulls out in front of him?
It's like it's gotten worse withall the texting and the music

(01:12:55):
and the radios and everybody's on their phones and all those
things of technology and where'sit going to go with AI and all
this other crap? Yeah, Oh my God, yeah.
It's incredible. So it is.
Crazy. It's crazy.
It's crazy to have lived throughno cell phones to being able to

(01:13:16):
get, you know, it's an answer. It's a computer, a real like a
like a human AI in your pocket. It's crazy to have.
Talk to stuff. Yeah, I know.
It's crazy. Yeah, I, I was, I was born in
92. So I, I did, I was born, I was
born in 92. So in, in 92, in 92, you know,

(01:13:37):
I, we didn't have Internet. I didn't have Internet till
middle school, you know what I mean?
And so I, we're the last generation that doesn't, I feel
like that because my kids don't know.
My kids have had iPads and shit,you know what I mean?
I see it. All the time on TikTok and all
that stuff, talking about the older generations and they're
talking about the 70s and 80s and I'm gone.

(01:13:58):
Yeah. What about the 50s and 60s?
No, I wish I could have seen it.You know, I wish I would have,
because I wish I could have lived in Reno in the 60s and the
70s and I wish I could have seen.
That's when I first moved here. Is an.
Do you remember what this building was, by any chance?
No, no, I've asked a lot of people.
I've asked Troy, you know. I just remember driving all the

(01:14:19):
way across the country and seeing, you know, Nebraska and
Kansas and Ohio, all the farms and flat, you know, the sun
comes up like, wow, where's the curvature in the earth and
stuff. But then going through the Rocky
Mountains and then pulling in the Reno, We went by John

(01:14:39):
Ascuaga's Nugget and they just had light bulbs.
They didn't have all the LED lights, all that stuff.
And I was like, they're flashing.
And I was like, Oh my God, this is like a circus.
Is there a carnival or something?
I was like, what is this? We pulled into some motel and
you know, spent a week or so andInterstate 80, you know, it was

(01:15:02):
4th St. That's why all these motels and
stuff were here. And you know, there's a few bars
I guess that are elbow room that's still around from when I
was out drinking and stuff all the time.
The elbow room was around then. Yeah, crazy.
Yeah, I used to. What I used to go to was
Diggers. It was down further down on 4th

(01:15:24):
St. Yeah, but the Nugget, you know,
was like going to the Oyster Bar.
Yeah. I mean, you used to go in there
every Friday night. Yeah, Turn around and have
dinner. And what about?
Oh, what's the Italian joint right here on in Sparks?
Cassells. Cassells.
I think it was Cassells. Was there Casselli's or
whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(01:15:46):
So there's a few. The halfway clove.
Yeah, yeah, I know. This is so.
This building was built in 19-O2.
Isn't that amazing? It is crazy and I've asked a lot
of people and they can't seem toplace it because that was
Ruben's cantina, you know what Imean?
But they don't. They can, you know, I'm sure
it's just some kind of store, but I'd love to have like an old
picture and try and track it down somehow, you know what I
mean? I don't know.

(01:16:06):
I wouldn't. Even do the Reno Arts downtown,
the Mapes, Riverside, all those old hotels.
I love listening. I love hearing Jay talk about,
or Jay posts. Yeah, and and he'll write about
old Reno. And I love, I love reading it.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
So I was only in Reno, you know,younger days, short period of

(01:16:27):
time because then I ended up living in Silver Peak and
Goldfield and Tonopah and and I ended up when I came working
construction, I I got tired of tramping.
I was were actually working in Connecticut.
I went back to see my relatives and they were paying lineman to
go back there. So I paid vacation.

(01:16:48):
So I'm back and worked in Connecticut for about 3 months
and visited all my relatives that I hadn't seen in 20 years.
Hadn't seen my dad in 20 years. He didn't even recognize me
being from 13 years old to 30. He is like.
So it was interesting. I got made it back for the New

(01:17:09):
Haven Saint Patrick's Day parade.
Oh man. And he was the Grand Marshall,
did all that stuff. But I was drinking a lot back
then and he'd quit and got into a a cool and helping other
people and stuff, which I was kind of shocked.
What? But that's cool, you know, Hey,

(01:17:32):
you're doing something, you know, good.
But you didn't help me. You.
Know I've been on my own forever.
There's a joke about Irish people quitting drinking.
I can't remember it. I was trying to remember it but.
Well, one, one guy that I know, he he said because my daughter
just graduated law school in NewYork City.
Your daughter did. Yeah.

(01:17:52):
Well, yeah, she went to CUNY City University.
New York is the number one public interest law school in
the nation. Badass.
So she was interning with Legal Aid Society and she just wrote
last year, year and a half ago, she wrote a 347 page clemency
report for this guy. It's been locked up 20 years.

(01:18:16):
He he got 20 to life and he wentin when he was a kid and he's
been doing nothing but good in prison.
But the system doesn't turn around and reward you for these
things. I hear you.
And he probably should never went to prison anyways.
But so she's been doing that. In turn.
They offered her a position and she accepted it.

(01:18:37):
And so now she's in training with legal aid, so she'll be
doing criminal defense. Badass.
Yeah. So our number.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's like Jesse Coulter's
always asking, you know, It's like, oh, my God, she's already
in court. Yeah.
Like in law school in New York, in New York.
I mean, I went to Criminal Courtin Manhattan, the same one Trump

(01:18:59):
went to on a Sunday. There's people, you know, not a
lot, but there's the judge and people and cops everywhere.
And the, the attorneys all came over and talked to the girls.
You ain't in law school, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, you're a 1L. They call them First Year Law.
And I'm just sitting there listening to all this stuff.

(01:19:20):
Criminal Court in Manhattan is open from 8:00 AM to 1:00 AM
seven days a week. Nuts.
I'm like, this is like 7-11. I'm like what?
This is open all night and all day, all night.
My daughter told me they busted a guy for stealing a cup of
coffee. I'm like, what?

(01:19:41):
I would have bought him the coffee even if I was a cop.
I would have said, excuse me, are you hungry too?
And like, can I get you something to eat?
The money they're going to spendincarcerating him and going
through the process, the taxpayers, it's like ridiculous
in my opinion. The people in the East are just
different. It's just a different.
It's a the first time I've I I truly.

(01:20:03):
Got on the road and started travelling.
The people are so different. Cause in Nevada, these are,
these are kind people, right? You know what I mean?
They're kind good, like, and then you get kind of the Midwest
and it's kind of like, these areangry people, but they'll still
help you, you know what I mean? And then you get to, it's like,
it's like, and then you get to the East and they're angry and

(01:20:25):
they won't help you, you know? What I'm saying, everybody's
walking down, you know what I mean?
You could be laying there dying and they just walk right over.
Yeah, it's. Swear to God that's that's a
reason why I do love it. Here it's a different
environment than people there. So when did you get your first
Pat? So, so and maybe let, maybe let

(01:20:46):
our audience know what the patent is.
Yeah. What?
What I started. I got tired of tramping.
I called my buddy. Hold on, hold on one second.
Will you pause that real quick? I got to use the bathroom.
Do you need to use the bathroom?I, I, we, you have, you have
things that need to be said. The the part of the the the goal

(01:21:06):
here, I think with our show is to capture.
The essence. The essence in the generations
before us and and and and have it forever.
You know what I mean? Because it's it's.
Well, I've been through the mental stuff.
My mother was a registered schizophrenic.
Oh shit, right down here on 4th St. lived over and some
government things over by the livestock Event Center.

(01:21:29):
And I mean literally pushing a cart down the street talking to
her imaginary friends. Amen.
Me too. And that's not the way I
remember my mother. But I was like, and I've been to
a psychiatrist and been evaluated and went through all
this mental stuff and like, it might stop.
I've had I've had drug induced, I don't know they called it

(01:21:51):
something where I psychosis is is where I've but I was also 19,
you know, 18. I was a child.
Brain's not fully. Developed it wasn't so it was
even worse and then it was like 25 years old and then sleep
depressed. I mean, man.
And the other thing is it's Renowhere it's. 24/7.

(01:22:12):
And the, and the, and the drug dealers are open longer.
That's, that's the, that's that's, yeah, it doesn't stop.
So it's like the bars are open 24/7 and the drug dealers work
longer hours, you know what I mean?
So it doesn't, I mean, even at 18, I could find whatever I
wanted whenever I wanted. However, I, you know what I
mean, it doesn't matter. It could be a Tuesday at fucking
8:00 in the morning. I could find it, you know, and

(01:22:32):
it's, and, and I mean, that's just the reality of it.
And, and I mean, it is, it is a sad thing, but it's also a
beautiful thing because our recovery groups here in Nevada,
Sir Pat, not Sir, I know it's not a competition, but I'm I
mean, it's, it's, it's differentthan any other place in the what

(01:22:53):
is what is wisdom, but. You ever hear of a guy
suffering? You know what I mean?
Diaz, Dixon. I have not.
Diaz ran the Step 2 program. Oh, step two.
Yeah, yeah. I've done meetings there.
And I, I met him through Dave Carter, who was the head
basketball coach at Nevada. Oh, OK.
They were into golfing and all this kind of stuff.

(01:23:14):
Well, when did meth come out? Like 30 years ago?
You know, it was like started itstarted on the, the news.
It was like, there was like talking like meth, how bad it
is. And I'm on what is meth?
Yes, I was a connoisseur. I had no idea.
I was like, so I called Diaz up and I knew the head guy at Step

(01:23:37):
2 and stuff and we met, had coffee at Starbucks and I asked
him I go. So what's this shit?
Well, he went to school like in Ohio to learn about these
substances and the brain and thechemical.
Oh, is this the professor at UNR?
No, he. Wasn't a professor.
OK, there was a there was a there was a professor from UNR
who made LSD or something. I don't know.

(01:23:57):
Yeah, but no, I get what you're saying.
Yeah. So he.
He, my psychiatrist taught at, you know, at the medical school,
world famous. He's written books on
psychiatry. What's that movie Beautiful
Mind, Russell Crowe. And he played Doctor Nash, who
won the Nobel Prize or whatever it was for mathematics.

(01:24:17):
He knows him personally and his wife and I had, I had numerous
conversations with him about allthis stuff.
But anyways, I was working in Connecticut.
Call my buddy. He said they're looking for a
lineman in North Tahoe. And I said, been there, done
that. Yeah.
He said Battle Mountain. And I said no, no thanks.

(01:24:38):
Yeah. And he said, tone Nepal, your
old stomping grounds. Oh, yeah.
And I go, who died? Yeah, cuz there's no jobs,
right? They're all filled.
And I went, what? Who died?
So I ended up getting on the phone, calling the office, talk
to the area service managers, Maurice Vanpool at the time, and
he said, where are you? And I said Connecticut?

(01:25:00):
And he goes, oh, I said, I'll bethere in three days.
I made it in 2 1/2. Walked in the next morning, drug
up, loaded up my dog, told my aunt and uncle I got to go.
And they're like, you know, I got to go.
This is my life, this is what I do.
Drag up, go, drove cross country, pulled in Sunday

(01:25:20):
evening. Monday morning I was sitting in
the office and he walked out andhe's like, Oh my God.
And he's, I said, I'm here readyto go to work.
He goes, well, you got to go take the drug test and the
lineman's test, you know, in Reno and I go no problem.
Came up to Reno, took the drug test, passed, took the lineman's
test, aced it from what I was told by the engineer.

(01:25:44):
He goes, did you cheat? I was like.
How am I going to doing it? How?
Am I going to cheat? You know?
But it's all written stuff and everything.
And he goes, we only got it's ever got 100.
And I said really, well, whatever, who cares?
As long as I passed, I got the job.
Yeah. Worked in Tonopah for like 3 or
4 months and they wanted a troubleman.

(01:26:07):
They call it out in Round Mountain.
And I had friends that were living out there and team roping
and stuff at at Carver's. And I went, I'll go.
Yeah, well, you got to bid the job, so I didn't have any
seniority, but I put in for the job.
Nobody wanted to go to Round Mountain, so I went.
I was out there 6 1/2 years living the best life.

(01:26:32):
I mean it was like team roping all the time.
We're just having fun. I'd go fly fishing and stuff.
There was 2 ponds down at what they call Hadley.
The mine had built a whole new town of Hadley with a runway and
everything for the plane flying in from Canada to the gold mine,
for all the executives and stuff.

(01:26:53):
But yeah, I was the only guy, soI covered everything pretty much
from Austin to Silver Peak to Goldfield Tonopah.
When I was on call, lights went out, I got the call, away I went
and it was real good. But I was drinking every day.
Yeah, yeah. I ended up in the hospital with
a hemorrhaging stomach, blood coming out everywhere.

(01:27:16):
I was like, what the hell? Yeah, and it's four days in the
hospital with a hemorrhaging stomach, and they told me I need
to quit drinking. And the doctor's looking at me
and going, do you, do you eat, Mike?
And I go, I'm on a liquid diet. Yeah.
Yeah. So I experienced all.
That it's the most I've ever heard.

(01:27:37):
Yeah, but I quit for like two orthree months and then I had a
bad day, went to the bar, drank a bunch, ended up back in the
hospital. New new Doctor.
He was from UCLA Medical Center,cancer department and really,
really brilliant. He's up here in Reno now, I
think teaching or something. He may be retired.

(01:27:58):
But anyways, he said, I don't think you realized how serious
this was, Mr. Lynch. And I went, yeah, he said if you
you're not bleeding now, but your body's had like an allergic
reaction to the alcohol. Something's going on.
And he was actually the first doctor to discover hantavirus in
the state of Nevada. It was like, wow.

(01:28:19):
So I turn around and he said if you start bleeding, you might
bleed out. You won't make it from running
the tonopah, you'll just, and ifyou do make it major surgery,
staple your stomach anyways. So I kind of started backing off
all the drinking and stuff like that.
So I've been there, done that. But I was talking to I blew my

(01:28:41):
knee out second time. First one was high school
football, that's a different story, but I tore my ACL playing
city league basketball. Went over to Bishop, had it
operated on and was laying on the couch.
Called the supervisor and distribution engineering.
Long story short, he said why don't you come up here and work,

(01:29:03):
we'll pay a subsistence. And I went, shit, that's free
money. Yeah, OK.
I didn't want to come back up tothe city.
Ended up staying the vice president of electric
engineering. Re Fag, who's from Winnemucca in
Battle Mountain, by the way, andworked in Getchell.
He didn't, we didn't know we putit all together.

(01:29:25):
Cool. But he said gave me all these
special projects to work on and I'd come up with solutions.
So I'm not afraid to call engineers at PG&E Addison
wherever. And that I knew.
And he said to me one day you should have went to school and
been an engineer. And I said, yeah, maybe, but I
like working outdoors, doing my own thing.

(01:29:45):
Anyways, he kind of, I said, what are you?
What are you doing? You're offering me a deal.
He goes, yeah, and I went. So I talked to all my buddies
and they said, Mike, you'd be a fool not to take him up on this
offer. But I had to give up everything,
team roping and my free. I was single.
You had to. You had to grow up a little bit.
And I was like 35 at the time and I'm like 34 and I'm like,

(01:30:08):
I'd never been to college. All I wanted to do was get out
of school, so I had to start it.Bonehead math, bonehead English.
But I was working, going to school.
They let me go whenever I neededto go.
So I'm just trying to make a living.
Sold my horse horses. I had a couple of them, Sold my

(01:30:29):
horse trailer. My truck just became a student
TMCC and I'm working. And that's where I did that for
about 6 1/2 years. I was getting ready to
transition from TMCC over to University Nevada and we started

(01:30:50):
into a merger with Nevada Power in Vegas.
HR person walked in one day and said got to fill out a new
resume. I said for what?
I already got a job. She goes you might not have 1.
And I said what are you talking about?
So she said your job's moving toVegas and I said if I wanted to
be in Vegas, I'd already be there.

(01:31:11):
They'd offered me a job and I knew a lot of lineman that were
working down there construction.I said no.
I said I think I'll take the severance.
So I'd just recently gotten married and I turned around and
took my severance and went into real estate.
But just prior to that, the biologist came in with a bird

(01:31:36):
guard and his cover put on the insulators and the conductors
protect birds. And I looked at it and I
wouldn't code it for a couple different reasons.
It's going to cause more problems and it's going to
solve. We're not trying to kill birds,
otherwise we'd shoot them. It's like, no.
So that's what led into I, I quit.

(01:31:59):
I was sitting on the deck one night eating dinner and I went,
I should work on that. I should try and figure out a
way to make and make it better. And so I just started.
It was like a model airplane. Yeah, playing with Legos.
I was like, how the hell would you do that?
So I've been involved in a lot of engineering stuff up to that

(01:32:22):
time. Insulator failures, underground
cable, all these different things.
And so that's how it kind of started.
I was like, so I called these engineers at PG&E and said, are
you guys looking for this? And I said yes.
And I said, well, why didn't youcode this manufacturer or this
manufacturer? And they said, we don't like
them. Same reasons I didn't like it.

(01:32:44):
And I went, we're on the same page.
And they said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm trying to figure it out.
And they said we want to see it.And I'm like, really?
They went, yeah, so after like 3or 4 prototypes, I'd go down to
Livermore PG&E has a huge training center there.
I'd show it to him. And they said, leave it with us.

(01:33:04):
They'd hand it to the apprentices, put it on, take it
off, put it on, take it off. And we're talking about
materials and the design. Finally, one day they said,
that's what we want right there.I said, oh, God, thank God.
Now I can go back to my job at selling real estate because I
got to pay my bills. And they said, no, no, no, hold
on, Mike, it's your design. You made it, you make it, and

(01:33:30):
we're buying it from you. And I looked at him.
I said we all know each other. I don't have a manufacturing
facility, how am I going to do this?
They said figure it out. So you became a business owner
pretty much overnight? It was like, yeah.
And then I'm like, how many you're going to buy?
Listen, we don't know this a newproduct for PG&E And I went, OK,

(01:33:52):
so snowing on Donner Summit, I'mwalking back to my truck and I'm
thinking, God, I just want to get home.
I want to get over the past. What?
An engineer. Charlie Poston looks at me and
he goes, hey, Mike, He said you need to patent it.
I looked at him, and I said, what?
It's a bird guard. Christ, somebody give me a
break. Yeah, he goes, trust me, Mike,

(01:34:13):
the big guys are going to steal your ideas.
And I went, how am I going to dothis?
I don't have any money. So I got back to Reno.
Yellow Pages. I'm looking for patent
attorneys. I found one, met with him, I'm
like, so I ended up putting it on my credit card file, the

(01:34:35):
patent, and it just started it. I'm like, I don't know how I'm
going to do this, manufacture itand stuff.
So I just started figuring it out and everybody's like, that's
another whole story, but that's how it started.
The first patent was Charlie Poston telling me to apply for a
patent. PG&E put in an order for like

(01:34:55):
1000 of them and I went. Yeah.
Then they said we need you to design this, those cut out
covers. And I'm like, I've been thinking
about that. So because there wasn't anybody
really making cut out covers, soI started designing those.
Same thing came up with the design couple iterations and
PG&E said this is it. We like it.

(01:35:18):
We're putting it on every singlecut out that goes out the door.
And I'm like, how many is that? They said this one style about
50,000 a year and I went 777. You hit the drive up.
Oh my God. Yeah.
It's like some start manufacturing.
Did you stop doing real estate or were you always just doing

(01:35:40):
real estate? No, no, I had two jobs.
Got it working nights trying to figure this stuff out.
Yeah. Selling real estate during the
day. Is it commercial or were you
doing everything? I started doing residential with
the wife because she was doing it and stuff needed help.
But then I I transitioned over to commercial because that was
more like engineering numbers, internal rates of return and all

(01:36:02):
these other things. It was like much more business
engineering. Interesting, you know of why is
somebody buy a business? Why do they build a factory?
It was like, you know, selling apartment buildings and
different things. So it was very interesting.
But then I think it was 2007, I told the wife, I said I can't do

(01:36:24):
this anymore. I can't work 2 jobs.
I said I'm I'm killing myself. I have my own gold mine.
I need to dig my own gold. So I just went into selling
doing the bird guard stuff 100%.And I told her I said I'm making
enough money. You can quit.
Be a stay at home mom with her daughter who was a young child

(01:36:45):
at the time. And she was like, oh, you know,
scared because she didn't understand the business.
And I said once utilities code you and it works and there's no
problems, they disorder and it just starts.
So it just word of mouth. Yeah, I don't have any sales
people that work for me. I'm a one man company, work from

(01:37:08):
home. I don't have them.
My office is in my house. I use half the garage for my
shop and doing designs and prototypes and SL as they call
it, 3D printed products. And I have the insulators and
all the different things that I need to look at and see how it
fits and, and utilities. Word of mouth just started, you

(01:37:31):
know, next thing I know, PacificCore and Rocky Mountain Power,
you know, ordering products and stuff.
I'm like, yeah, how the hell of this happened?
Yeah, man. So I didn't get any loans from
banks. Nothing, right?
I took in a partner from California.
I gave him 50% of the company. I said, you go sell it, handle

(01:37:51):
the manufacturing, do all this and I'll just do the engineering
and design work. And he was like, OK, yeah.
So we utilized his company for credit.
He didn't put up any money, not a dollar, filled out the credit
forms. The manufacturer over in Sparks
turned around and looked at it and said, yeah, that's good

(01:38:12):
enough for us. They started manufacturing them
and we started shipping them thePG E.
So I don't have a warehouse, anyof that stuff.
They make them and ship them, make them and ship them.
But the volume got so big we couldn't thermoform them.
I had to go to injection moldingand I was like, how do we do
that? So that was another whole
learning process and I'm still learning today.

(01:38:34):
So it's just a matter of there'sit, there's going to be problems
and it's just kind of how you deal with them kind of thing.
Well, if there are issues, I mean, there's only been a few
issues with some of our products.
Yeah. And I've sold over 1,000,000,
1/2. Yeah.
Cut out covers. Yeah.
To utilities, Massachusetts, theMidwest, mostly the West Coast,

(01:38:57):
but they're all. I mean, I was in Huntington
Beach driving to go have breakfast with my daughter,
wife. I looked up beaches on this
side, power line over there, andthere's my covers.
She went to school at Chapman University in Orange.
We're going for orientation, trying to find a parking spot

(01:39:18):
park. I'm walking down the street.
I look up, there's my covers right there.
I took pictures through my cell phone and it actually says the
address. Chapman University.
And I went. How cool is that?
That is cool. Santa Cruz.
I've been San Francisco. Yeah, I'm right in the middle of
San Francisco by UCSF, and my daughter's checking the school

(01:39:42):
out and I walk outside, take a break and have a chew and I'm
looking up. Oh my God, there they are.
Yeah, Santa Cruz walked out by the pier.
We got there at night, walked out the next morning and I
looked up. There they are.
There they are. There they are.
I'm like, Oh my God. Yeah, they're all over the
place. Mike, Mike, having you on is

(01:40:02):
just is, is special in a way that you're not going to
understand. I think we're going to need to
have you on a couple more times if you're OK with that.
You know what I mean? Just to talk about whatever,
man, we love having you. Do you have any advice for our
generation with life experience that you've that you've put
together? Man, you're an entrepreneur,

(01:40:23):
you're a Reno native. You, you, you know all the same
people as me. You know what I mean?
Which people will put that together, you know, and that's a
beautiful thing, you know, But Ithink that, like I said, I think
that the most profound thing that we can hear from you is, is
advice on on what to do now. You know what I mean?

(01:40:45):
When I I'm not a business person, I didn't take any
business classes, right? But I obviously was starting a
business. So I started reading about like
the Harvard Business Review sitting in an airport, was doing
testing on a couple of my prototypes back in 2001 I think

(01:41:07):
it was, and in Atlanta on a highvoltage lap.
And I was sitting in the airport, I'm waiting for my
plane. Went over to the gift shop,
looking around, there was Harvard Business Review, and I'm
like, the title was something about business and sorry, I
went, I'll buy that. Yeah.
Started reading it and it said General Motors for IBM, all

(01:41:32):
these companies, they don't makethe products.
I didn't know the engines, the transmissions, rear ends, the
fenders, the back then there wasn't chips and these things,
but somebody else makes it. They just assemble it.
Yeah. And I was like, Oh my God, I

(01:41:54):
looked at that as a business model.
Yeah, but it was through inquisite.
The engineers, I know they said,Mike, you're one of the what
makes you different from a lot of engineers is you're you're
curious, you're inquisitiveness.You really think about stuff and
really dig in and analyze it andlearn about it versus that a guy

(01:42:20):
just has a job and has a job to do, and he's told what to do.
And that's what he does. Yeah.
And he goes home at night. You really delve into things.
And I said, yeah, I don't know why.
I've asked my psychiatrist. I said, do I have Asperger's?
And he's like, we don't call it Asperger's anymore.
It's another higher form of autism.
And I'm going, whatever. Yeah.

(01:42:40):
I said I analyze everything and everybody around me.
I, I can't shut my brain off like that.
Sometimes I can't sleep at night.
I'm visualizing things in 3D. So I use software program like
SolidWorks to design products. I have other people that are
designing send me the files and I'm looking at it and, and I

(01:43:04):
just question everything. But the one thing that I, I try
to live my life by, and it's from all the old timers, people
that have taken me in when I wasa kid, I didn't have nothing and
they treated me well with respect.

(01:43:26):
And so I try to do the same thing with everybody I meet in
life is I don't know you, I don't know what kind of person
you are. I don't care.
I treat them with respect. And if they treat me with
respect, we become friends and something an old timer told me,

(01:43:49):
he said, how many friends do youhave pal?
And I said, well, I don't know. I've worked with so many
different. He goes, let me explain the
difference between an acquaintance right and a friend.
He said you'll be lucky in your entire life if you can count
them on one hand. Friend and he's an older guy and

(01:44:10):
I'm listening to him, you know, like where are we going with
this is getting deep like what he goes I'm going to tell you
what a friend is. He said he has your back.
I don't care night or day. You call him at 3:00 in the
morning, he answers the phone and he said, but it works both
ways, right? He said if you tell a friend

(01:44:31):
that you're going to help him move and you've been out
partying all night and you're drunk on your ass, you show up.
You gave him your word conviction.
It's your word. And I learned that cowboy and on
rancher, we'd go over and help another rancher brand all day,
two to three days, they'd get paid.

(01:44:52):
You do it to help somebody, theyneed help, you help them.
So the old timers, the ranchers and stuff, they all helped each
other. They wouldn't steal a cow from
somebody. They'd say, this got your brand
on it. You know, we'll hold it for you.
They might deliver it to the rancher.
And it's that way in life, working in construction and

(01:45:14):
stuff, you're working with people from all over different
things. I've worked with people that
have just got out of prison and I'm like, and I'm a kid and I'm
like, what was he in prison for?Don't ask.
Like it's like the Vietnam vets.You don't sit there and go, what
was it like being over there? How?

(01:45:34):
Many people do. You kill?
Yeah. What did you experience?
You let them tell you the story if they want to talk about.
So I learned all these things from the old timers that I
worked with about life. And so I try to treat everybody
with kindness. If I can help in some way.

(01:45:56):
I don't care if it's a Humane Society or different things.
I've made donations. I sit on the board at DRI, the
Desert Research Institute, because I see what's going on in
the environment. Is there something we can do?
Oil, coal, you know, nuclear. Everything kind of ties

(01:46:18):
together, in my opinion. Yeah.
And what's the cause and effect?As human beings, I go.
Yeah. We create a lot of things.
Internet. Oh, yeah.
What was the Internet created for?
Military communications, Yeah now you got social media and
kids are all over it and they'rebashing each other and posting

(01:46:40):
things about their supposed friends that aren't really their
friends and saying things and next thing you know you find out
some kids committed suicide and it's tied to this bullying and
stuff I just. Yeah, it's crazy.
No, it's crazy. And.
And yeah, just. So what can we do as human
beings? You.

(01:47:01):
Know be kind to one one another.Can we treat each other with
respect? Can we turn around and I don't
care what color you are. I don't care what religion you
are with the politics and all these different things.
I'm like you want to be gay I don't care.
I'm not God. Yeah, I've read a lot of the

(01:47:22):
Bible, not all of it, but it's like, judge not you will not be
judged by your Father, which is in heaven.
I go, yeah, I'm not judging anybody.
Yeah, the world isn't as polarizing as it's made to be
seen as made to as as it's made to look.
It's not as polarized because I travel.
You meet a lot of people. And I meet a lot of people and I
don't. And I don't agree with a lot of

(01:47:44):
people a lot of the time. And that's OK.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
We can disagree, but I don't have to kill you.
Yeah, for sure. I don't have to chop your head
off, That's right. Because of your beliefs.
For sure we can still. Yeah, nature or nurture is a
reason why anybody thinks the way they do, right?
So it's like. Yeah, why can't we be friends?
Yeah, for sure. You know what?
Totally disagree. But I don't have to turn around

(01:48:04):
and shoot you. Yeah.
Charlie Kirk. Yeah.
You know what it's like. But he's voicing his opinion.
Yeah, he may not agree with him.So you don't agree with him?
Yeah, there's a lot of people I don't agree with inherently.
And they're radical and they're and they're it's and it's fine.
But I, I, I agree with their right to say whatever because

(01:48:25):
this is fucking America, you know what I mean?
This is our. Freedom.
Yeah, anyone, Anyone that says anything I agree with your
right. To say, you know, it's like, do
I agree with someone burning theflag?
No. Well, the same with being a
biker is like there's places in the world where it's outlawed to
wear a patch, which is the craziest shit.
And I'm like, and that's protected under ARM First
Amendment and a right to assembly, a right to.

(01:48:48):
And so if you're going to take those rights away, you know,
then what rights are you going to there's?
People in England that go to jail for Instagram posts.
I just. You know, like all these, all
this craziness of things that that's what, you know, thank God
that I was born in America. But the Constitution, the Bill

(01:49:08):
of Rights, all these things, I'mlike, wait a minute.
It's not one sided. It says I can stand up and say
whatever I want. Absolutely.
And you're not going to throw mein jail.
But then who's the nighttime host?
Kimmel. Kimmel.
Yeah, yeah. It which I don't even watch any
of this stuff, but it's all overthe news.

(01:49:31):
Kimmel will turn around and know.
So now I'm going. Yeah, Well, he should be able to
say whatever he wants. But if I was in a club and I got
a cut on, yeah, I should be ableto wear that cut wherever the
hell I want. That's nobody's business.
This, that right now, if I breakthe law, I hear you.
You know, that's different. Yeah.
Whether I have a cut or I don't have a cut, Right.

(01:49:51):
It's like so. So I don't agree with these laws
or interpretations of laws. Yeah.
On why it's kind of segregated, like at all.
You're in a motorcycle, you're in a gang.
And I've got friends that are retired cops and they just look
at me and said, what are you doing hanging out with these
guys, Mike and stuff like that. And I said they're my friends.

(01:50:15):
I said they haven't invited me to party.
Oh, they're just going to embezzle money from you.
You have a business and all that.
And I said, well, excuse me. I said you're looking at it from
law enforcement side. I'm telling you, nobody has ever
turn around and tried to embezzle money from me ever.
And I said and I've never seen anybody do any illegal

(01:50:39):
activities or whatever. And that's why I've, I've asked
members like, I don't understandall the fighting and everything
between the clubs and all these different things.
What is it? Is it well drugs?
Is it women? Is it guns?
For sure what you hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And really, like, to me, to me, this is the last breed of real

(01:51:00):
men. And it's cowboy shit too.
It's cowboy stuff because, because at least when we when we
have a disagreement and then we can't figure it out, we'll step
in the backyard. And that's a part of being a man
that I think is dying. That's what I believe in and I
go. Hey, guess what?
We're not going to shoot each other.
Let's talk. Because we go fight in the
backyard, you know what I'm saying?

(01:51:20):
In the old days they used to sayyou had a disagreement with a
guy in the bar. You went outside and handled it.
I think that's and then you'd goback in the bar and buy him a
drink. Right.
I'm like that. That's what I.
Believe, And I've been on the other side of that.
I've had my ass kicked and had him buy me a drink.
You know what I'm saying? So I've been on both sides of
it. You.
Know it works both. Ways and it does.
So it's like being men. It is.

(01:51:43):
That's what I look at it and say.
I've had nothing but respect from people who've, you know,
served in the military to lawyers, to doctors.
I have friends in every different profession you can
possibly think about and stuff. But yeah, that's, that's just

(01:52:03):
me. I turn around and I stay in my
lane. I do my own thing.
I'm work seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Yeah, but I enjoy what I do. There you go.
It's like. So don't feel like we're, you
know. It's, yeah.
It's a four letter word. It's always a work, like, yeah,
whatever. Yeah.
But if you enjoy what you're doing, Yeah.

(01:52:26):
And it's making the world a better place.
I mean, what else can you ask for?
That's it, man. I go.
People like say to me all the time, you work seven days a
week, I go. Yeah.
And just to touch on what you were saying is the people that
you were, Yeah, the people that you're saying is like the club
people. It's like these people to me are
the truest definition of what you were saying is friend.

(01:52:48):
That friend thing is, is if you get a friend like these are
people that taught me that it's not an expendable word.
The they don't want anything from you in return.
That's the definition of a friend of me, and the people
that have embodied that most in my life are dudes that ride
motorcycles. You know what I'm saying?
Well then. Closest thing, the Cowboys that

(01:53:11):
I like, I go very similar. And you know, there's like this
I've heard, you know, Cowboys don't like bikers.
Bikers don't like Cowboys. And I'm like, why?
Wait a minute, this is kite the same culture.
Yeah, it is. This is, you know, the freedom,
the the wind in your face. You know, you're out on that
bike and stuff like being on a horse.

(01:53:31):
Get bucked off out in the middleof the desert.
Bon Jovi said it was a steel horse, so yeah, that's right.
I love that song. I love that song, yeah.
Yeah, it is. It's so it's that culture and
stuff of whatever it is, you know, But I have doctors,
friends that I played golf with and stuff and you know, I've

(01:53:52):
given them golf clubs. Amen.
It's like if it helps them with their game play better, makes
their life easier, happier. Here, I'll give you the whole
set. I've donated more golf clubs
than probably anybody in this town.
There you go. And I've never shot over under
100, so, you know, see who cares?
Yeah, Yeah, I'm just saying it's.
Like getting on a bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some people could say he's not taking the corner right or

(01:54:15):
something. It's like it's what I do.
Yeah, so. Well, Mike, I really appreciate
you coming on. We're going to have you back on
and I can't wait to talk to you more.
I just want to say thank you so much for spending your Sunday
with I've never. Done anything like this in my
life? So this is like I said.
It's important. Oh my God.
There's a reason why you're here, you know.

(01:54:36):
Well, that's what I thought. You wouldn't be here if it
wasn't. You know what I mean?
If. It if it can help somebody,
yeah. Or they have a question, you
know of whatever you know, they can get a hold of me.
And we'll send them smoke signals.
Yeah, whatever it might be, whatever it might be, you know,
it's like all I can do is give you my experiences.
And that's kind of, I don't, youknow, my father was an

(01:55:00):
alcoholic. My mother was a schizophrenic,
registered, I mean, pushing a shop shopping cart down on 4th
St. here, you know, turning around and talking to her
imaginary friends and stuff. And I'm just like, what?
What happened to my mother? You know what she get some bad
acid over and Frisco when we're living over there, I'm going I

(01:55:21):
don't know, but you know, peoplego through things in life,
difficult times and stuff. If we can be there to help each
other and support each other andinstead of saying, Hey, you
should have, you know, done thisand then that, you know, I mean.
Let's just be kind of one another.
Yeah, and live, live your life by example.

(01:55:42):
You know, I've had people say I should write a book.
All the different things that I've gone through in my life and
how they're like, how did you dothis, Mike?
You get this business and you'reselling these.
When I go, I have no idea. I said all I me personally, it's
the guy upstairs that has kind of helped me along the way
somewhere because it's like thisis unexplainable.

(01:56:04):
I'm not a sales person and I don't like salespeople.
I don't like the pressure. You know, when you walk onto the
car lot and here they come, you know, all over you.
This truck, that truck, it's like, excuse me?
Let me. Let me look around.
So usually I would go to Jones WFord or, you know, or something
in the middle of the night, they're all gone and I'd walk

(01:56:26):
around and read everything on the labels and the stickers and,
you know, make my decision and stuff like that.
So. Well, well, Mike, I really
appreciate you being. Here.
Thank you. Yeah, the the answer there is be
kind of one another man. So let's can we just turn around
and help each other out and difficult times and this person
and this person can have the same issues, but this person,

(01:56:49):
you know, processes it different, maybe because of
chemical imbalances in their brain and this person.
So there's not a solution that like fits everybody.
We're all different. We all turn around and process
things and handle things different.
And I'll, I'll make one little comment that I've been through a

(01:57:11):
lot of difficult times in my life and I don't know, it's
probably 4-5 years ago. I, I have quite a few weapons
and I sat with a 9mm twice. First time I was like, what am I
doing? And I put it back in the safe by
my bed. And then the second time was

(01:57:32):
pretty bad. I I sat for probably 20 minutes
and I came within what I would say a split second of sticking
it in my mouth and pulling the trigger.
It was so close I was shaking. And I called my psychiatrist and
I said, hey, I got to talk to you and told him.
And he said, when can you come in?

(01:57:53):
I said this afternoon when he goes, come on in, his name was
Charles Price. I went in and saw him and he
said, let me ask you a question.Why didn't you do it?
And I said, I don't care about anything in life.
I said I should have been dead along time ago.
And I don't know why I'm here and why I'm still doing what I'm

(01:58:16):
doing, but it would devastate mydaughter.
And he goes, yes, it would. And he goes, yes, you're the
rock for her. And I said, I know, but it was.
It would be just being selfish. I turn around and would.
It's easy to pull the trigger. That's no big deal, you know,

(01:58:41):
but satisfying. What about her?
What about the other people in my life?
You know, how's it going to affect them?
And he went very good reason on why you didn't do it.
And I said, well, it's I can understand Rob.
I didn't know Robin Williams committed suicide.
I had no idea. I just knew he died.

(01:59:02):
And then I don't know, I found athing.
And you know, all these different people that have
taking their life, I'm just likewhat happened where it pushed
them to the that point And all these famous people, they have
life. I mean, these rock singers and

(01:59:23):
different things. It's like what you pushed them
to that point. I get you.
I get. You, we're all different.
We're all different. We all.
Handle different and we got a lot to live for and so do you my
friend. Well, and so it's like meeting
somebody meeting you. It's like, you know, if you ever
needed to call me, I tell peoplethat cell phone is by my side.
You call me night or day. What?
But I am there for you, man. It's like I will come meet you.

(01:59:47):
I'll do anything I can to turn around and have your back.
My ass. No better way to end that.
Thank you so much for being here, Mike.
Thank you so much for being here, my friend.
Thank you. Bye, everybody.
Hello 11.

All Episodes

Mike Lynch #17 | Fourth Street Live

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Mike Lynch #17 | Fourth Street Live