April 30, 2025 • 31 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What it's that time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Berry Show is on the air. Good morning Michael Berry,
but no you cannot use my bathroom. Hello, good ever, Bunny.
(00:26):
This is mile Old Hamilton Astros win again and a
good morning to the TZAR.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Good morning, Michael Berry. It's seton Connery. But you had
a little radio show. Pity, I wash it and to
find it. Good morning, Michael Berry. I'm all jaked up
on Mountain Dew. This is the Thornton Finch wishing you
a good morning. Good morning, Michael Berry, God morning, Michael Berry.
(00:53):
Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Zar, Good morning, Michael,
Zay Sailor. Good morning at Asina, Good morning, Michael. Hello,
Hello are you there? Good morn you Michael Bear. How
you learned that? I read it tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Mone Good morning, Texas, listen to this. Good morning Texas
in your car. Good morning, Texas is.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
On his day. We're happy to be here to talk
about everything. Good morning, We're not wearing pants.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Good morning, Texes, Good morning Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good bring Texas.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Wake God. Let's be goddamn all right. I need something.
We got to crowdsource something here. Good morning, We got
a crowdsource something. I don't know the answer to this,
(02:06):
but if you can email me through the website Michael
Berryshow dot com, somebody out there will know this. Apparently
it's illegal to kill a seagull. I don't know if
that's a federal statute, so that would be across I
was talking to a friend of mine who said he
believes it's illegal to kill seagulls. I don't know if
that's in the state of Texas everywhere. I don't know.
I'm asking is that true. But the question is my
(02:34):
friend believes he heard somewhere that if you kill a seagull,
all the other seagulls will leave and not come back.
That's like a bad sign, bad juju. I don't know,
that's their self preservation. I don't know if that is true.
So somebody out there will know, will has seagull knowledge,
surprising seagull knowledge, And if you'll email me and I
(02:58):
will read that on the air, it would. It was
a long discussion about seagulls and why it came up,
But the reason was that my friend had read that
in the olden days, if you didn't want the seagulls
at your peer you'd take shovel and kill one of them,
leave it out there where the others could see, and
kind of a scarecrow effect, and the other seagulls would
(03:18):
go away, and then you wouldn't have seagulls again after that.
Don't know interested to know you ever eat seagull ramon? Yeah, okay,
that's your story, and you're sticking to it. You're waiting
for a joke. There's no joke. There's no joke. Hey,
you don't want to anyway. The meat's not any good.
Like the guy that asked, you're really going to eat
(03:41):
that endangered species? He said, yeah, what does it taste like?
All across between a whooping crane and the California condor,
those are other extinct species. That joke required the listener
to have some endangered species knowledge, and you clearly didn't.
We got rain coming today. For those of you who
(04:03):
are kind of easing into getting a little older, or
who have moved from the city, or you've moved down
here to the south and you're easing into getting older
and you kind of want to get to the point
where you're you're you you are more natural with it,
you wear it better, you know, like if you've moved
(04:23):
from the North or California down here and now you're
living out in Belleville, you know you'll need to learn
the little, the very natural flip of your fingers as
you drive past people on a country road. You don't
want to be you know, the forest gump wave when
he's you know, there on the pier. But you want
to be real natural about flicking your finger up as
(04:45):
a you know, as a greeting as as people go by.
It's little things like that you want to learn. The
other one is on a daylight today, and we can practice.
Somebody will say, uh, it's gonna rain today, and your
answer will always be, yeah, we sure needed it, We
sure needed it. I don't ever think my grandmother. I
(05:08):
don't think my grandmother ever heard the phrase it's going
to rain today and did not reply, we sure needed it,
as if we were going to, you know, put the
crops out. But she would sometimes if nobody else would
talk about the weather, she would bring it up. She
would do the call in response. So she'd say, this
is going to rain today. You maybe look outside, this
(05:31):
is going to rain today, And then she paused, of course,
we sure need it, because there was nobody else in
the trailer to do the call and response, so she'd
do it all. She'd do it all. One thing I
wanted to clarify, but because I got a lot of
emails on the matter, I mean, I don't care if
people think I'm friends with Lance mccollor or because or
I hate Lance Micouse. But apparently people did not understand
(05:51):
I didn't wrap that discussion up yesterday. There was no
point to my pickleball discussion of the Selarium pickleball place
they're doing in Midtown. And as I said, a friend
of mine, Andy Awaita, is part of that deal. I
I like Andy. I got no I got nothing bad
to say about Andy or Selarium or that place or
the concept. I was just remarking because it was on
(06:14):
my screen and I saw it. But what I was
trying to say about that is there's a lot of
pickleball joints that are popping up in their their pickleball clubs.
And my point, yes, I do play pickleball. I played
last night, I'm playing again tonight. I love it. But
that this hasn't this has nothing to do with pickleball.
This is the point that people keep missing again and
(06:36):
again and again. If you own a bar of any type,
I don't care what other activities you have there, you
are trying, you're competing with all the other bars to
get people to come to your house, to your place
and socialize and drink beer or drink drink and drink alcohol,
(06:58):
because there's a very, very health the margin on alcohol.
Like poor Paul Jacob over at Jacob's Barbecue, He's got
no alcohol, so he's got to make all his money
on food costs. That is very hard to do. And
and people won't sit and eat, you know, keep eating
for three hours and keep ordering more food with alcohol
they do, and and you can, you can get some
(07:19):
really good margins out of that. So the trick is,
and this is what the consumer, A lot of consumers
don't notice, is you're always looking for a way to
create an experience for people that they come there. But oh,
you're really trying to do is sell them alcohol. So
one year it's axe throwing. Remember ax throwing was a
big deal. Actually, fancy bowling alleys, you know, that was
(07:45):
the big What was the place that was a fansom
fancy bowling alley where the rapper got killed. It might
be defensive, driving because your regular bar is not your
ice house, eat and pulling people. It might be live music,
that's what we did. Uh, it might be you mean it.
But all of those are reasons. That's all I was
saying is that a lot of these pickleball joints are
popping up, and I'm going to pray we might be
(08:05):
hitting the saturation here.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Pretty solliber glass hood with air grabbing scoops.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
With the Michael Berry fucking hood Benssbill escaped from the
ordinary just a few years ago. I thought it was
the heart and so the hook. Chance mclin sings this
song in all of our events, and when he sings it,
he pronounces the word hook and the first time I
(08:31):
heard it it was kind of jarring. So that's weird,
the heart that brings you back. So I have no ideas.
See sitting in a bar with buddy mine the other
day and there was a guy a couple of seats
(08:51):
over and quietly under his breath, he was saying, Powell Bam, kaboom.
My buddy was getting madder and madder, and I said,
what's wrong? He said, them's fighting words. Boom f.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Bam.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The guy told me the other day that I have
a face like a boat. I didn't say anything. I
just gave him a stern look. There was a fellow
(09:49):
named Mike yesterday who called on the subject of Vietnam.
Was he a Vietnam veteran? Mike, my apologies. I kept
intending to get to you, and I had an interview
and I had something else. It was not my intention
to not put you on the air, if you will
call us or put you right on, because I actually
(10:10):
did want to get your perspective. I wanted to get
at least one Vietnam veterans perspective. Yesterday, as I mentioned,
yesterday was fifty years since the fall of Saigon. And
if you ever see that evacuation, there's a documentary on it,
and man it is powerful. I mean the they capture
(10:31):
one to one million of the intensity that people felt
as the walls were closing in and they're trying to
get They're up on the top of the building, they're
trying to get them out of there, and the Vietnamese
all won out. And it reminds you of that scene
in Afghanistan where people were hanging on to the bottom
of the of the of the plane to get out
(10:52):
of there. Everybody's trying to get out. And I am
mindful as much as I can be at my age,
not having been in war, but having read, watched, talked
to so many things related to Vietnam. It was on
this day in nineteen seventy five that the Fall of
(11:15):
Saigon officially occurred. Communist forces took control of Saigon, and
Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South
Vietnamese President Blong Van men Dwong Van men H. That
(11:37):
is that is a very very dark chapter in American history,
to Mama, very dark chapter. So many lives lost, is
the phone line open, so many lives lost, so many
lives torn apart, so many people who went on to
(12:00):
struggle for the rest of their lives with what they
endured in that horrible war. I just think there is
so much blame to go around. There is so much
harsh criticism to go around. There's so many people who
(12:20):
avoided that war because they were the fortunate son, and
so many people who went off and served, and the
children of World War Two heroes who came home heroes,
and then their sons following in daddy's footsteps, now it's
my turn. I will go and I will do this.
(12:40):
The way they were treated when they got home, it
just it's a very very bad deal all the way around.
And it is one of those things that bothers me
more than so many other things in American history, because
I don't think it's there's ever been a proper reckoning.
(13:01):
I don't think there's ever been a proper apology to
these guys. I don't think there's been a proper reconciliation.
I don't think there has been the national conversation that
there needs to be, and that bothers me, and I
don't think it's too late fifty years ago. So you know,
(13:23):
if a guy came back from fifty years ago and
he was twenty two at the time, he's seventy two today,
but you got you got a lot of loss of
life in sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy one, seventy
two in that period that those guys are now fifty five,
fifty seven plus eighteen seventy five to eighty. I know
(13:48):
because I know what age they were at the RCC
when we would call them forward. And then you can
add a few years to that because that's been a
few years, so anyway, I don't I want to hear
from if your father was there. I want to hear
from some Vietnam veterans today on the show. And if
you want to wait a minute to call, or you're
(14:09):
unable to call, but you can call later, just say
you serve to Vietnam when you call, and as we're
doing the show, we'll go back and forth to your calls. Yeah,
I would I would like to do that. Seven one
three nine nine one thousand, seven one three nine nine
nine one thousand. On this day. In eighteen oh three,
(14:31):
the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for
fifteen million dollars, which would be four hundred and fourteen
million dollars today. It more than doubled the size of
our at that point, very young country. In eighteen twelve,
(14:53):
the Territory of Orleans became the eighteenth US state under
the name Louisian. Michael, do you know what I struggled
(15:14):
to reconcile at this point in my life. I hate
the government, and I don't think it all of a
sudden got bad. I don't think it was always I
don't think it all of a sudden was occupied by
self serving, self dealing, opportunistic bastards. I think that's their
(15:39):
moths to the fire. This is the flame that draws
them and always has control and power and money. And
you know, I've always sort of viewed these these guys,
many of them were drafted, didn't even choose to go
into this. But whether you chose to serve or not,
(16:00):
it was a bad situation. And and so I always thought,
you know, I would have supported them, and I would,
but I always seen these long haired, dirty, smelly hippies
and their sit ins, and their festivals, and their filth,
and their their promiscuity and and their lifestyle, and so
(16:24):
I've always hated them, and i'm that's not that's not
my scene. But now I look at it and I go, well,
what would have been my position at that time? I
would have been against the war. I wouldn't be hanging
out with John Lennon and Yoko, but I would have
(16:45):
opposed the war. Of I like to think I would have,
knowing what I know now, I would have been able
to see that. It's it's an interesting thing. I wouldn't
have been you know, I wouldn't have been a hate Ashbury,
you know, as some Ashram but I I I don't know.
(17:07):
It's a it's a The war bothers me. It bothers
me a lot. And you know the the positions that
were staked and how they were presented. You know, I'm
on the Oki from Muskogee side, not the not the Peacenicks.
(17:31):
And isn't it interesting that the piece Nicks that crowd
ended up becoming the authoritarians of today. It's not lost
on me either. They became the very thing they claimed
to be protesting against. What am I to do with Mike?
Bill and Ron? Do we just we we don't know
anything about him? Oh is that what you did? Or
(17:56):
don't get don't get touchy. I don't know. I'm trying
to figure out which to take first. Huh. Well, but
is that what they are? The Vietnam folks?
Speaker 5 (18:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, then the start with Mike. Mike, you're on Michael
Berry Show. Are you the Mike they called yesterday?
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Mike?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Are you Mike Barnes? I didn't call you. I didn't
call yesterday.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, go ahead, are you black?
Speaker 6 (18:21):
I'm uh okay anyway, why come on, man, I'm seventy
five years old, was drafted back in seventy served in
the Vietnam. The seventy mon came home early seventy two
at a nonticle coming home. It was brought to San Francisco,
(18:45):
San Mateo, of all places, uh and we were called
the uh son of San Mateo.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In case. Hey, hey, Mike, Mike, hold on a second, Mike,
if you're moving around it's causing your cell to go bad,
or if you're on a bluetooth, can you get an
I can't hear you. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Okay, anyway if you yeah, I had a we're you know,
treated like heroes, arade in three Days of Town and
sat my tao.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
O Mike, Mike, we're skipping you every other I'm gonna
put you on hold for a second. And this is
a good reminder, folks. If you're on bluetooth, it doesn't
come through on the air. I want to hear what
you have to say. I'm looking forward to it, but
we're just it's as if you're not talking, or that
you're talking underwater. So if y'all would please take your
(19:43):
bluetooth off and speak directly into the phone. Bill you're up.
We'll come back to Mike in just a moment. Bill,
You're up, Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Hey, Michael.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
Yeah, I'm seventy nine years old, and I avoided the
draft by joining the Navy, and I with the Vietnam
and I wanted to go. I always watched the Jane
John Wayne movies and I just wanted to see if
I had what John Wayne had, even though he really
didn't serve in World War Two. So I went over
(20:12):
there and I found that I was good at war.
You know, War's just not you know, popping a gun
at somebody. There's a whole repertoire of stuff you have
to do and know before you go to war. And
I was good at that, and I really had It
was the best year of my life in Vietnam. I
(20:33):
really had a great time.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's interesting. You know, I suspect you are in the
distinct minority, but I suspect there are other people that
it awakens a certain skill and urge. And I don't
just mean the killing, I mean the intensity. You know,
I've spent a fair amount of time talking to veterans
with PTSD, and one of the things that I think
(20:59):
is not talking about enough and is not understood. Is
part of the PTSD experience is that there is no
longer intensity in your life. The adrenaline makes you alive,
and adrenaline is a drug, and it's a hormone, but
it's a drug. And that without that adrenaline, without the
(21:21):
intensity of protecting your brothers and risking your life, I
think it is such a crash that it's hard for
people to deal with that nothing seems to have meaning
in life. I've heard versions of that from a lot
of veterans who've seen combat and who struggled with with PTSD.
What about war do you feel like you were good.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
At You know, I could anticipate needs, so I was
in small units and so we would have to provide everything.
And after ted, everybody gave up in Vietnam, right, they
just wanted to stay behind the wires with a wire.
So we were allowed to do just about anything we
(22:02):
wanted to do. And everybody else that stay behind the
wire and we would go out and patrol and do
all kinds of stuff, you know, play army, and it
was great. And they said, well, we're going to let
you go outside of the wire, but don't call us
if there's a need and the problem just like you
were saying the problem with being in a combat situation.
It's addictive, you know, It's like that you crave it.
(22:26):
And I was lucky enough to be in and out
and stay it. And I got to also do the
war in Iraq so in two thousand and two, so
that was really good. In two thousand and four, that
was really good for me. Even though I was fifty
six years old. I think I did okay then, not
like obviously when I was twenty, but at fifty six,
(22:48):
I was still okay.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Very interesting, Bill, thank you for the call. Very interesting.
That's a rare perspective, or rare that someone would hear that.
I'll just go ahead and say it. Sorry to Michael
very show. I got an email from a fellow named
Clint Ives while we were talking to Bill. Interesting story.
(23:13):
Who said I think I was good at war? Did
he say I liked war or just that he was
good at it? That he was good at it? And
Clint said, Bill, who you were just speaking to, he's
too humble to tell you that he's a Navy seal.
It also happens to be the Victoria County Republican Party chairman.
(23:35):
Great man sounded like a very interesting cat. You would
like to sit down and have him tell you stories,
because he has seen some things. He has definitely seen
some things. If at fifty six, thirty years after Vietnam
(23:55):
they were sending him into Iraq. He's not the only
fellow I've ever heard that, but there aren't many. You
got to figure kind of like Liam Neeson telling those
old boys it took his daughter. Listen. I've got a
special set of skills. I will track you down. I
don't know who you are, I don't know what you want.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you
I don't have money, but what I do have are
a very particular set of skills. Skills I've acquired her
for a very long career, skills to make me a
nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter
go now, that'll be the end of it. I will
not look for you. I will not pursue you. But
(24:40):
if you don't, I will look for you. I will
find you, and I will kill you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You know. I saw a video of a guy in
Florida and an alligator was out on the the highway,
but he'd gotten over into the grass. The ditch in
between that separated the two sides of the highway, and
the Sheriff's deputes didn't know what to do, and they've
(25:12):
shut down the highway and they don't want him getting
back out in the road and causing a crash. And
here comes on some old boy and he gets out
and I don't know if he was barefoot before or
he was just showing off. You've seen this. He gets
out and he's got what looks like a pool cleaning
stick and he goes up on this gator. Well first
he gets it. He just walks up on the gator
(25:34):
and he kind of like strikes like a python at
him with his hands, kind of Hong Kong fu. He
kind of move and the gators keeps flipping around and
flipping around. And this guy was built. I mean he
was built. He looked like he looked like one of
the characters on that TV show where they had lifeguards,
(25:54):
the nine two to one, Oh or was that what that?
What was the one that had huh maywatch. Yeah, he
looked like one of the guys on there, so real fit,
real tan, a lot of tats because they all have
that now, and his hair was kind of a little
fake blonde, but there was. But this dude looked like
a guy that has some stories in his life. Anyway,
(26:16):
he goes up on him and he gets that gator
spinning around and spinning around like maybe he was wearing
him out. I don't know what he was doing. Then
he went back and got a tool that looked like
a pool cleaning thing, and he went in on that gator.
And he went in on that gator, and about the
third or four times, somehow he got the gator hooked up.
(26:36):
I don't think he plunged it in him. I think
it was like a wire or something that like he
spooled out of it. I have no idea. I'm probably
getting this part wrong, and I admitted I don't know
the lingo or the inside of what happened. But once
he got the gator like that, then he went in
behind him and he went broke back mountain on this gater.
He got back on the back behind of him, and
(26:57):
then he spun him over. I mean that's a he
was a good sized gator. He spun him over, and
then he had him by the throat and he's all right,
you will sit get over here. And so those other
deputies are maybe it was with state troopers. They come walking
up to help him, and I think they were thinking, well,
for me to help you, I have to trust that
you're not gonna let him go. And they get up
(27:19):
there and they're they're kind of half ass holding it,
you know, like oh, trying to keep back, and they
take it and they put it in the back of
the truck, and I don't he probably took him home
and ate him. I don't know. But anyway, I think
to myself, I'm going about my day and you going
about your day. Most of us have a similar set
(27:39):
of circumstances, fears, assets. You know, one guy can do
something a little better than the next guys and one
guy not as good as the next guy. And then
you got these outliers, right, you got these people like
Bill and thank God for it. Can you imagine? You know,
you see things that are done, you know, bomb texts,
(28:04):
I don't. I have a great admiration for guys that
go in and disable a bomb, disarm a bomb, Like
how do you learn to do that? You don't ever
get to mess up. You can't mess up even one time,
So you know, you think about okay, you understand that
(28:27):
you never get to learn from your mistake. And you
disable ninety nine successfully in the hundredth one and they're
having a funeral for you. Imagine the mindset to stay calm,
like that guys that walk on a high wire. You
know that guy that did it in New York that
met a movie on him man on wire, that's crazy.
(28:51):
They remind you of yourself. What exactly do you have
that be cool in the pocket. See the problem is,
I think the moment you say to yourself, be cool
in the pocket, the moment you start to panic. Right man,
my highlights like things that I go, you're a bad MF.
I managed to stop biting my fingernails. That's pretty much
(29:12):
where I am, you know what I mean. At some
point I in my twenties, I managed to stop biting
my fingernail. Now I still chew the cuticles. That's kind
of while you know you did that. I lost seventy pounds.
Woo hoo. These people face death and deliver death daily.
(29:35):
I mean, man, that's a We will get back to
our seagull discussion in a moment. I got a lot
of comments on that that you're gonna want to know
about the Migratory Bird Treaty of nineteen eighteen. I don't
know if you know this, ramon, you know why seagulls
fly over the sea, because otherwise they'd be bagels. Yeah,
(30:02):
I don't want to be a bills. Did we get
Mike on a good line?
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Mike, Hey, thank you sir for the other for the
next try.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, sorry, we got this joining, but go ahead, mom, okay.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
All right. Anyway, My story is I was drafted in
seventy served in seventy one, returned early seventy two. But
it was a non typical return story. My company, a
of one hundred fourth first Airborn was brought in and
we were known as the Sons of San Mateo. That
(30:42):
was in California, of course, and they gave us a parade,
treated us to the town for three days. I spent
the night at the home of a former mayor of
San Mateo. Everything was great. So this return formed my
perspective on things differently, maybe than others. So that's pretty
(31:03):
much a story.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's a great story. I'm glad you shared it. Yeah, wow,
I am thank you for calling, sir,
What it's that time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Berry Show is on the air. Good morning Michael Berry,
but no you cannot use my bathroom. Hello, good ever, Bunny.
(00:26):
This is mile Old Hamilton Astros win again and a
good morning to the TZAR.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Good morning, Michael Berry. It's seton Connery. But you had
a little radio show. Pity, I wash it and to
find it. Good morning, Michael Berry. I'm all jaked up
on Mountain Dew. This is the Thornton Finch wishing you
a good morning. Good morning, Michael Berry, God morning, Michael Berry.
(00:53):
Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Zar, Good morning, Michael,
Zay Sailor. Good morning at Asina, Good morning, Michael. Hello,
Hello are you there? Good morn you Michael Bear. How
you learned that? I read it tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Mone Good morning, Texas, listen to this. Good morning Texas
in your car. Good morning, Texas is.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
On his day. We're happy to be here to talk
about everything. Good morning, We're not wearing pants.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Good morning, Texes, Good morning Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good bring Texas.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Wake God. Let's be goddamn all right. I need something.
We got to crowdsource something here. Good morning, We got
a crowdsource something. I don't know the answer to this,
(02:06):
but if you can email me through the website Michael
Berryshow dot com, somebody out there will know this. Apparently
it's illegal to kill a seagull. I don't know if
that's a federal statute, so that would be across I
was talking to a friend of mine who said he
believes it's illegal to kill seagulls. I don't know if
that's in the state of Texas everywhere. I don't know.
I'm asking is that true. But the question is my
(02:34):
friend believes he heard somewhere that if you kill a seagull,
all the other seagulls will leave and not come back.
That's like a bad sign, bad juju. I don't know,
that's their self preservation. I don't know if that is true.
So somebody out there will know, will has seagull knowledge,
surprising seagull knowledge, And if you'll email me and I
(02:58):
will read that on the air, it would. It was
a long discussion about seagulls and why it came up,
But the reason was that my friend had read that
in the olden days, if you didn't want the seagulls
at your peer you'd take shovel and kill one of them,
leave it out there where the others could see, and
kind of a scarecrow effect, and the other seagulls would
(03:18):
go away, and then you wouldn't have seagulls again after that.
Don't know interested to know you ever eat seagull ramon? Yeah, okay,
that's your story, and you're sticking to it. You're waiting
for a joke. There's no joke. There's no joke. Hey,
you don't want to anyway. The meat's not any good.
Like the guy that asked, you're really going to eat
(03:41):
that endangered species? He said, yeah, what does it taste like?
All across between a whooping crane and the California condor,
those are other extinct species. That joke required the listener
to have some endangered species knowledge, and you clearly didn't.
We got rain coming today. For those of you who
(04:03):
are kind of easing into getting a little older, or
who have moved from the city, or you've moved down
here to the south and you're easing into getting older
and you kind of want to get to the point
where you're you're you you are more natural with it,
you wear it better, you know, like if you've moved
(04:23):
from the North or California down here and now you're
living out in Belleville, you know you'll need to learn
the little, the very natural flip of your fingers as
you drive past people on a country road. You don't
want to be you know, the forest gump wave when
he's you know, there on the pier. But you want
to be real natural about flicking your finger up as
(04:45):
a you know, as a greeting as as people go by.
It's little things like that you want to learn. The
other one is on a daylight today, and we can practice.
Somebody will say, uh, it's gonna rain today, and your
answer will always be, yeah, we sure needed it, We
sure needed it. I don't ever think my grandmother. I
(05:08):
don't think my grandmother ever heard the phrase it's going
to rain today and did not reply, we sure needed it,
as if we were going to, you know, put the
crops out. But she would sometimes if nobody else would
talk about the weather, she would bring it up. She
would do the call in response. So she'd say, this
is going to rain today. You maybe look outside, this
(05:31):
is going to rain today, And then she paused, of course,
we sure need it, because there was nobody else in
the trailer to do the call and response, so she'd
do it all. She'd do it all. One thing I
wanted to clarify, but because I got a lot of
emails on the matter, I mean, I don't care if
people think I'm friends with Lance mccollor or because or
I hate Lance Micouse. But apparently people did not understand
(05:51):
I didn't wrap that discussion up yesterday. There was no
point to my pickleball discussion of the Selarium pickleball place
they're doing in Midtown. And as I said, a friend
of mine, Andy Awaita, is part of that deal. I
I like Andy. I got no I got nothing bad
to say about Andy or Selarium or that place or
the concept. I was just remarking because it was on
(06:14):
my screen and I saw it. But what I was
trying to say about that is there's a lot of
pickleball joints that are popping up in their their pickleball clubs.
And my point, yes, I do play pickleball. I played
last night, I'm playing again tonight. I love it. But
that this hasn't this has nothing to do with pickleball.
This is the point that people keep missing again and
(06:36):
again and again. If you own a bar of any type,
I don't care what other activities you have there, you
are trying, you're competing with all the other bars to
get people to come to your house, to your place
and socialize and drink beer or drink drink and drink alcohol,
(06:58):
because there's a very, very health the margin on alcohol.
Like poor Paul Jacob over at Jacob's Barbecue, He's got
no alcohol, so he's got to make all his money
on food costs. That is very hard to do. And
and people won't sit and eat, you know, keep eating
for three hours and keep ordering more food with alcohol
they do, and and you can, you can get some
(07:19):
really good margins out of that. So the trick is,
and this is what the consumer, A lot of consumers
don't notice, is you're always looking for a way to
create an experience for people that they come there. But oh,
you're really trying to do is sell them alcohol. So
one year it's axe throwing. Remember ax throwing was a
big deal. Actually, fancy bowling alleys, you know, that was
(07:45):
the big What was the place that was a fansom
fancy bowling alley where the rapper got killed. It might
be defensive, driving because your regular bar is not your
ice house, eat and pulling people. It might be live music,
that's what we did. Uh, it might be you mean it.
But all of those are reasons. That's all I was
saying is that a lot of these pickleball joints are
popping up, and I'm going to pray we might be
(08:05):
hitting the saturation here.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Pretty solliber glass hood with air grabbing scoops.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
With the Michael Berry fucking hood Benssbill escaped from the
ordinary just a few years ago. I thought it was
the heart and so the hook. Chance mclin sings this
song in all of our events, and when he sings it,
he pronounces the word hook and the first time I
(08:31):
heard it it was kind of jarring. So that's weird,
the heart that brings you back. So I have no ideas.
See sitting in a bar with buddy mine the other
day and there was a guy a couple of seats
(08:51):
over and quietly under his breath, he was saying, Powell Bam, kaboom.
My buddy was getting madder and madder, and I said,
what's wrong? He said, them's fighting words. Boom f.
Speaker 4 (09:15):
Bam.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The guy told me the other day that I have
a face like a boat. I didn't say anything. I
just gave him a stern look. There was a fellow
(09:49):
named Mike yesterday who called on the subject of Vietnam.
Was he a Vietnam veteran? Mike, my apologies. I kept
intending to get to you, and I had an interview
and I had something else. It was not my intention
to not put you on the air, if you will
call us or put you right on, because I actually
(10:10):
did want to get your perspective. I wanted to get
at least one Vietnam veterans perspective. Yesterday, as I mentioned,
yesterday was fifty years since the fall of Saigon. And
if you ever see that evacuation, there's a documentary on it,
and man it is powerful. I mean the they capture
(10:31):
one to one million of the intensity that people felt
as the walls were closing in and they're trying to
get They're up on the top of the building, they're
trying to get them out of there, and the Vietnamese
all won out. And it reminds you of that scene
in Afghanistan where people were hanging on to the bottom
of the of the of the plane to get out
(10:52):
of there. Everybody's trying to get out. And I am
mindful as much as I can be at my age,
not having been in war, but having read, watched, talked
to so many things related to Vietnam. It was on
this day in nineteen seventy five that the Fall of
(11:15):
Saigon officially occurred. Communist forces took control of Saigon, and
Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South
Vietnamese President Blong Van men Dwong Van men H. That
(11:37):
is that is a very very dark chapter in American history,
to Mama, very dark chapter. So many lives lost, is
the phone line open, so many lives lost, so many
lives torn apart, so many people who went on to
(12:00):
struggle for the rest of their lives with what they
endured in that horrible war. I just think there is
so much blame to go around. There is so much
harsh criticism to go around. There's so many people who
(12:20):
avoided that war because they were the fortunate son, and
so many people who went off and served, and the
children of World War Two heroes who came home heroes,
and then their sons following in daddy's footsteps, now it's
my turn. I will go and I will do this.
(12:40):
The way they were treated when they got home, it
just it's a very very bad deal all the way around.
And it is one of those things that bothers me
more than so many other things in American history, because
I don't think it's there's ever been a proper reckoning.
(13:01):
I don't think there's ever been a proper apology to
these guys. I don't think there's been a proper reconciliation.
I don't think there has been the national conversation that
there needs to be, and that bothers me, and I
don't think it's too late fifty years ago. So you know,
(13:23):
if a guy came back from fifty years ago and
he was twenty two at the time, he's seventy two today,
but you got you got a lot of loss of
life in sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy one, seventy
two in that period that those guys are now fifty five,
fifty seven plus eighteen seventy five to eighty. I know
(13:48):
because I know what age they were at the RCC
when we would call them forward. And then you can
add a few years to that because that's been a
few years, so anyway, I don't I want to hear
from if your father was there. I want to hear
from some Vietnam veterans today on the show. And if
you want to wait a minute to call, or you're
(14:09):
unable to call, but you can call later, just say
you serve to Vietnam when you call, and as we're
doing the show, we'll go back and forth to your calls. Yeah,
I would I would like to do that. Seven one
three nine nine one thousand, seven one three nine nine
nine one thousand. On this day. In eighteen oh three,
(14:31):
the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for
fifteen million dollars, which would be four hundred and fourteen
million dollars today. It more than doubled the size of
our at that point, very young country. In eighteen twelve,
(14:53):
the Territory of Orleans became the eighteenth US state under
the name Louisian. Michael, do you know what I struggled
(15:14):
to reconcile at this point in my life. I hate
the government, and I don't think it all of a
sudden got bad. I don't think it was always I
don't think it all of a sudden was occupied by
self serving, self dealing, opportunistic bastards. I think that's their
(15:39):
moths to the fire. This is the flame that draws
them and always has control and power and money. And
you know, I've always sort of viewed these these guys,
many of them were drafted, didn't even choose to go
into this. But whether you chose to serve or not,
(16:00):
it was a bad situation. And and so I always thought,
you know, I would have supported them, and I would,
but I always seen these long haired, dirty, smelly hippies
and their sit ins, and their festivals, and their filth,
and their their promiscuity and and their lifestyle, and so
(16:24):
I've always hated them, and i'm that's not that's not
my scene. But now I look at it and I go, well,
what would have been my position at that time? I
would have been against the war. I wouldn't be hanging
out with John Lennon and Yoko, but I would have
(16:45):
opposed the war. Of I like to think I would have,
knowing what I know now, I would have been able
to see that. It's it's an interesting thing. I wouldn't
have been you know, I wouldn't have been a hate Ashbury,
you know, as some Ashram but I I I don't know.
(17:07):
It's a it's a The war bothers me. It bothers
me a lot. And you know the the positions that
were staked and how they were presented. You know, I'm
on the Oki from Muskogee side, not the not the Peacenicks.
(17:31):
And isn't it interesting that the piece Nicks that crowd
ended up becoming the authoritarians of today. It's not lost
on me either. They became the very thing they claimed
to be protesting against. What am I to do with Mike?
Bill and Ron? Do we just we we don't know
anything about him? Oh is that what you did? Or
(17:56):
don't get don't get touchy. I don't know. I'm trying
to figure out which to take first. Huh. Well, but
is that what they are? The Vietnam folks?
Speaker 5 (18:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, then the start with Mike. Mike, you're on Michael
Berry Show. Are you the Mike they called yesterday?
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Mike?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (18:15):
Are you Mike Barnes? I didn't call you. I didn't
call yesterday.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, go ahead, are you black?
Speaker 6 (18:21):
I'm uh okay anyway, why come on, man, I'm seventy
five years old, was drafted back in seventy served in
the Vietnam. The seventy mon came home early seventy two
at a nonticle coming home. It was brought to San Francisco,
(18:45):
San Mateo, of all places, uh and we were called
the uh son of San Mateo.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In case. Hey, hey, Mike, Mike, hold on a second, Mike,
if you're moving around it's causing your cell to go bad,
or if you're on a bluetooth, can you get an
I can't hear you. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
Okay, anyway if you yeah, I had a we're you know,
treated like heroes, arade in three Days of Town and
sat my tao.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
O Mike, Mike, we're skipping you every other I'm gonna
put you on hold for a second. And this is
a good reminder, folks. If you're on bluetooth, it doesn't
come through on the air. I want to hear what
you have to say. I'm looking forward to it, but
we're just it's as if you're not talking, or that
you're talking underwater. So if y'all would please take your
(19:43):
bluetooth off and speak directly into the phone. Bill you're up.
We'll come back to Mike in just a moment. Bill,
You're up, Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
Hey, Michael.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
Yeah, I'm seventy nine years old, and I avoided the
draft by joining the Navy, and I with the Vietnam
and I wanted to go. I always watched the Jane
John Wayne movies and I just wanted to see if
I had what John Wayne had, even though he really
didn't serve in World War Two. So I went over
(20:12):
there and I found that I was good at war.
You know, War's just not you know, popping a gun
at somebody. There's a whole repertoire of stuff you have
to do and know before you go to war. And
I was good at that, and I really had It
was the best year of my life in Vietnam. I
(20:33):
really had a great time.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's interesting. You know, I suspect you are in the
distinct minority, but I suspect there are other people that
it awakens a certain skill and urge. And I don't
just mean the killing, I mean the intensity. You know,
I've spent a fair amount of time talking to veterans
with PTSD, and one of the things that I think
(20:59):
is not talking about enough and is not understood. Is
part of the PTSD experience is that there is no
longer intensity in your life. The adrenaline makes you alive,
and adrenaline is a drug, and it's a hormone, but
it's a drug. And that without that adrenaline, without the
(21:21):
intensity of protecting your brothers and risking your life, I
think it is such a crash that it's hard for
people to deal with that nothing seems to have meaning
in life. I've heard versions of that from a lot
of veterans who've seen combat and who struggled with with PTSD.
What about war do you feel like you were good.
Speaker 5 (21:42):
At You know, I could anticipate needs, so I was
in small units and so we would have to provide everything.
And after ted, everybody gave up in Vietnam, right, they
just wanted to stay behind the wires with a wire.
So we were allowed to do just about anything we
(22:02):
wanted to do. And everybody else that stay behind the
wire and we would go out and patrol and do
all kinds of stuff, you know, play army, and it
was great. And they said, well, we're going to let
you go outside of the wire, but don't call us
if there's a need and the problem just like you
were saying the problem with being in a combat situation.
It's addictive, you know, It's like that you crave it.
(22:26):
And I was lucky enough to be in and out
and stay it. And I got to also do the
war in Iraq so in two thousand and two, so
that was really good. In two thousand and four, that
was really good for me. Even though I was fifty
six years old. I think I did okay then, not
like obviously when I was twenty, but at fifty six,
(22:48):
I was still okay.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Very interesting, Bill, thank you for the call. Very interesting.
That's a rare perspective, or rare that someone would hear that.
I'll just go ahead and say it. Sorry to Michael
very show. I got an email from a fellow named
Clint Ives while we were talking to Bill. Interesting story.
(23:13):
Who said I think I was good at war? Did
he say I liked war or just that he was
good at it? That he was good at it? And
Clint said, Bill, who you were just speaking to, he's
too humble to tell you that he's a Navy seal.
It also happens to be the Victoria County Republican Party chairman.
(23:35):
Great man sounded like a very interesting cat. You would
like to sit down and have him tell you stories,
because he has seen some things. He has definitely seen
some things. If at fifty six, thirty years after Vietnam
(23:55):
they were sending him into Iraq. He's not the only
fellow I've ever heard that, but there aren't many. You
got to figure kind of like Liam Neeson telling those
old boys it took his daughter. Listen. I've got a
special set of skills. I will track you down. I
don't know who you are, I don't know what you want.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you
I don't have money, but what I do have are
a very particular set of skills. Skills I've acquired her
for a very long career, skills to make me a
nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter
go now, that'll be the end of it. I will
not look for you. I will not pursue you. But
(24:40):
if you don't, I will look for you. I will
find you, and I will kill you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
You know. I saw a video of a guy in
Florida and an alligator was out on the the highway,
but he'd gotten over into the grass. The ditch in
between that separated the two sides of the highway, and
the Sheriff's deputes didn't know what to do, and they've
(25:12):
shut down the highway and they don't want him getting
back out in the road and causing a crash. And
here comes on some old boy and he gets out
and I don't know if he was barefoot before or
he was just showing off. You've seen this. He gets
out and he's got what looks like a pool cleaning
stick and he goes up on this gator. Well first
he gets it. He just walks up on the gator
(25:34):
and he kind of like strikes like a python at
him with his hands, kind of Hong Kong fu. He
kind of move and the gators keeps flipping around and
flipping around. And this guy was built. I mean he
was built. He looked like he looked like one of
the characters on that TV show where they had lifeguards,
(25:54):
the nine two to one, Oh or was that what that?
What was the one that had huh maywatch. Yeah, he
looked like one of the guys on there, so real fit,
real tan, a lot of tats because they all have
that now, and his hair was kind of a little
fake blonde, but there was. But this dude looked like
a guy that has some stories in his life. Anyway,
(26:16):
he goes up on him and he gets that gator
spinning around and spinning around like maybe he was wearing
him out. I don't know what he was doing. Then
he went back and got a tool that looked like
a pool cleaning thing, and he went in on that gator.
And he went in on that gator, and about the
third or four times, somehow he got the gator hooked up.
(26:36):
I don't think he plunged it in him. I think
it was like a wire or something that like he
spooled out of it. I have no idea. I'm probably
getting this part wrong, and I admitted I don't know
the lingo or the inside of what happened. But once
he got the gator like that, then he went in
behind him and he went broke back mountain on this gater.
He got back on the back behind of him, and
(26:57):
then he spun him over. I mean that's a he
was a good sized gator. He spun him over, and
then he had him by the throat and he's all right,
you will sit get over here. And so those other
deputies are maybe it was with state troopers. They come walking
up to help him, and I think they were thinking, well,
for me to help you, I have to trust that
you're not gonna let him go. And they get up
(27:19):
there and they're they're kind of half ass holding it,
you know, like oh, trying to keep back, and they
take it and they put it in the back of
the truck, and I don't he probably took him home
and ate him. I don't know. But anyway, I think
to myself, I'm going about my day and you going
about your day. Most of us have a similar set
(27:39):
of circumstances, fears, assets. You know, one guy can do
something a little better than the next guys and one
guy not as good as the next guy. And then
you got these outliers, right, you got these people like
Bill and thank God for it. Can you imagine? You know,
you see things that are done, you know, bomb texts,
(28:04):
I don't. I have a great admiration for guys that
go in and disable a bomb, disarm a bomb, Like
how do you learn to do that? You don't ever
get to mess up. You can't mess up even one time,
So you know, you think about okay, you understand that
(28:27):
you never get to learn from your mistake. And you
disable ninety nine successfully in the hundredth one and they're
having a funeral for you. Imagine the mindset to stay calm,
like that guys that walk on a high wire. You
know that guy that did it in New York that
met a movie on him man on wire, that's crazy.
(28:51):
They remind you of yourself. What exactly do you have
that be cool in the pocket. See the problem is,
I think the moment you say to yourself, be cool
in the pocket, the moment you start to panic. Right man,
my highlights like things that I go, you're a bad MF.
I managed to stop biting my fingernails. That's pretty much
(29:12):
where I am, you know what I mean. At some
point I in my twenties, I managed to stop biting
my fingernail. Now I still chew the cuticles. That's kind
of while you know you did that. I lost seventy pounds.
Woo hoo. These people face death and deliver death daily.
(29:35):
I mean, man, that's a We will get back to
our seagull discussion in a moment. I got a lot
of comments on that that you're gonna want to know
about the Migratory Bird Treaty of nineteen eighteen. I don't
know if you know this, ramon, you know why seagulls
fly over the sea, because otherwise they'd be bagels. Yeah,
(30:02):
I don't want to be a bills. Did we get
Mike on a good line?
Speaker 6 (30:09):
Mike, Hey, thank you sir for the other for the
next try.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, sorry, we got this joining, but go ahead, mom, okay.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
All right. Anyway, My story is I was drafted in
seventy served in seventy one, returned early seventy two. But
it was a non typical return story. My company, a
of one hundred fourth first Airborn was brought in and
we were known as the Sons of San Mateo. That
(30:42):
was in California, of course, and they gave us a parade,
treated us to the town for three days. I spent
the night at the home of a former mayor of
San Mateo. Everything was great. So this return formed my
perspective on things differently, maybe than others. So that's pretty
(31:03):
much a story.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's a great story. I'm glad you shared it. Yeah, wow,
I am thank you for calling, sir,
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