Get Above Ye Raisin'

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Beck (00:08):
Welcome to Queernecks, the podcast that puts the
Yee Hall in y'all means hall.
I'm your host, Beck,

Dash (00:14):
and I'm your host.
Dash.
Welcome to today's episode.
Is it nice weather there?

Beck (00:21):
I don't know.
I haven't been out indaylight hours in a few days.
It was nice last night, andthen the thunderstorms came.
Seems to be nice out there.
I don't know.
I'm sitting in my perfectlychilled 68-degree apartment

Dash (00:34):
Well, it's, it's chilly again here.
Chilly to my, you know, Appalachian ass.
It's like 65.

Beck (00:41):
Yehaw

Dash (00:42):
like c- I've had the windows open.

Beck (00:44):
Let's see what it is

Dash (00:46):
that I almost closed them

Beck (00:47):
Let's see.
It is currently 81 degrees in Waterville

Dash (00:52):
Yehaw

Beck (00:53):
degrees Feels like 82

Dash (00:55):
Well, yeah, we had a little heat wave where it got
up into the 70s and low 80s, mm,

Beck (01:00):
Yeah, looks like it's gonna be in the 70s for the next week.
Today's in the 80s andthen 70s, 70s, 70s, 70s,

Dash (01:08):
Have you heard

Beck (01:08):
70s, and so forth.

Dash (01:09):
Niño?

Beck (01:10):
Oh, no, what's that?

Dash (01:11):
Apparently we're having worst El Niño in 200 years

Beck (01:16):
Does it come with tomato and sour cream?

Dash (01:18):
I remember, this was the late '90s, this was the first time
I'd heard of El Niño and it wasapparently a, a fairly bad one then.
It caused a lot of disruptions.
but I was looking at…
The things they use to predict that are,sea predictive models for the jet stream
and stuff like that, and so I was lookingat those, the temperature of the ocean is,

(01:41):
like, projected to be 20 degrees warmer.
That is catastrophic.
Like,

Beck (01:46):
Yeah, it is

Dash (01:48):
water shortages, it's, it's likely that this graph is a model
that was a worst-case scenario, right?
Like, it could be as high asthis, but still, Jesus Christ.
Especially after the last severalyears mi- fairly mild El Niños.
Like, it was going down,down, down, and this year…

(02:08):
I, and I don't know what's causingit to do that, like, what…
Obviously, I'm not a climatologist.
I don't know shit about shit,but, so I, I don't know how to
tell, like, where that came from.
But then I was like, "Well, I better,you know, my anxiety over here to Duck
Duck Go and find out how that's gonnakill us," and I was not disappointed

Beck (02:30):
I had another animal scare last night, or yesterday.
Got out of bed yesterday, andPita would not get out of bed.
Normally, when it's timeto get up, she jumps down.
There, I have a milk crateat the end of my bed.
It was covered in a rug.
Super high-tech, but itworks as a step for her.
And she usually just jumps downon the, on the milk crate, and
then jumps on the floor and we go.
She would not, and I tried and I tried.

(02:50):
So, Shanna came in and got her, andcarried her into the living room.
She didn't wanna walkon a leash yesterday.
She didn't wanna eat.
She didn't wanna do, like, anything.
She kept, like, crying, 'cause wehad some errands to run yesterday.
She let trucks go byand didn't bark at them.
Like, all of the signs that Pitadid not feel good yesterday.

Dash (03:08):
the Chihuahua death rattle.

Beck (03:10):
Yeah.
Uh, but sh- l- last night she finallyate something, and then she…
I just fed the girls justnow, and she'd, she ate.
She got out of bed thismorning, um, no problem.
So, I don't know if itwas just a temporary…
'Cause we went out, the night before,the morning she woke up sick, we
were out till 1:00 in the morning.
Uh, we went to the drive-inand watched a long movie.

(03:31):
And so maybe she had toomuch barking, or she was…
I mean, she's getting to be an old lady.
Maybe she had too muchexcitement that night.
Um, I don't know.
But it really had me worried.

Dash (03:41):
Yeah,

Beck (03:41):
can't lose three dogs in six months.
I just can't

Dash (03:44):
She just overdid it a little bit.
She's

Beck (03:46):
Yehaw

Dash (03:47):
she's not a young woman.
You can't take her out clubbing that late
I, I know that you're, like,intermittent on TikTok, but now my
FYP has been taken over with Europeansexperiencing America 'cause we're

Beck (03:59):
Oh yeah

Dash (03:59):
Cup, and it's been a lot.
Like, there's a lot going on.
Like, there's some bickering becauseapparently we're not doing a very good
job of hosting the World Cup, and sothe, the people who are coming here…
And, and I'm talking about, like, outsideof the fact that we literally keep
detaining people for trying to come intothe country and either work at or compete

(04:19):
in an event we hosted and invited them to.
All of those complaints are legitimate.
but, like, they're like,they don't like our stadiums.
They don't like the fact thatthey can't walk places, like that,
and it's like, "We warned you."
But one of my favorite things ispeople going around experiencing our
restaurants for the first time, likeour chain restaurants, things that they

(04:40):
don't have, it's so interesting becausethey're just over the moon about…
I saw this woman lose her mindabout Olive Garden earlier, and
it was really fun and kinda…
It was, like, totally sweet and wholesome.
She was like, "I can haveall of this that I want?"
And she was…
it's so funny because yeah,to us, like, that's mid, but

(05:00):
she's from fucking England.
It's like, compared to what theyeat over there, that's mean.
Obviously, I don't know what, whatBritish cuisine is like, but you know,
we're going off of stereotypes here.
And some of the Americans inher co- in her comments are
like, " Ew, Olive Garden is so mid."
And she was like, "To you maybe,but I'm having the time of my life.
Can't you just be happy for me?"
And I'm like, I really vibe with that.

(05:23):
Like, can we, can we just not besnobs to people who enjoy right?
They're going to all the diners.
Somebody went to IHOP, and this guywas just living for this half stack
of pancakes he got with whipped creamand strawberries on top and, you
know it, it's really kind of sweet.

Beck (05:43):
I follow the opposite trend usually.
I follow one guy's from Scotlandthere's one guy from America that
are traveling across mostly Asiancountries, and they try street food
everywhere they go, and they talk tothe locals and that kind of thing.
I find that, like, really,really fascinating.
And then there's this onekid, his name is Dennis.
He is Ukrainian by birth, speaks Englishfluently as well as Ukrainian, and lives

(06:09):
in China and goes to China public schools.
So he is, like, eight yearsold and trilingual, and

Dash (06:16):
Whoa

Beck (06:16):
But they let, the, the … He's really cool because she sends him
out grocery shopping by himself.
He's literally betweeneight and 10 years old.
The, the account goes back a coupleof years, so some of the videos
are of him a little bit younger.
But he goes grocery shopping byhimself, he goes across town by himself.
He does all kinds of things like thatby himself, stuff you could never do in
America, and it, it's really interestingto wa- I- But we're both culture nerds, so

Dash (06:41):
Yeah, exactly.
I, love…
I mean, travelogues are cool anyway,but prefer it through the lens of food.
I like people who are experiencingcultures in all kinds of ways.
A- Anthony Bourdain w- was really,I really looked up to, to him,
and I first experienced himthrough his show, No Reservations.

(07:01):
And the whole, like, conceitof that show was, food is, is
something really important.
It cru- cuts across cultures.
Food is, food is a placewhere we can all meet.
But also this idea that, like, youdon't have to wait around for someone
to extend a specific invitation.
Americans are not very good at travelingabroad because expect, we have such

(07:24):
inters- like, I don't know, specificexpectations of what, of how we should
be treated and what it's gonna be like.
And we are not cultured.
We don't speak multiplelanguages, you know?
And so the whole idea behindNo Reservations was just show
up and experience something.
just go in with a, an openheart and mind and, and just be
happy to be impressed or, or,

Beck (07:46):
Yehaw

Dash (07:47):
disappointed.
Who the fuck cares, you know?
The point is to experience it, andI, that was really a cool thing for
me to have access to as a youngerperson growing up where I did.

Beck (07:56):
I really liked The Frugal Gourmet, and he talked a lot about
traveling through Rome, and hewould show pictures in Italy and,
you know, all over the place.
His name was, I think, Ken Smith.
Ken…
Was it Ken?
Jeff Smith.
His name was Jeff Smith.
There's a movie coming about him.
He was disgraced because they foundout he was gay and he had a little
twink boy and he fell from grace.
He was a PBS star.

(08:19):
He had a show called The FrugalGourmet, and he was very flamboyant.
That was one of my firstentryways into food and culture

Dash (08:27):
people were still shocked somehow when he came,

Beck (08:30):
Yehaw
Watch food shows veryoften, like Top Chef or

Dash (08:39):
I have occasionally, I, I like The Bake Off.
I like, I think it was ChoppedI was watching with Sabrina,
'cause she likes that kinda thing.
I do enjoy them whenever I, I sitdown with them, but it's not something
that's a part of my regular rotation

Beck (08:57):
Top Chef just finished their latest season last week.
So I was cur- I, that was, wewatch, we watch it every season.
Um, there was also theTournament of Champions on Food
Network, which was really good.
I think there's one that has beenrecorded that I haven't seen.
So basically, you know how there's,like, a only a small pool of, of
actors when it comes to those shows?
Like, um, the same three judges showup here, and they're cooks on the

(09:18):
next show, and they're judges on thisshow, and they're hosts on that show.
And it's a very smallrepertoire of, of people.
But they go head-to-head, and it's ablind taste test, and women have won
every season, which I find fascinating

Dash (09:33):
now that you say that, I guess the pool of people who are at
that level of accomplished in the,in cuisine or whatever and also
good on camera is s- pretty small.

Beck (09:47):
Yeah.
It's hosted by Guy Fieri

Dash (09:49):
Did you ever watch Nailed It!?

Beck (09:51):
Nope, haven't heard that one

Dash (09:52):
Is, it's not really a cooking show, honestly.
I mean, occasionallysomething good happens.
Occasionally somebodymakes something good.
But the point of it is that thesepeople are not very good at It's
usually, I think it's entirely baking.
And it comes from that memefrom the mid-2010s, right, where
somebody would attempt something.

(10:13):
They're…
Like, say like I decide I'm gonnatry to make a sculpture cake, and I
don't know what I'm doing, and I'mtrying to make Elsa or whatever.
Remember that, that picturethat I couldn't stop laughing
at of the Elsa balloon?

Beck (10:25):
No, I don't remember

Dash (10:27):
oh, God, I've gotta show you.
Maybe I didn't show it to you.
But, like, somebody would attemptsomething and then sit it next
to the original, and it w- the,it would say, "Nailed it," you
know?
Obviously they did not nail itso it's, it's based on that.
But so they would be people who werelike, "Yeah, I'm pretty decent at baking."
And they would get them on andget, set them challenges, give

(10:49):
them enough time to do it, andthe results were fails normally.
You know?
Like, they just were not able to.
But, like, they were trying, you know,and it was just a normal person, and
it was interesting to, to watch that.
And also it was funny.
And it was hosted by Nicole Byer, whoif you don't know her, you should.
You would really enjoy her sense of humor.

Beck (11:12):
Sounds familiar.
is

Dash (11:12):
like…

Beck (11:13):
she Black?

Dash (11:14):
Yeah, she goes way back in the skit improv comedy

Beck (11:18):
That sounds familiar.

Dash (11:20):
Yeah.

Beck (11:20):
I think I know who you're talking about

Dash (11:22):
she also has a podcast.
Yeah, so she hosts it, and she's,like, very funny, and there's
this French chef guy who actuallydoes know how to bake cakes.
He's very famous for them.
I have laughed watching that show.
But we're not making fun o- ofthe people necessarily because
of course they're not successful.
We set them up to fail.
The show is about setting them upto fail and still kind of like, you

(11:47):
know, they're all in it together.
We're all here to fail collectively, andI'm sitting on the couch here failing
because I haven't even tried to do thething that you just failed at doing.
So,

Beck (11:57):
Yehaw

Dash (11:57):
I'm not better than you.
When I find this Elsa,I'm gonna send it to you.
But, I think…
So I've watched a lot of that one.
Probably that one and Bake Off isthe bake, is the ones I watched

Beck (12:08):
Yeah.
Well, we watch Top Chef, we watchthe Tournament of Champions.
Um, sometimes I'll watch Chopped, butI've seen so many of them and it's such
the same thing over and over and over.
It gets on my nerves a little.
I don't know.
I like Top Chef because thechallenges change every time
Oh, wow.

Dash (12:26):
I can't.
Look at the fingers.

Beck (12:29):
Those are some ripped abs she has there too
That's terrible

Dash (12:34):
And like that person, I'm just so impressed, right?
That they did all of that work.
They probably saw what was happeningfairly early on in the process, knew
how it was gonna turn out, but they madeit, they finished it, they set it out
where people could see it, and they tookpictures of it and put it on the internet
That's, uh, you know, that's living life.

(12:54):
That's using your free will

Beck (12:56):
And your talents

Dash (13:02):
Well we gave ourselves homework ' cause we're insufferable.
and I believe we, I believe it wascalled Book Report, but we just
decided that we would talk aboutwhatever we had watched or whatever.
I d- I don't, we didn't reallysay, like, whether it had
to be recent, but, you know.
What, what was that like?
Did, what did you come up with?

Beck (13:24):
Well, I kind of struggled with it because I am watching several
different kinds of media this week.
I, I went to the drive-in and sawDeclaration Day, which I do not
recommend um, even though it's aSpielberg … Disclosure Day, yeah.
Even though it's a Spielbergmovie, it's really not great.
Like, we, just kind of sat therewondering, "Why is this so bad?"
Like, what are we missing, you know?

Dash (13:44):
in that.

Beck (13:45):
Well, they give you no reason to care about the characters,
and they just tell a story, butthere's no connection to it, right?
They … I d- I just didn'tthink it was very good.

Dash (13:54):
Yeah.
So Yellowjackets, you saidyou're watching Yellowjackets.
Did you finish
season three?
Is that…
You said
you were in the middle of season
three

Beck (14:00):
Well, no, the middle of season two.
We're in the middle of season two.

Dash (14:03):
Okay

Beck (14:04):
There's only three seasons, Yeah.
So I know there's a lotthat I don't know yet.
We're about halfway through, 'causethere's three seasons and we're ab- I
think we're on episode four or five.
And things are starting to get weirdas shit, so I know it's gonna get…
They show flashes of what's coming,So I know things are gonna get really
weird, so we'll see where that goes.
And I know I'm totally late to this.
I know everybody has alreadybeen out in the wilderness.

(14:25):
They already built a shrine.
They already had a trauma response.
They possibly have eaten somebody,and I'm just now showing up
saying, "Wait, what happened?"
Right?

Dash (14:33):
Somebody's running

Beck (14:33):
got really…
Yeah, they are.
She's running for senator.
Um, and she's, she's like the mainqueer person in the, in the th- And
that's another thing I love about it.
There's so much queerness going on in it.
Um, there seems to be kind of an equalfooting, at least for the '96 girls, uh,
where it, there, you know, there's…
Nobody even cares.
There's, there's not alot of homophobia yet.

(14:56):
I don't know if there willbe, but there doesn't seem to
be a lot of homophobia yet.
They treat it just like a regular…
It, it bugs me when people introducegay characters just to have them
stress about coming out or peoplebeing mad that they're gay or whatever.
Like that…
trope is so overdone, You know?
Just go on.
We've already talked about coming out.
What happens next, you know?
Not everybody is traumatized.

(15:18):
Like, just keep going.

Dash (15:20):
Of the li- a life for this person?

Beck (15:22):
Right, exactly.
I am so many things.
I am, I am so many different kindsof person that I forget being queer
is what people find interesting.
It's like the eighth most interestingthing about me, you know what I mean?
Like, I just have so much else going on,I just forget people care about that.
But it's really good because they do kindof forget to care about that in this show.
There's lesbian make-out scenes,there's a gay marriage and they have

(15:45):
a kid and all that kind of stuff.
Um, the, uh, if you've not watchedit, it's basically this group,
this high school soccer team isgoing to the national competition
and their plane crashes on theway into the Canadian wilderness.
They have no idea where they arebut it's the Canadian wilderness,
and they are there for 19 months.

(16:05):
They tell you that, like, episode one.
And so it's just time passing, and ithappens in 1996 when this happened,
and they also show you what washappening in 25 laters, 25 years later.
Uh, so 2021, '22 is when the, thesecond part of the show takes place.
And it's just the parallel, the livesof the young ones and the old ones.

(16:26):
And it's got Juliette Lewis.
It's got oh, what is her name?

Dash (16:30):
Christina Ricci

Beck (16:31):
Yeah, Christina Ricci.
She plays a crazy-ass little lady.
She gets crazier as the show goes on.
Yeah

Dash (16:38):
does.
I never know what she's gonna do next.
I, I don't think I'vemade it to season two yet.
that's one of thoseshows that I actually, I
can't binge it it's so, saturated.
It's so, like, full of and, and
wackiness and stuff, and I'm somebodythat has to process things, I guess, when
they're, when it's jam-packed like that.

Beck (17:00):
Right?

Dash (17:00):
every time we turn
around and we do something wild, I belike, "Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Okay, where does that go in my brain?"

Beck (17:06):
Yeah.

Dash (17:07):
But yeah, her, her character is bug nuts.

Beck (17:10):
Yeah.
Where are we allowed and,celebrated to be so weird?
I appreciate how diversethe characters are too
Like, there was just a wide variety, andI can't imagine getting to an island with
all of them and having to make it work.
Because knowing what I know now,as the only out queer person, I'd
not, I would not have done well.
I would have been the one they designatedto cry in the corner into my hoodie.
Um, I probably would've lost aleg the first day or something.

(17:33):
Like, my luck is not great.
But I really like, in the show,the, the diversity of characters.
It gives them, uh, a lot of differentthings that can go on and change.
There's every kind of color.
There's every kind of race in there.
Um, everyone has different sexualities,you know, different stories.
I think it's, I think it's really greathow diverse they let, they let people be.

(17:54):
Different moral compasses,different ways of falling apart.

Dash (17:58):
it's a mixed
genre show as well,
so kind of a mystery thriller proceduralbecause there's been a, a murder possibly.
This is in the present.
it's also kind of a horror thing becausethey're stranded in the, in the woods
and, their perspectives on reality arebeing challenged in different ways.

(18:19):
And I'm g- I'm not gonna giveaway plot points, but like, you
know, it gives, it gives us an
opportunity to ask interestingquestions, like what happens when someone
is mentally unwell in a
survival situation like that?
This is something I likedabout The Walking Dead.
They did this occasionally.

(18:39):
Like I, I,
you know, I there were times,there were seasons I loved
with Walking Dead, and then
a point where I could no longercontinue watching that stupid
ass show.

Beck (18:48):
I've never seen an episode of it

Dash (18:49):
w- and it's really, I don't think for you, it would scare the
daylights out of you,
but,

Beck (18:53):
Yehaw

Dash (18:54):
what's really good about it
is a s- a
same thing Yellowjackets does, is use thishigh pressure, really unusual situation
that none of us have ever been in
before, w- none of those people haveever been in before, and most viewers
have never been in before, to askinteresting questions about how people
react to things, how different people
with different shitgoing on react to stuff.

Beck (19:15):
There's a scene in the first episode, so I don't feel
like I'm doing any spoilershere 'cause it's first episode.
They crash the plane and ChristinaRicci's character as the young one
is looking for food or something.
I forget what she was looking forbut she comes ac ロ- across the
black box, you, know, the flightrecorder, and shit's blinking.
And so they could have found themprobably, but, she reaches into the thing

(19:37):
and pulls all the wires out and killsit Now, I don't think that's a secret
that ever comes out because at least inseason two they're still talking to her.
You know what I mean?

Dash (19:46):
And I love Melanie Lynskey,

Beck (19:48):
That's who I was trying to think of her name.
Yes.

Dash (19:50):
Yeah.

Beck (19:51):
great

Dash (19:52):
so
lauren Ambrose also
shows up in season two.
I know, she was was kind of…
I would- I don't know if you'd call her aqueer icon in the '90s, but she was like
every lesbian I knew hada crush on Lauren Ambrose
in the '90s.

Beck (20:09):
Do you have red hair?

Dash (20:10):
Yep

Beck (20:11):
yeah, then she just came into the the s- the episodes that we're in.
I like how they're handling allthe characters, and I love how
normal they make being queer

Dash (20:20):
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, now I will, I will jumpback in and finish it then.
That way
we can talk about it.

Beck (20:26):
Okay.
We're taking it a couple, 'causeShanna, Shanna works from 6:00 AM
until 3:00 PM most days, so shehas to leave for work at 5:00 AM.
So she goes to bed pretty early, so we canonly get, like, one or two episodes in.
She was off the last few days, sowe got a couple of extra episodes
in, but we work pretty slowlythrough them, so you have time

Dash (20:46):
S- I think somewhere out there there's gonna, there was
either supposed to be or may stillbe a fourth season, a final season.
Got, had some issues.
They had,
To shut down for COVID, and then when
people were allowed to start again,they s- they couldn't because
Juliette Lewis is a Scientologist,

(21:07):
she wouldn't take the vaccine.
and then after they were onlycontracted for five years, so now
they've gotta convince these peopleto either sign a new contract or…
I know
more about the production than theshow just because I, I like to read
about stuff like
that.
Um, so I hope they get to
tell the rest of the story,
In
a way that they wanted to for, for,

(21:28):
you know, their sake and for the viewers

Beck (21:30):
I'm just curious how they're gonna end it,

Dash (21:32):
Oh, well that's the worst.
If they don't get to doit, then that would suck.
You know, something, thesame thing happened with…
Well, it happens a lot, right?
Shows, shows that have that are buildingto something, that are doing a long
form storytelling, one of the hazardsof a television show that does that

(21:52):
is that it could get canceled beforethey get to finish telling the story.
this this is what happenedto Firefly, which is,
a sore spot for a lot of nerds.
This is a Joss Whedon show from
2002, and it's, called a spacewestern because they're essentially
cowboys and it is essentially,
know the, the western genre, but in space.

(22:13):
it was not a good fit, andit was a great show, right?
Fuck Joss Whedon and what he did tothe, to the people, especially the
women who worked on his shows.
But
Firefly's a
great show

Beck (22:24):
Right?

Dash (22:24):
Slayer is a great show.
But in
2002, people weren't interested in
stories like that
because were very, like,angry, right, about 9/11.
All of television and filmrearranged itself in the year 2002.
and so it just, it was reallybad timing for a show like that.
So it got canceled after one season.

(22:44):
So then they made a movie, theyreleased a movie afterwards to wrap
up the story, and it was okay

Beck (22:49):
Not everybody gets that chance though.
There's lots of shows that have wrapped,and I have no idea what happened.
There was another show, I can't rememberthe name of it, but that was another group
of girls that get stranded on an island.
Basically, they are sent away to thiscamp for behavior modification, and
it's how they survive on this island.
Um, and then at the second season,there's some boys introduced, um,

(23:12):
the boy's side of the, the thing.
Um, and then I was really interested.
Like, they had some really good storiesstarting there, and then they cut the
show So I was very upset about that.
which is kind of why I strayed away fromYellowjackets for So long because it kind
of made me angry that I had already seena show like that and it didn't finish.
So I kind of took it out onYellowjackets 'cause it's the
same genre, which is stupid, butThat's the way human brains work.

(23:35):
Like, like that Hot One show, Ihad to physically tell myself, "You
don't have to like hot wings toactually watch that show, Becky."
You know?
Like

Dash (23:43):
That's so funny.
Hot Ones is cool too because it's like
h- the idea of it ishe's n- he's very good
at his job.

Beck (23:50):
Yehaw

Dash (23:51):
like wants to
ask really interesting
questions of
people who are probably tired of gettingthe same old questions asked at, of them.
Well I had a couple of…
I had a, a hard time deciding as well,which makes sense because the both of us
consume so much various forms of media.
Everybody does, right?
But like, in particular we bothlike read and watch a lot of things.

(24:11):
have kids, right?
When we get to do, we get tospend our time how we want to.
But there were two things that I've,happened that were interesting to me
because they were kind of intertextual.
they like…
So one is like Wikipedia free fallis something I do a lot of times
if I'm watching something or if Ithink about something I'll be like,
"Oh, I, I wanna read about that."

(24:32):
I'll go to Wikipedia and read about it.
And so I was checking back in withsomething I already knew about based on a
movie I had seen of someone I already knewabout that I was r- really interested in.
So the creator of Wonder Woman wasa guy named I forget his first name.
I think it was William MoultonMarston, but he, everybody called
him Moulton Marston, who's aprofessor of psychology I think.

(24:54):
And, ever noticed like thingsabout Wonder Woman that are
kind of like- S&M coded, right?
She has a whip.
The only way to disempower heris to handcuff her, to put her
two, like wristbands togetherand she can't move anymore.
so even, like, her outfit isa kind of, like, S&M getup.

(25:14):
And we have to, like, take thisback to its original thing.
Well, he was, he was into S&M,actually very early adopter
of the American S&M scene,
a more mainstream, like, notthe severe underground kind.
You know?
Like, by this time he was gettinginto it, there were shops and
stuff where you could buy the gear.
So it was a more organized
underground scene.

(25:36):
So I, I knew about him, and I foundthat really interesting, and then
they made a movie about him called,Professor, I think, Marston and the
Wonder Women.
Google it just to makesure that's what it's
called

Beck (25:47):
That sounds familiar

Dash (25:47):
Y- yeah, from 2017, Marston & the Wonder Women.
it's, you know, it's,it's not a great movie.
It's good.
I enjoyed it.
It's got…
You know, biopics are hard, the re- evenmore interesting than his, like in, like
being into S&M and, like, Wonder Womancoming out of that and being kind of a
representation of a woman, it was moreof a dom sub type thing, was that he was

(26:13):
polyamorous, and he had a wife that hewas legally married to, and then they
had a girlfriend who lived with them,and she was the inspiration for Wonder
Woman, the o- the, like, their third,actually, she started out as a student.
It was very…
Like, so both he and his wifewere professors of psychology, and
then this woman was their student.
She fell in love with the wife first,and then like, they all talked about

(26:37):
it, and they all decided that theywere cool with becoming a throuple.
And so, like, this was in'40, or the '30s and '40s.
And so, like, they were justreally living a secret queer life.
And then started to have children, right?
Like, the third woman, who wasn'tmarried to him, like, their…
They got very complex.
They had to move places because peoplewould find out or start to suspect

(26:59):
about them, and then they would getrun out and have to move somewhere new.
and so the movie is, like, doesinteresting things with that.
But the movie also, One thing itdoes is take the opportunity to
use mise-en-scène like a comic bookpane, like the panel of a page.
So there's so many beautiful visualsof, especially of this woman who's
the inspiration for Wonder Woman,and she's played by Bella Heathcote.

(27:22):
And the, t- M- M- Marston and hiswife are played by, Luke Evans,
who's doing Rocky Horror right now.
Have you seen the y- imagesof him, like, in his getup?
He just, he looks fantastic.
Kind of ugly, but also fantastic,which I think really works for Frank N.
Furter.
And Rebecca Hall, who's oneof my favorite actresses.
I love her.

(27:42):
She's gorgeous Anyway, so it's a,it's a really kinda sweet movie
about these people who make anunconventional relationship work.
After he died, he died kindof young of lung cancer, they
stayed together, these two women.
Like, they just kept raisingtheir kids together and stayed,
together and never, neither oneof them married another person.

(28:04):
But the woman who was the
inspiration for Wonder- Wonder Woman,
Her name was Olive Byrne.
And so I was like, Well, Idon't know anything about her,"
'cause I had read about Marston andhis wife, And I was like, I don't know
anything about her."
And so I r- started reading about, herand all of a sudden randomly there's this
line, that, let's see, "Byrnewas delivered into an Irish

(28:24):
American family by her aunt, Margaret
Sanger."

Beck (28:28):
Well, Lord.
Like the Margaret Sanger?

Dash (28:32):
Yeah.

Beck (28:32):
Wow

Dash (28:33):
Isn't that
crazy?

Beck (28:35):
That's not notable or anything I always tell my students, "If you've ever
had sex that was for non-reproductivepurposes, pour one out for old Margaret."

Dash (28:43):
Yeah.
So like her mother was Ethel Byrne,who was Margaret Sanger's sister.
I wonder if she was in themovie and I didn't realize it.
That would've been cool
But another thing um, that I watchedwas actually just last night.
I do a l- this version of

(29:06):
it's not watching movies, it's watchingabout movies, if that makes sense.
I open up…
I have a, quite a few Plex libraries
of just various people,

Beck (29:15):
What's a flex library?

Dash (29:17):
Plex is a a remote server setup situation where people
can load files of movies into
their server, and if they'veshared it with you, you can
stream that from wherever you are.
So my dad has one, my brother-in-lawhas one, and Eric has one.
So between all of them, not only do I have
every movie ever made, I'vegot some seriously deep cuts.

(29:38):
And yeah, a lot of that stuffprobably fell off the back of
a truck, but I didn't pick it
up off the back of atruck, so I'm not doing
wrong.
It was
them.

Beck (29:47):
Right

Dash (29:48):
but Eric has
his organized into horrormovies and all other movies.
And so I'll open up the horrormovies library and set it to organize
randomly, which is really cool.
But I saw a movie called Wolfen.
Do you remember an author who was abig deal in the '70s, '80s, and '90s
named Whitley Strieber?

Beck (30:08):
Doesn't ring a bell, no

Dash (30:10):
He, a dude.
He, he believes he was abductedby aliens and so he's written
several installments of
an autobiography is kinda whathe calls it, but it's just the
stories of, of him being abducted
by aliens.
But he also writes fiction.
Although a lot of it is also about aliens.
But he…
The first book he ever wrote is called

(30:31):
The Wolfen.
I read it when I was, like, eight I wasway too young to be reading a horror.
by then I had already read
other horror.
I'd been reading Stephen King.
I was, like…
It was somewhere between eight and 10.

Beck (30:43):
You were reading Stephen King at eight years old?

Dash (30:45):
Yeah, I know.
I learned to read on that stuff becauseit was what we had in the house.
So once I knew how to read and stuff, Iwould, I would take those and read them.
And they're not, like, incrediblycomplex literature, but there was
plenty of stuff I didn't understand.
You know?
Like, I think back now to, like,e- every so often, a scene I read

(31:06):
that I didn't understand at the timewill download in my brain, and I'll
remember, like, "Oh, that's whatwas going on in this certain scene."
But yeah, I was readingthat stuff pretty young.
So this book was, like, reallysimplistic compared to those.
I fully understood everythingthat happened in it it was…
It's actually not a very good book.

(31:27):
But what is so interesting aboutit is that it's still terrifying.
It scared the shit outof me, and it's awful.
It's an objectively bad book.
It's poorly written.
It's, it's tropey and generic and…
But the idea is so scary I was, like,kept awake by it at night because it's
about these, like, shape-shifting wolves.

(31:48):
Or not shape-shifting, they're,they're just this, like, secret hidden
species of hybrid or something, likeintelligent wolf, that's been living
for centuries alongside us, but wedidn't know about it because they,
like, our, our society throws away.
they, you know, on the homeless peopleor, you know, addicts or, you know,

(32:11):
whatever, and we never noticed them.
And that idea was compellingto me, and I was like, "Maybe
they really are out there."
But movie also added this layer
of commentary about gentrification,and it was so extra.
But it also, again, was legitimatelycreepy, and they didn't even show the
monsters 'cause it was made in 1981.

(32:31):
are they gonna do?
You know, put a guy in a costume?
funny, not scary.
so I watched a movie, and Iwas pleasantly surprised by,
they tried to do something with
it, and it was scary

Beck (32:44):
Thought I was being brave watching Unsolved Mysteries, and you were over
here watching shape-shifting werewolves.
Yeah, we are not the same.

Dash (32:53):
Anyway, maybe it's a good
time to hear from this week's sponsor

Beck (32:56):
Sounds good to me

Dash (33:03):
All right.
This episode of Queernecks is broughtto you by the Homemade Tree House.
are honored today to be sponsoredby one of the fundamental formative
processes of foolhardy rural engineering.
Today, people of means have theirpick of luxury backyard cedar
pavilions built by contractor usingblueprints and pressure-treated wood.

(33:23):
But the tree houses of our youth wereabsolute death traps constructed by
three neighborhood kids who founda rusty hammer and a box of bent
roofing nails on a Saturday afternoon.
It was character-building towaste a whole day building a death
trap from materials you might aswell have built a coffin out of.
Abandoning all reason, math, physics,and parental supervision, you had

(33:44):
a water-logged piece of plywood forthe floor, a single green two-by-four
holding up the main weight, and threemismatched plastic milk crates for stairs.
You nailed the whole thing directlyinto a scraggly pine using hardware
never meant to hold human weight,creating a civil engineering crisis
thirty feet above the gravel.
The actual completion of thestructure was never realized.

(34:05):
You ran out of nails by nightfall,or you realized nobody had the upper
body strength to haul a discardedcar seat up into the branches.
The project just stopped, leavinga half-finished platform of exposed
wood and jagged edges hanging overthe creek bed for the next six years.
though it was missing three walls anda roof, that platform stayed central
to every single game you played.
It was a pirate ship, a spaceship, atop-secret military bunker, conjured

(34:29):
from the oppressive boredom of summersin the holler and held together by
frayed bungee cords and the grace of God.
from this vantage point,your problems felt small, and
the world seemed less sharp.
Every time the wind blew, the wholestructure groaned in a way that
should have triggered an evacuation.
But you just sat up there anyway, sharinga sleeve of stale saltines and planning
your eventual escape from the country.

(34:51):
For certain slightly different kidstrying to find an unsurveilled corner
of the world, this shaky woodendeck was a sovereign queer nation.
It was the one place where you couldsit above the tree line, look out over
the ridges, and make up your own rulesfor how life was supposed to work.
The Homemade Tree House, teaching countrykids how to trust a structure held
together by hope long before we had to dothe exact same thing with our adult lives.

(35:14):
now back to the unsanctioned,ill-thought-out, dangerous, but
necessary project we call thispodcast, also built out of whatever
scrap we found lying around.
We legit would just naila stick into the crook
of a tree and call it a tree house.

Beck (35:33):
I was always too afraid to climb trees.
Afraid I was gonna fall

Dash (35:37):
Oh, really?
Fallen's kind

Beck (35:38):
Yeah.

Dash (35:39):
it.

Beck (35:39):
Yeah.
I was, I was, I don't know,I was always a big kid And so
I always felt I was too big,
that if I hit the groundit was gonna hurt too much.
So I just never did.
My brother was all into it.
it was just, I didn't like gettingdirty, except for softball, 'cause that's
where you're supposed to get dirty.
But other than
that I didn't like getting sweaty
I still like that

Dash (36:00):
and you have to
s- I think y- you have to get used to that
young.
So like s- getting into
being an outdoor personafter a certain age
is probably different, 'causeyou gotta get over that like
discomfort, the f- the icky
feeling, you know?
But whereas if you were a kid,you were always used to it

Beck (36:20):
Yehaw

Dash (36:21):
Yeah.
Something about pine trees
too.
You could climb those things forever
Did you bring a noun ofAppalachian interest?

Beck (36:27):
I did.
Let me pull It up here.

Dash (36:30):
Lord, stick with us, internet.

Beck (36:32):
Please, please, if I, if I cut out, just let me know, okay?

Dash (36:35):
Okay

Beck (36:36):
All right, today's noun of Appalachian interest is
the Underground Railroad.
Now, I know what you may bethinking, "Beck, that is not a noun.
That is a whole historical system."
And to that, I say, first of all,don't grammar police me on my own
podcast, but second of all, yes it is.
It is a noun phrase, andthat absolutely counts.
I will take my points and a littlebiscuit on the side wherever

(36:57):
I can get them, thank you.
something we should say out loudbefore somebody pictures Harriet Tubman
in a little conductor hat yelling,"All aboard," through the mountains.
The Underground Railroad was a, not a realtrain, and it was not just a few people.
It was a, not a tidy little mapwith dotted lines and snack stops.
It was a dangerous, secret, changingnetwork of people, homes, roads,

(37:18):
rivers, woods, churches, caves, wagons,boats, courage, and lies told to
slave catchers with a straight face.
It was dangerous work.
And Appalachia matters in that storybecause Appalachia sits in the borderland.
the mountains and river valleysof this region were not just
pretty scenery for a calendar youraunt buys at the dollar store.
They were passageways and hiding places.

(37:39):
Every road was the hard road, andthen there were places where a person
might find help, but also places wherea person could be easily betrayed.
The Ohio River was one ofthe big dividing lines.
On one side was Kentucky, which wasa slave state, and on the other side,
Ohio and Indiana were free states.
Ohio was a free state by one vote, though.
That's something I learned when doingmy research for my master's thesis.

(38:02):
But free state did not mean safe.
Let's be real about that.
Crossing a river did not ma-magically fix racism, poverty,
danger, the culture, or even the law.
The fugitive slave acts meantthat freedom seekers could still
be hunted and dragged back south.
so when we talk about the UndergroundRailroad in Appalachia, we are talking
about people risking everythingbecause the world they lived in

(38:23):
was built to deny them liberty.
And the terrain itself couldbe both a helper and a threat.
A mountain road could hide you,but it could also wear you out.
A river could carry you towardsfreedom, but it could also drown you,
and a holler could shelter you, butonly if the right person lived there.
Like we've learned here onQueernecks, Appalachia is not
and was not just one thing.

(38:44):
It was never just one thing.
It held enslavers, abolitionists, freeBlack communities, Quakers, poor white
families, bounty hunters, church folks,wagon drivers That is one of the things
I want us to sit with, for a moment.
The Underground Railroad was notonly famous names like, Harriet
Tubman and Frederick Douglass.
It was also thousands and, of unnamed,anonymous people who opened a door or

(39:05):
left food or even rode a boat or lookedthe other way or said, "No, I haven't
seen anybody," while absolutely anddefinitely having seen somebody and,
hear me say this, I do not wanna turnthis into one of those stories where
white people get centered as the heroes.
That happens a lot with the UndergroundRailroad, but not on my watch.
Folks love to tell stories likefreedom was something handed down

(39:26):
by nice white abolitionists withclean aprons and good intentions.
But the heart of the story is theenslaved Black people choosing freedom
for themselves, choosing danger overbondage, choosing the unknown over the
known horror, choosing to run, to walk,to hide, to swim, to climb, to keep going.
And that's the story.
That, that the helpers mattered.
Uh, Lord, they mattered.

(39:47):
But freedom seekers were not just beingcarried along, they were making impossible
choices in a world that punished themfor wanting to own their own bodies.
And that is why the UndergroundRailroad belongs in Appalachian history.
Like everything else, it's complicated.
It's not because Appalachiawas perfect, because it wasn't.
Nor were the mountains innocent.
Not every cabin was a safe house, andevery river crossing ended in freedom.

(40:09):
No, It happened because thisregion was part of the struggle.
The same ridges and rivers people nowtalk about beauty were part of the escape,
the fear, the survival, the resistance.
So when you hear UndergroundRailroad, Picture someone
cold, hungry, still moving.
A house where people inside know thathelping them could cost everything.
Picture Appalachia not as abackdrop, but a place where history

(40:30):
ran through the woods, across thewater, and up the mountain roads.
And if you were taught that Appalachianhistory is only coal mines, front porches,
and old time music, well, bless yourheart, somebody left a whole lot out.
Do yourself a favor andresearch this f- further.
There are lots of stories to be told.
And remember sometimes that the mostAppalachian thing a person can do is look
at an unjust law, shut the door behindsomebody who needs shelter, and say, "I

(40:54):
don't know what you're talking about."

Dash (40:56):
Wow.
Very informative one

Beck (40:58):
Y- I learned a lot about the Underground Railroad when I was doing
my my thesis research because it w-w- Portsmouth was definitely on the
Ohio-Kentucky, you know, border there.
Like the, the guy that wrotethe 13th Amendment, the one
that abolished slavery,right, grew up in Portsmouth.
He, he saw people being s- stolen intothe slave trade on the river where he

(41:19):
worked with his dad, which formed hishis politics for generations to come.
He became Lincoln's right-hand man.
He ran for mayor and lost, andthat's when he went to Washington and
became the influencer that he became.
We don't even have a, a road namedafter that guy, which is insane to me.
Yeah.
But, like, the Scioto River goes allthe way up to Columbus, and then it

(41:40):
continues all the way up to Detroit.
So if you got to Portsmouth, likea lot of people talk about going to
Cincinnati and going up to Detroit thatway, but if you were on the river, you
could go literally from South Shore,Kentucky across the river there, go
to the creek at Scioto, and go all theway up through Lucasville up through
Piketon, Waverly, to Chillicothe,to Columbus, and you could run to
Detroit from there, and it was a clear,straight line to freedom on the water.

(42:03):
But we don't talk about that atall where I'm from, which is a Damn
shame

Dash (42:08):
Well, There's a great episode of the podcast Uncivil.
Have you heard that?

Beck (42:13):
I haven't

Dash (42:14):
Y- I fucking love that podcast.
I'm gonna send you a link to it.
You would…
You're gonna
love it.
It's,

Beck (42:20):
Okay

Dash (42:21):
It's this historian, he was pro- professor at Clemson,
and he's talking about…
He selects under recognized, moments,kinda like what we do with the Noun
of Appalachian Interest, right, but,like, more serious, about the, the
time period around the Civil War.
but he did an episode on the CombaheeRiver raid where you know, Harriet

(42:44):
Tubman, It's so badass, and I'm notgonna do it justice, but basically
she spent a, 24 going back andforth bringing hordes of slaves from
this plantation that was across the
river.
was, she led an expedition of 150
of 'em, and the 2nd SouthCarolina Infantry, these, f- like,

(43:06):
people had already been freed
by the Emancipation Proclamation and
joined the Union Army.
But, like, this raid is
so badass because theyjust, like, she didn't stop,
and she got hundreds of them.
if it says how
many.
300 men just in one evening on June 1st,
1863, 300

Beck (43:26):
I learned a lot about Harriet Tubman when I read a couple of
months ago, um, Harriet Tubman Livein Concert by Bob the Drag Queen.
Um, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it'sa wild story, but, you actually
learn a lot of actual HarrietTubman history when you read it.
I gave it four out of five stars.
I would recommend, you know.
That's a, that's a good one to, to read

Dash (43:46):
I'm writing it down this time because I didn't last time you said it

Beck (43:49):
It sounds so funny.
Harriet Tubman Live in Concert.

Dash (43:52):
very Bob.
Fucking love

Beck (43:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Hello, this is editing dash cutting in here
with a technical announcement.
So we lost, um, the rest of this,these recordings to internet demons.
So you're about to hear us, um,spin the wheel and come up with our
assignment for next week, and then.

(44:17):
the episode's gonna transitionto our very first episode.
Not the whole thing, but bits of it.
And I thought we could, uh,celebrate one year by looking at
whether we've improved or not.
So you be the judge.

Dash (44:31):
All right, so we should spin the wheel and find out what kind of the
topic of what we're gonna talk aboutnext week . wow, this is a good one.
I'm excited for this.
We got joke thief.

Beck (44:43):
Ooh

Dash (44:43):
So a joke that makes you laugh or a comedy set that you think about a lot.
I'm always replaying some ofmy favorite ones in my head.

Beck (44:51):
Yehaw

Dash (44:51):
just gonna maybe, like, think of a few and jot them down throughout
the week, and then try to tell them.
It's kinda tricky tellingsomebody else's joke, but, you

Beck (45:01):
Yehaw

Dash (45:02):
Can say what you think is funny about it or whatever

Beck (45:05):
I've got like 10 different ideas already.

Dash (45:07):
Yeah, me too.
I got kind of a redneck podcast set up.
To be honest.
I've got like some lampsclipped to the side.
Of the table, and I don't have astand for the mic, so it's just like
sitting on the desk in front of me.

Beck (45:27):
I've got a table from mom's house that I use as my everyday table.
I keep all my shit on itand I just spread out.
I have my bookcase here.
I have a whole lighting set up, butwe don't need to worry about that.

Dash (45:38):
Cool.
Yeah.
I don't have anything, like all mybooks are in the floor behind me here.

Beck (45:42):
Most of my books are still in storage 'cause we knew we were
only gonna be here for a year, sowe really didn't unpack that much.

Dash (45:48):
Is that some sort of, because I'm, no matter how long I'm gonna stay
somewhere, I don't unpack, , I don'tknow if that's some homeless fear
that like this trauma of , I'm alwaysafraid that I'm gonna lose my house

Beck (46:01):
right.

Dash (46:02):
But I still live like that.
I guess

Beck (46:03):
I worry about being able to feed us.
That's my big worry.
. And having things like we havemore underwear than God should give
because you know, that's just stuffyou didn't have when we were kids.

Dash (46:14):
You know how many pairs of shoes I've got?

Beck (46:16):
Yeah.

Dash (46:17):
Because we, when we were kids, we'd grow out of them.
Like I, I grew like a weed and wegot all our shoes at the yard sales.
And , there's like one brief windowa time where whatever pair you have
fits you right, and then that goesby pretty fast or they wear out.
So now I just like hoard shoes.

Beck (46:33):
My mom would take me shopping.
Um, we'd go to Columbus 'causeit was the closest big city.
so we would go to the JC Penney outlet.
And, on the way there, we would stopat a video poker machine and mom
would play for a couple of hours.
And then we'd go to JC Penney.
And then on the way back we'd stop at thehorse track and she would play the horses.
Yeah, so gambling was a big part.
There were many times we had no moneyand my dad would send my mom to Bingo.

(46:56):
Yeah.
And she'd come home with a couplehundred dollars, you know, it's

Dash (46:58):
an in

Beck (46:59):
investment.
Yeah, it was.
They played the lotterylike it was their 401k.

Dash (47:04):
I almost thought about playing the lottery the other day.
I've never had thatimpulse once in my life.

Beck (47:07):
Big go pretty regularly.
Um, that just starteda couple of months ago.
it just makes me feel close to mom.

Dash (47:13):
Yeah.
The further away I live, the moreI'm like noticing the things I miss.
So they don't have pawn shops here.
I've never lived anywhere thatdoesn't have poverty before.
And so I can't function here becauseall of the things that we built to make
up for the stuff that wasn't available.
Right.
Those micro economies,nobody trades for shit.
Here.
If people need to get rid ofsomething, they try to sell it to you.

Beck (47:33):
Yeah, and

Dash (47:33):
it's like, okay, like they will try to squeeze five
bucks out of a piece of garbage.

Beck (47:37):
I just had to deal with a bunch of redneck men selling all my dad's stuff.
So that was, yeah, that was a lot of fun.
Negotiating prices on shitwith them on like boats and tow
trucks and all kinds of shit.

Dash (47:49):
But like I need shit.
And I'm trying to ask folks,like, where do you get your tools?
You telling me just go to ACE Hardwareand pay full price for new shit?

Beck (47:56):
Right.

Dash (47:56):
I need a pawn shop that I can walk into and get a $5 20-year-old
black decker that I can abuseuntil it flies apart in my hands.
And they don't do that here.
But

Beck (48:06):
are they, are they illegal or they just don't have 'em?
'cause they don't have that kind of issue.

Dash (48:11):
Nobody's hungry.
Nobody worries about losing their house.
It is bizarre.
Wow.
And thing.
And it's not like stuff ischeaper and it's not like anybody
makes a shit load of money.
You know what it is?
Is they have, they havesocialized state backed healthcare

Beck (48:26):
safety nets,

Dash (48:27):
safety nets, right back home.
Everybody goes broke on healthcareuntil they die of whatever.
The last thing theycouldn't afford was here.
Man, I'm spoiled.
It's just the shit you needfalls from the heavens here and.
It's so, like, I arranged my,my problem solving skills,
they just don't apply here.
So it's, it's weird to get used to, butgrowing up, you know, like there was a

(48:49):
Walmart in Kentucky, in Tennessee andthere still is not, there still ain't
nothing where I grew up, but mom and dad,you know, they both worked multiple jobs.
And so, and then like once, once a monthwe went grocery shopping for five people
and three rapidly growing fucking.
Corn pone, redneck children.
I remember like the first of the month,we'd get our food stamps and they'd load

(49:12):
us all up into my dad's van, big Bertha,which was this cargo van, and we would
drive it up to Kentucky and spend hours.
Each of us would get our own shoppingcart and fill it with everything.
We each had a list.
We had to get.
I loads grocery shopping.
To this day, I won't do it.

Beck (49:28):
I won't either.

Dash (49:29):
It sucks.
And then you

Beck (49:30):
gotta do, I'll only do pickup.

Dash (49:32):
Yeah, you do.
And then we get home and you gottafucking load it all in a trailer
that the five of you barely fit in.

Beck (49:37):
Yeah.

Dash (49:38):
Much less the month supply of shit you just bought.
And then you gotta make it last a month.
I mean, just our whole lives.
Revolved around the logisticsof procuring food and resources.
And now it's even, you would think thatI would feel good that it's easier now,
but I don't know what to do with myself.
I don't know how to function.

Beck (49:56):
Yeah, no, I get it.
I wanna give all my money away.
I like find myself donating to likedifferent causes and pet shelters and
you know, I have like $10 to spare andI'm like, who could I give this to?
And I, I don't think people thatgrew up with money have that
same kind of, you know, urge.

Dash (50:14):
No.
And like, you know, if you need todownsize or something, like there's this,
listserv that everybody at the universityuses, even retired people are on it.
And if they need to get rid ofsomething, they'll send a message out
and they'll be like, I'm selling this, orwhatever, and it'll be some horse shit.
But it's still like, you, you can't,if I need something, I'm, I'm, I'm not
gonna sit around and wait until somebodyhappens to send it through this listserv.

(50:34):
Right?
And so for them, that's a luxury.
They're like, oh, interesting.
I always wanted one of those.
And for me, I'm like,where do I get a $5 drill?
They do have those here.
They have garage sales here.
They've been having 'em lately, soI've picked up some stuff there.
It's mostly the people that have 'em isthe old folks who are going into homes,
so I've gotten all my furniture that way.

(50:54):
What's today's topic, Becky?

Beck (50:56):
The first thing that popped into my mind was the story that my grandpa
told me about running moonshine.

Dash (51:00):
We'd going straight to Pappy stories.

Beck (51:02):
Yeah.
The first thing that popped into my mind,because he brought him up, my grandfather,
my papa, he was such a character.
He was one of the kindestmen I have ever known.
It was my adopted grandfather.
He told me a story one time when he,he was born in the twenties, so in the
thirties he was, you know, around ateenager, when there was prohibition
and all that kind of stuff going on, andthey were making moonshine and one of
the stills up on the hill and he said itwas, it was at night and he went running

(51:26):
'cause he was trying to tell 'em allthat the revenues were coming right.
So he ran and the cop finally caughthim and he said that he was in sitting
in the cop car and he was just shaking.
And the cop was like, what'sthe matter with you boy?
And he is like, I'm cold.
And the cop was like,it's the middle of July.

Dash (51:39):
Nothing to see here.
Did you have bootleggerswhere you grew up?

Beck (51:42):
Did I have what?

Dash (51:43):
Bootleggers.

Beck (51:44):
Oh yeah.

Dash (51:45):
Was it a dry county?

Beck (51:46):
No, but the township that I was in was dry.
You had to go across the river to get, youhad to go into Lucasville to get liquor.

Dash (51:53):
Did they have one of those systems like you, you'd drive up
and like flick your lights and

Beck (51:57):
I never bought ev All of the moonshine that I have had has
been given to me, without asking.
'cause I'm not a big drinker.
Right.

Dash (52:04):
Yeah.

Beck (52:04):
There was a lot of alcoholism in my family, so I'm not a big drinker,
but all of the moonshine that I havebeen given has been basically against
my will when I first moved to West.
I think I gave you a, a pint ofthe apple pie moonshine, didn't I?

Dash (52:17):
Yeah.

Beck (52:18):
Yeah, it was delicious.
That was from one of my cousins.
I still know people whoare making moonshine.
That's, it's been going on.
It's never been nothappening up that hill.

Dash (52:25):
My aunt makes it, well, she did.
Last time I talked to her.
We had bootleggers for like,that's where you had to get beer.
And so when we were in high school, wewould drive up to the bootleggers and
like there was a whole complicated systemwith ATVs going up the hill and stuff.

Beck (52:38):
Well, you could get liquor and stuff in Portsmouth.
The state liquor store was there soyou could get anything like that.
You could get beer in Lucasville, on theother side of the river, but on my, on the
north, so there's the valley side of theriver and the northwest side of the river.
I went to school on the valleyside of the river, but lived on
the northwest side of the river.
And over in Valley, you could getbeer and stuff like that, but over

(52:58):
in Morgan Township, they It was dry.

Dash (53:00):
Yeah, it was dry for.
All the counties around.
So it was like the whole Tri-County area.
And like you could go down to Tennessee,people would go down to Geico to get
beer, but you couldn't get liquor there.
You couldn't get anything harderthan malt liquor down in, Jellico.

Beck (53:15):
Yeah, he was just moonshine around me and a lot of those moonshiners
moved into weed in the later years.
There's a of weed up big run.

Dash (53:23):
The entrepreneurial spirit.

Beck (53:25):
Yeah.
Well, there's not a, there's not astitch of flat land all the way up that
holler, so they grow it on the side ofthe hill and do all that kind of stuffed.
Yeah, there, it's big run is seven mileslong and there's a lot that happens on it.
If you go all the wayout, fa all the way out.
big run.
On the other side of it, there'sa family dollar out there because
there are family dollars and dollargenerals everywhere out there.

Dash (53:46):
Like a family dollar or just the Dollar Store family.
I think they're all thesame company anyway.

Beck (53:51):
Holy

Dash (53:51):
and waffle House basically holds Central Appalachia together.

Beck (53:55):
There's no Waffle House in Soda County here, anywhere near

Dash (53:58):
there actually wasn't where I grew up.
Well, there wasn't restaurants,there wasn't stores.
I mean,

Beck (54:02):
just got a Taco Bell, like the day we moved out, they opened their
doors for business and before thatall we had was a Wendy's and that was
still big, pretty fancy for Lucasville.

Dash (54:11):
There was a Kentucky Fried chicken.
What was like your family's indulgent,like not, I mean like the kind, we ate

Beck (54:18):
so much fast food.

Dash (54:19):
Like were y'all on fast food omnivores or was there one in particular?

Beck (54:23):
So mom and my mom and dad both worked a lot and Giovanni's Pizza,
you've heard me talk about that a lot.

Dash (54:28):
Yeah, right.

Beck (54:29):
that was a big one.
And then there was this place calledJim Dandy, where you could get
a big mo and a Coke for 99 centsand we'd have 'em deliver like 20
big mos and Cokes to our house.
Mom, my mom grew up fairly poor andher mom always bought, I don't know
what the equivalent of generic wasback in the fifties and sixties.

Dash (54:47):
Store brand.

Beck (54:48):
Yeah.
My mom refused to buy the storebrand of anything She bought
name, brand, everything, evenwhen we couldn't afford it.

Dash (54:54):
Where I lived, there wasn't fast food and, um, it was a, it was
like a food desert in every way.
There wasn't a.
A grocery store or a fast food, butwe could drive into Kentucky and
get something in my trailer park.
There was a competition like youwere, you were high dollar if you
could get off of help, like youwere king of the trailer park if you
were not on assistance that month.

Beck (55:14):
Yeah.
I felt pretty proud when I wasable to call the welfare office
and tell 'em to turn mine off.

Dash (55:17):
Yeah.
I don't know it's a little bit ofthat bootstrap thing, but there's
also just nothing wrong with feelinglike you've accomplished something.

Beck (55:23):
Yeah.
I didn't until I got thisjob being an adjunct.
You have to be on welfare.
Yeah.
You have to be on Medicaid.
I take 16 different medications, dude.
Mm-hmm.
My insulin alone is like 90bucks, you know, and I, I just
don't have that to shell out allthe time, times 16, you know?
And.
It's a lot, but yeah, I totally get it.
Having insurance, and I was veryproud to, I don't think we were

(55:45):
on welfare when I was a kid.
We didn't have insurance, butit wasn't required back then.
I had insurance throughmy biological father.
He was an iron.
Wow.
He was a union iron worker.

Dash (55:54):
We didn't have a doctor.
There was a place we would drive to downthe holler called Windham Sham, that it
was a, I believe he was a physician'sassistant and he had somebody's pad.
We never saw whoever'sname was on the pad.
Whoever this doctor was,but he was pretty good.
Like he could, you know, if we were sick,we could go down there and there was some

(56:15):
people in there who could draw blood andstuff, but like, you know, we didn't die.

Beck (56:18):
Lucasville was one of those small towns that had a pharmacy that your
papapa could go in and come out withantibiotics, you know, for the dog.
They would just say they were for the dog,but you could get whatever you needed.
Lucasville was one of those small towns.
My grandma won the, thecountywide Christmas decorating
contest a couple of times.
When we were moving, when we weregoing through all the stuff I found
they copied, they did a xerox copyof the check that she got one time.

(56:40):
So I got to see that where she,it was from the radio station,
they sponsored the contest.
It was cool.

Dash (56:46):
Well, we called this show Queernecks.
I mean, I, I just sort of said thatas a, I'm a fan of a Port Manto.
It's just sort of partof my brand of humor.
but you know, I.
Like people don't leave whereI'm from, but people don't leave.
Geico, me and my, my siblingsand my cousins we're the first
generation of people who left

Beck (57:04):
mine.
You either get out youngor you stay there forever.
There's

Dash (57:07):
nowhere in

Beck (57:08):
between.
Yeah.

Dash (57:08):
Yeah.
And so I never meet other peoplelike me in general, but if I
do, on the rare occasion that Ido, they did not grow up queer.
Where did people work?
Like where was the big employer

Beck (57:19):
at the hospital?
The prison, there isn'ta lot of factory works.
There was a big shoelace factory,but it's down to like 20 employees.

Dash (57:26):
That was like, that was like industry, like y'all had

Beck (57:29):
stuff.
Steel mill.
Steel mills.

Dash (57:31):
Wow.

Beck (57:31):
There's still steel mills, still steel mills there.
Now we're, we're right on the cuspof coal too, like an hour from us.
There's coal miners everywhere, butthey, that's not something that has
extended down into southern Ohio yet.
I don't know if it's just notthere, but in West Virginia you
can, there's, you know, you know,there's all kinds of coal there.

Dash (57:48):
Yeah.
That's the only work we,that Geico had was the mine.

Beck (57:51):
Yeah,

Dash (57:52):
so that's what my dad did for the longest time.

Beck (57:55):
A lot of truck drivers, that kind of thing.

Dash (57:56):
My Uncle Steve became one later, but that's only because my
dad's parents were actually kindof rich 'cause they owned the mine.
'cause you had to havemoney to be a truck driver.
But yeah, dad worked in themine for a long time and
then he just joined the Army.
And then after he come out of the army.
Was in the National Guard for awhile and then he went to work
for the railroad as a brakeman.

Beck (58:15):
That's another big one.
I know a lot of peoplethat work for the railroad.
A lot of manual labor kind of stuff.

Dash (58:20):
Oh yeah.
That's the only, yeah.

Beck (58:22):
And if you go down there now, I mean, you can work at the hospital.
You're lucky if you can get ajob at the university, but it's
so small, you know what I mean?
That they need adjuncts likecrazy because they're paying like
$125 a week, a month per class.
It's ridiculous how lowthey pay their adjuncts.
I was teaching three classes and makinglike four 50 a month and that was it.
Grading English and that kind of thing.

(58:43):
Anyway, there's the hospital.
There's a lot of fast food.
There's more pizza placesthan anything in there.
Do you know who Jamie Oliver is that chef?
he came into Huntington.
Huntington.
I remember Virginia.

Dash (58:54):
I remember that.

Beck (58:55):
Yeah.
That, that's our.
That's, you know what I mean?
That's, that's the kindof place that I'm from.

Dash (59:00):
Mine was one of the skinniest.

Beck (59:01):
Yeah, mine's one of the fattest.
But there's more fastfood and there's, yeah.
That kind of thing.

Dash (59:06):
So like you didn't grow up eating, I guess probably
like hill people food then if

Beck (59:11):
you ate.
I didn't eat a lot of vegetables.
My sister and I have both lamented that wenever knew what a fresh peach tastes like,
and now I'm almost too afraid to try it.

Dash (59:18):
Yeah, I mean, anything we couldn't grow just came in a can because you
buy groceries once a month, you can't,you're not buying anything fresh.
I thought asparagus was disgusting untilI realized that I had only ever eaten that
can kind, that turns into mucus and soI had fresh asparagus once as an adult.
I was in my twenties and I was like,this is ain't, this ain't the same shit.

Beck (59:37):
Yeah.

Dash (59:37):
What

Beck (59:38):
is this?
I, well, I had, I had, I had Appalachiangrandmothers, so I got a lot of
fresh bread and I got, you know, alot of roasts and fried chicken and
biscuits and gravy and fried potatoes.

Dash (59:49):
Did you ever eat poke salad?

Beck (59:50):
My grandpa would, would fry up anything that he caught in his traps.
he kept an acre garden up on thehill, on the land that I just sold.
he'd have traps out.
So you'd go to his house and he'd have, agroundhog called fried up sitting there.

Dash (01:00:02):
Oh my God.

Beck (01:00:03):
Yeah.
Things like I, I.
I will not eat meat at arandom person's house ever.
because of my grandfather.
He tried to trick me into it.
I almost thought I almost took a bite onetime and it was like gopher or something.
It was ugh,

Dash (01:00:14):
no gopher's, good eating,

Beck (01:00:16):
no thank

Dash (01:00:16):
turtles.
You, yeah,

Beck (01:00:18):
no, thank you.

Dash (01:00:19):
I mean, there wasn't, people didn't really eat much meat, honestly.
I mean, it, there was, they ate a lot ofpork fat, a lot of, but they, you're not
gonna slaughter anything else becauseit's either working or producing milk.

Beck (01:00:30):
Right.

Dash (01:00:31):
So it's like occasionally somebody would slaughter a cow
that got too old or something.
We would have meat for fucking months.
It was amazing.
But we ate a lot of, a lot of this,the like recipes where I'm from
revolve around pig fat of somekind, bacon grease and a green.

Beck (01:00:48):
My mom ate this concoction.
She would put buttermilk in a cup anda green onion, the whole thing, and
pour bacon grease and put cornbreadin it and eat it with a spoon.

Dash (01:00:56):
Yep.
My dad still does that.

Beck (01:00:58):
Yeah, it was like one of her favorite things in the whole world.
Did

Dash (01:01:00):
she put sugar in it or, or pepper?

Beck (01:01:02):
Uh, pepper.

Dash (01:01:03):
Yeah.
My dad would put sugar in it.

Beck (01:01:05):
Have you ever had a bag of peanuts poured into a Pepsi?

Dash (01:01:08):
No.

Beck (01:01:08):
Oh, that was a big one of my dad's try it one of these days if you like.
Sweet.
Do you like sweet and salty together?

Dash (01:01:13):
Yeah, but I don't drink pop.

Beck (01:01:15):
Me neither, but it's a nice treat once in a while.

Dash (01:01:17):
Next time if

Beck (01:01:18):
I, the result of it makes it

Dash (01:01:18):
really

Beck (01:01:19):
alright,

Dash (01:01:19):
next time I'm in the company of both a bag of peanuts and a Pepsi.
I'll try.

Beck (01:01:23):
It's really good.
And I, because I quitsoda like 10 years ago.
Unless I'm eating Chipotle andthen I have to have a Mountain Dew.
That's the only

Dash (01:01:30):
sometimes all you, sometimes all you can think about is getting
a, getting a hold of a, of a Pepsi orsomething and I don't know what it is.
Like it seizes me.
Yeah, because we did grow up on, butmy dad worked for Coke for a while.
Actually, I forgot about that.
There's a coke plant up in Corbinand I still have the jacket he wore.

Beck (01:01:46):
We got a lot of stuff that fell off those trucks.
They drove.

Dash (01:01:49):
Yeah.

Beck (01:01:49):
Yeah.
One time I asked him, they got a caseof panting shampoo I'll never forget,
and I was like, where'd this come from?
Mark said, it fell off theback of the truck and I lit.
I literally believed him that it fell

Dash (01:01:59):
off.
You thought that's what it was?

Beck (01:02:00):
Yeah,

Dash (01:02:01):
I did.
Yeah.
The first time somebody told methat, I was like, well, is it broken?
Like does it work?
Is it okay?
That's the thing, like mostof our speech was euphemistic.

Beck (01:02:09):
Yeah.

Dash (01:02:09):
You just have to learn it as you go.

Beck (01:02:11):
Yeah.
You say poke salad.
A poke to me is a bag.

Dash (01:02:14):
Yeah.
Po Well, you're from, so that's,I don't like where I'm from.
People didn't say that, but I knowother places in like further East,
North Carolina, they say poke is a bag.
But we, I didn't, I didn'thear, I didn't hear that until,

Beck (01:02:27):
have you ever heard of Green Bell peppers being called mangoes?
Oh,

Dash (01:02:30):
that

Beck (01:02:31):
was big around, down there.
Yeah.
But basically anything that got pickled,they would call mangoes and so Nice.
You'd grow your bell peppers and you'dpickle 'em for the, for the winter.
But I, I didn't know what a mangowas until I was in high school.

Dash (01:02:42):
Oh man.
People must have thought,thought she was nuts.

Beck (01:02:45):
Yeah, I

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
learned.
'cause I

Beck (01:02:46):
Didn't join girl Scouts until I was in the seventh grade.
I was in girl Scouts like my freshmanyear and I think that's when we
had the, the fruit tasting party.
And so I tried to mangoand was totally blown away.

Dash (01:02:56):
Yeah.

Beck (01:02:57):
I was just taste

Dash (01:02:58):
nothing like a pickled pepper,

Beck (01:03:00):
nothing like nothing.
But we, yeah, we ate a lot of fast foodand my sister and I both have battled
our weight our whole lives, you know?
Yeah.
And I think that's part of it.
But my mom, like you said,they worked multiple jobs.
And my mom, she just, she was, she,she loved to take care of us and
things like that, but she worked a lot.
And so we would justorder pizza or mm-hmm.
Whatever.
It was just easier.
I still make her chili to this day.

Dash (01:03:21):
I make my dad's chili.

Beck (01:03:23):
Yeah.
Um,

Dash (01:03:24):
well, and, and you know, beginning

Beck (01:03:24):
was a big one.

Dash (01:03:25):
If, if there had been restaurants, I'm sure people where
I'm from would've done that too.
Yeah.
Because it would've been so much easier.
You know, my mom had, I remembereating, you know, she had a, a like,
five to 10 recipes that she could just.
Whip out like nothing, and we atethose on a loop for my entire childhood

Beck (01:03:43):
as part of my A-D-H-D-I have.
I didn't get diagnosed till I was 42,but I've had clear signs my entire
life, especially when I was little.
I would go through phases where I wouldonly eat one thing for months at a time.
When I was in doing my undergradfor the second time, I got on
a Wendy's chili, kicked and ateit like every day for a year.

Dash (01:04:02):
I didn't know that was an A-D-H-A-D.

Beck (01:04:04):
Yeah, that's an ADHD thing.

Dash (01:04:05):
I got diagnosed this year.
And I do that

Beck (01:04:08):
when I sauce.
It's a bean and meat, it's like a paste.
it's a hot dog sauce that, youknow, you put it on top of hot dogs.
I don't like hot dogs, but Ilike hot dog sauce on bread.
And that was all I would eat wasthis hot dog sauce on bread and like,
they would buy it for me by the case.
And when my dad was cleaning out mygrandparents' house the first time,
he found a whole case of that stillin their closet from the eighties.

Dash (01:04:31):
I remember finding all this, like the food from the
company store, Because they neverofficially outlawed company towns.
And so Angelica was a companytown until my parents were born.
And so you can still find companycredit, like the little, plug
nickels and stuff around there.
The food they had at the company storewas like government cheese, potted
meat, gigantic sacks of evaporatedor dried rice and potatoes and stuff.

(01:04:54):
And so you'd find it decades laterand it would still, like, I would
almost be like, is this edible?
This might still be good.
This stuff is made not to expirebecause it's basically military surplus.

Beck (01:05:04):
Right.
I gotta say, government cheesemakes a killer grilled cheese.

Dash (01:05:08):
I still love that shit.

Beck (01:05:10):
Yeah.

Dash (01:05:10):
I can't, I will tear up a ese sausage.

Beck (01:05:12):
Yeah.
I can't do mystery meat.
I don't like hot dogs.
I don't like the, those little sausages.
I don't like bo.
I love it.
I can't do that.

Dash (01:05:19):
Oh yeah.

Beck (01:05:20):
I don't like most lunch

Dash (01:05:21):
meats.
Fried bologna.
Fried bologna.
Well, I love

Beck (01:05:23):
that.

Dash (01:05:23):
I was, the oldest too, so I got cooking duties before the others.
And so when you're like nine and you'retrying to figure out how to feed siblings,
and I like couldn't do anything much.
I could boil water and Icould make a grilled cheese.
We just started trying to find.
New things to stick in theskillet or new things to boil.
And so that's how I invented Ramenabomination because we would take these,

(01:05:45):
those just machen ramen packs and thentry to find shit in the fridge that was
about to go bad, like celery or whatever,and cut it up and throw it in there.
I, I still made thatwhen I was in college.
I just started putting, I putpeanut butter in there one time and
it kind of tasted like pad Thai.

Beck (01:05:59):
Yeah.
Chili with peanut butter sandwich isone of my favorite things in this world.

Dash (01:06:02):
We didn't do that.
I, I learned about that from you.

Beck (01:06:05):
Yeah.
Have you tried it yet?

Dash (01:06:07):
No, I live alone and don't cook anymore.
My meals are, is a rotation ofcereal and peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches because I don't knowhow to exist as a singular unit.
I don't know how to, if I don't havepeople whose wellbeing is tied up
with my own wellbeing, I just sayfuck it all and don't do anything.

Beck (01:06:25):
Yeah, Shannon's like that.

Dash (01:06:26):
And I think that I know people who are from like middle class backgrounds
and from the Midwest, and they're notlike that, they're not built that way.
they're able to be independent in regardsto domestic things or just having desires.
I don't have desires if I don'thave work to do or somebody to take
care of or somebody to look after.
I don't know what to do with myself.
But that is some redneck trauma.

Beck (01:06:46):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I was, I was the youngest, so myexperience was a little different
and my brother and I had someproblems and my mom separated us.
So when we weren't in school for thesummers and stuff, after I turned like
eight, I would go stay at my grandma's.
she was a nanny for an MD and a PhD.
They had three kids and they livedlike right behind where she lived.
so I would go to grandma's and I would bethere from the time she would go to work

(01:07:10):
before the girls got up and come backhome after the girls had been bathed.
The night, right?
Yeah.
So she was gone all day, every day shewould get home in time to watch Jeopardy.
So I would be there in her apartmentby myself for hours, upon hours and
they would leave me money 'causeI was too young to cook and I was
able to order my own Giovanni's, myown wow dos and things like that.

Dash (01:07:30):
That's a totally different kind of self-sufficiency.

Beck (01:07:32):
I'm trying to, thinking back on it, they were really letting, like
what would've happened if one of thosedelivery men would've figured out I
was eight years old and by myself.
Yeah,

Dash (01:07:41):
yeah.
I didn't know, I didn't know how to orderlike food over the phone until college.

Beck (01:07:46):
Yeah.
Oh no.
I learned that one early.

Dash (01:07:47):
Yeah.

Beck (01:07:48):
And I was always the one that got sent in to go pick it up too.
'cause I was the youngest.

Dash (01:07:52):
What's something that you, what's something you learned that
you didn't know when you wentaway to live with normal people?

Beck (01:07:57):
That Catholics existed.
My first, my college roommate wasa Catholic, and all my friends were
Catholics, and I was like, what the hell?
I thought everybody waseither Baptist or There's

Dash (01:08:05):
different kinds of Christians.

Beck (01:08:07):
Yeah.
So many little things.

Dash (01:08:09):
Yeah.
I keep like every, I remember themsometimes, like I never, I didn't see
a crosswalk until I went to college.

Beck (01:08:15):
People have family photos where people are not smoking in them

Dash (01:08:18):
or people don't s or you don't let people smoke in the house.
Midwesterners, they don't let you smokein their house because it's their house
and they don't smoke and it's rude.
And I'm like.
Wow, this is totally different.
you let company do whatever.

Beck (01:08:29):
Yeah.
You feed 'em your last egg.
Yeah, yeah.
You do, you do.
For family and stuff, I kind of likeit when people come over and smoke,
because it makes me think of mom,the cell is, the smell of cigarettes
makes me think of my mom and dad.

Dash (01:08:42):
So my papa, my mom's dad worked in the mines like his
whole life and a company town.
They give folks the leftovermaterials from as they excavate the
mines, like the beams and things.
If you collect those, you canbuild additions onto your house.
he even put a bathroom in later.
They had running water after a time.
They still had a a well though,but it was still like, and a lot
of hillbilly houses are like this.

(01:09:03):
There's a main room that's right inthe middle and the potbelly stove
or whatever it is, will be in there.
And that's where everybody sits, like allthe cousins, all the family or whatever.
And then when it's time for bed, theyall go off to the separate parts that
have been built out on the house.
My earliest sense memories is sittingaround when I was a baby, kind of
dozing off 'cause it was getting late,listening to the grown people, you

(01:09:23):
know, their voices kind of rumblingand talking about shit I didn't
understand and smoking cigarettesand it was like being in the womb.

Beck (01:09:30):
Mm-hmm.

Dash (01:09:30):
That's like the safest I've ever felt.

Beck (01:09:32):
That's how I feel about going to bingo and walking
outside and smelling, you know?
it's such a visceral throwback forme, the smell, because like on, on
halftime at Bingo, you walk outside,and everybody's out there smoking and
you just walk into a cloud and the smellof, of whiskey, the smell of whiskey.
And that reminds me of my mom.
It makes me almost throw up when Ismelled, I can't handle smelling alcohol.

Dash (01:09:55):
My family wasn't drinkers.
I mean, there just wasn't.
Like, you kind of had to choose, butI mean, if you, if you were somebody
who, who had the resources to, to getalcohol, then you would do that or
whatever, but it was really frownedupon, like there was a, a big stigma
associated with alcohol when I grew up.

Beck (01:10:09):
My mom would talk, shit about her grandfather who was the
town drunk 'cause she called him.
And how they found him.
And they had to what'sthe word I'm looking for?
Juice him, um, at the end.
And she would talk allkinds of shit about that.
And that's exactly what happened to her.
You know, and

Dash (01:10:23):
these things repeat themselves.

Beck (01:10:25):
Yeah.
And vices.
Vices are main killers in my family.
I can't tell you how many peoplehave died from COPD and lung cancer.
And, you know, my mom died straight upfrom alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver.
My brother died of a drugoverdose, and he was a full-fledged
alcoholic his whole life.
he was an alcoholic by thetime he was a teenager.
there was No,

Dash (01:10:46):
I was too,

Beck (01:10:47):
yeah, good for you that you made it out.
he did not make it out.

Dash (01:10:51):
I, don't know what sexy, gay angel descended on me to, fix that or
whatever, but I'm one of the lucky ones.
I just woke up one day and it was gone.
It didn't happen for my brother.
I was telling somebody this the other dayabout like how, you know, our, the people
we go to high school with are, are dead.
Wow.
Of opioids, the war,and doing redneck shit.

(01:11:13):
My mom says they diedof, Hey guys, watch this.
Just like you feel the time, right?

Beck (01:11:18):
Mm-hmm.

Dash (01:11:18):
There's, there's no work.
It's not that there's nothing to do, it'sthat there's nothing to aspire for, and
so you just do increasingly dumber shit.
I mean, I knew somebody who diedfrom falling off a bridge that they
were only on because of a dare.

Beck (01:11:31):
Wow.

Dash (01:11:31):
I knew somebody,

Beck (01:11:32):
I have a cousin that fell off a trellis.

Dash (01:11:34):
Yeah, that's what it was

Beck (01:11:34):
as a teenager.

Dash (01:11:35):
Yeah.

Beck (01:11:36):
They were bored out walking.

Dash (01:11:37):
Yeah, exactly.
And sometimes it's just thatnobody is ever around or nobody
thinks to say what the fuck?
And, and I don't know where that learninggets derailed, but it is systemic.
It's hopelessness.
I think it's lack of self-respect.

Beck (01:11:51):
It's the cycle of poverty, man.

Dash (01:11:52):
The cycle of poverty.
Yeah.

Beck (01:11:54):
It's, you know, 'cause we grew up and we see our parents struggling.
My mom would have been.
So happy if I had just married somerandom truck driver, lived up a holler,
had five kids, and had that life.
Yeah.
She would've been completelyproud of me and whatever.
She didn't understand what I did.
She didn't understand my going to school.
She didn't understand my being gay.

(01:12:15):
Mm-hmm.
Right.
I rose above my raising, you know,and she didn't understand that.

Dash (01:12:19):
Did it?
Did it sometimes feel like she wasa little, uncomfortable with that?

Beck (01:12:24):
Oh, yeah.

Dash (01:12:25):
Yeah.
My mom at several points of myprofessional career has given me the
don't get bubby raisin talk, and it'slike I feel this profound insecurity
or inferiority complex thing.

Beck (01:12:37):
My dad, when we got into a big fight about white privilege one night.
And, it was, I was still pretty new intothe whole field and I didn't have all
the words that I have now that I couldhave had a better conversation with him.
But he, he got to screamingand this was Mark.
And he said to me, you know, forsomebody that's getting a PhD,
you're not real smart, are you?
That like, took the breath outta mylungs, you know, because like your

(01:13:00):
parents are supposed to be the ones.
That are rooting for you.
Exactly, exactly.
My biological father, he called meprofessor and, and sent me gifts
and you know, just told me everytime I talked to him how proud
he was of me, my mom and Mark.
I think if I had quit with a master'sdegree, it would've been fine.

Dash (01:13:16):
Weirdly things between me and my, family in regards to
a lot of things, particularlypolitics got easier to navigate.
The more I distanced myself fromthem because of the transition,
it was transitioning, that it waslike drawing a line in the sand.
I was like, you either get to come withme on this, or you get to never have

(01:13:37):
any information about what I'm doing.
I'm not gonna cut you out, butI'm never gonna let you in again.

Beck (01:13:42):
Right.

Dash (01:13:42):
And each of them, even though I didn't have to say that explicitly,
they I believe understood me enough toknow that that was what was on the line.
And you don't fucking,my dad's a Republican.
He was.
Until recently, luckilyfucking hates Trump.

Beck (01:13:57):
My dad was, he was a Democrat for all intents and purposes, but
after he lost the bingo, he went backto truck driving and he was around a
lot of very uneducated redneck men,and they talked him into not getting
the COVID shot and things like that,and he ended up dying of COVID.

Dash (01:14:13):
Yeah.
It's so predatory this misinformationthis like the systemization of
all oppressions, duh, is it'spredatory, but it's still hard.
I think for people to see thevictims of that as human sometimes.
And I get that.
I struggle with it too sometimes.
I'm like, I, if you say one more fuckingword, you are gonna learn how red I am.

(01:14:34):
They cosplay, rednecks here.

Beck (01:14:35):
Yeah,

Dash (01:14:36):
it's weird.

Beck (01:14:36):
Well, everybody does.
It's, it's, you know, it's atrope, you know, missing teeth
and talking like this and

Dash (01:14:41):
No, I mean, they literally, like, these people think they're rednecks.

Beck (01:14:45):
Oh,

Dash (01:14:45):
they're, they think that they're small town America, conservative
hoorah, Trump, blah, blah, blah.
They drive big trucks.
They don't need, they dress up likethey're going to work, but they ain't.
It's really weird.
I don't know if you've seenthis in, I saw it a little bit.
There when we were in Ohio too, peoplefly the Confederate flag dressing up,
like wearing cloud hoppers and shit.
Kickers and Carhartt things, and it'slike, have you ever driven a tractor?

(01:15:08):
I feel like somebody, it makes me feelvery, like my culture is not your costume.

Beck (01:15:13):
Right.
and they're the ones that also areprocop because if, you know real
rednecks, they're like, fuck the police.

Dash (01:15:20):
No.
You know, if, uh,

Beck (01:15:21):
that's where NASCAR came from, you know?
Right.

Dash (01:15:23):
Literally running from the police.
Yeah.
they're just so like humpingthe legs of any authority
figure they can find looking.
It's like you.
Are missing the point aboutwhat redneck is, right?
Redneck is somebody that isoppositionally defiant to anybody
who tries to tell 'em what to do.
Yeah, there's that overlapbetween maybe rednecks are just

(01:15:44):
forgetting who they are now.
Maybe they're so defeated and so justfucking kicked down that Trump sounds
reasonable to them or something.
I don't know what that is, andI'm not gonna try to defend
any redneck support of Trump.
But the origin in the historyof redneck is a fucking union.
The town I lived in fought thewars, like the first wave of people

(01:16:05):
in the wars were from Jellico.
That was union organizing.
And that's where red, that'swhere the term redneck came from.
Yeah.
Right.
They wore the bandanas around their neckand, and it's like to, to be, to have
that kind of history and not understandwhat's so cool about that and rather
be falling all over people and wearing

Beck (01:16:22):
back to blue.

Dash (01:16:23):
We back to blue or whatever.

Beck (01:16:25):
Police lives matter.

Dash (01:16:26):
You fucking love cops so much.
Just go be one and shutthe fuck up about it.

Beck (01:16:30):
Right.

Dash (01:16:30):
Oh, they don't want you.
Is that what this is?
We're gonna get canceledon our first episode,

Beck (01:16:34):
apparently.

Dash (01:16:36):
Well, who's this episode sponsored by?

Beck (01:16:38):
Ancestry, apparently

Dash (01:16:39):
ancestry.com,
the, the Kentucky Lotto.

Beck (01:16:42):
See going when we, you say you would go from Tennessee up to Kentucky.
We would go from Ohio down to Kentucky.
Because cigarettes are cheaper.

Dash (01:16:50):
Yeah, they are.
They still are.

Beck (01:16:52):
If you cross the bridge from Portsmouth into Kentucky,
either direction you turn, there'sfive or six cigarette stores.
You can go to,

Dash (01:17:00):
that was actually my first, uh, my first hustle was selling
cigarettes to kids on the playground.

Beck (01:17:05):
Oh, wow.

Dash (01:17:06):
A quarter a piece.
We were on free lunch,so we never had money.
Almost all of Gelica was on free lunch,but you could buy little ice creams for
a quarter after lunch at the school.
And so David and Vanessa wanted them,and so I would steal cigarettes from mom.
Normally, I felt kind of bad about it,although I did know this one woman who
kept a deep freeze chest freezer full of.
Cartons of Marlboro Reds, andso I would take those and sell

(01:17:31):
cigarettes on the playground.
That's kind of how I started smoking.
I had to make them look cool.
I'm a good salesman.

Beck (01:17:37):
I saw you smoking a cigarette.
I thought you quit.

Dash (01:17:39):
I did quit and then I moved to this hell hole.

Beck (01:17:41):
Gotcha.
According to Facebook, it's been alittle over 10 years since I quit.

Dash (01:17:45):
I started some medication.
I'm trying to.
Take better care of myself.
I've gotta be a betterfriend to people and myself.
I was more mentally ill thannormal the past few months and
it got, it got kind of rough.
So I called a doctor and started somemedicine, but the medicine I'm on is
supposed to also help me quit smoking.
So I've set a goal.
I'm tapering off.

(01:18:05):
We'll see.
Shut up.
Can you hear her?

Beck (01:18:08):
Yes.

Dash (01:18:09):
Okay.
Yeah, she's featured on many.
I don't know why she does this.

Beck (01:18:12):
She just wants to be a part of it.

Dash (01:18:13):
She's a, she's a, a diva.

Beck (01:18:16):
I miss having cats.
Both of mine died.

Dash (01:18:18):
I know.
This is episode sponsored by Ziggy.
Oh, she just stuck hershitty paw in my mouth.

Beck (01:18:23):
Yum.
I've never met Ziggy.
Hello kitten.

Dash (01:18:26):
She did almost kill me recently.
She bit a hole through myhand and it, I got sepsis.

Beck (01:18:31):
Oh

Dash (01:18:31):
wow.
I had to have a fuck load of antibiotics.

Beck (01:18:33):
I had got bit by a cat one time.
It was a wild kitten andI had to go to the er.
I didn't have insurance at thetime, and so they made me come
back to the emergency room.
I had to come back every dayfor a week and I got an IV drip.
My hand turned like black.
It was disgusting.
I'm prone to accidents.
I've almost had my arm ripped off.
I, my leg almost fell offfrom going to the beach.
I've had some

Dash (01:18:53):
wild Yeah, you, you've had it rough.
Like I, that's another placewhere I really got off light.
Like all the redneck shit Idid, I have not been maimed
or, or as ill as I should be.

Beck (01:19:03):
Yeah.
I, I, I haven't been solucky I haven't been maimed.

Dash (01:19:07):
I think so.
Well, should we wrap this yarn up?

Beck (01:19:10):
Sounds good to me, friend.

Dash (01:19:11):
We don't know what topic's gonna be on next week.
Let's, let's guess.
Let's try to guess what we're gonnatalk about and then we'll be completely
fucking wrong because both of us ramble.
We're gonna talk about church.
Yeah.
Join us for church.
Oh, that's

Beck (01:19:21):
a rich one.

Dash (01:19:22):
Join us for church.
My stories about church willprobably surprise people.
I mean, there's the usual.

Beck (01:19:28):
I come from a long line of Pentecostals.
Like cast it out, demons and

Dash (01:19:31):
Oh yeah.

Beck (01:19:32):
And that kind of thing.

Dash (01:19:33):
Did you ever speak in tongues?

Beck (01:19:35):
Yeah, me.
I didn't, but my, I know I did.
My grandmother did.
So after my parents divorced, mydad went out of town to work and
whenever he would come back in town,I would stay with him like all weekend
and we'd stay at his mom's house.
And I remember waking up at like five inthe morning 'cause she would be shouting
her prayers in tongues in her bedroom.

Dash (01:19:52):
I mean, I did it on purpose.
I knew, I mean it was kind of faking,but also like it's the adrenaline.
And so like, it's like I, I wassavvy to what was happening, but
it was still kind of an experience.
It wasn't a spiritual one, butI was like, this is interesting.
I just, I got a lot of data from it'cause I was a little fucking weirdo
who didn't know how to have friends.
And so I just studied people all the time.

Beck (01:20:14):
I have a story I'll tell you next week about how, my, my Pentecostal
as ended up in the 1987 UnitedMethodist Church as Christmas play.
That was

Dash (01:20:23):
excellent.
Join us next week forspeaking in tongues the.
Church, Christmas play and,outhouses behind the church.

Beck (01:20:31):
Amen.

Dash (01:20:32):
All right, subscribe like wherever you get your podcasts
and we'll see you next time.
Say hi to mom and them.

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