AM Show Hr 3 | Real Talk on Education, Culture & Classic Country Vibes

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is on the air. Education is a

(00:29):
fascinating commodity because it's one of the few and certainly
the most important public commodity that we produce. And so
the question becomes, how are we to do this? Now?

(00:51):
I'm going to say things that will make people very uncomfortable,
and I'm going to do so without using hypotheticals or
the language that keeps from hurting people feelings. When you
look at a society, particularly when you look inside the
city limits, you're going to find a number of people

(01:12):
who do not share the values that the people of
the suburbs and rural communities share to an extent that
it's going to be shocking by many people. The lifestyle
is not purposeful or intentional. It is often neglectful or

(01:34):
de facto. If you were to drive through the inner city,
let's take it out of Beaumont of Chicago, or Detroit,
or Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Houston, and you were to
drive through certain neighborhoods of the inner city, which is
code for predominantly black, and you drive through these neighborhoods,

(01:58):
you might see unattended children at a disturbingly young age,
and that would be bothersome to a lot of people.
You might see during the daytime, grown men of working
age who are riding around on a tiny bicycle or

(02:19):
standing on a street corner, or consuming alcoholic beverages approximately
more than thirty nine but fewer than forty one ounces
at a convenience store on the corner owned by a
Vietnamese family that's greatly resented by the people who are
residents of the community. These are things that are alien
to suburban and rural residents, and inside these communities the

(02:49):
percentage of home ownership goes way down. So you're not
typically talking about a husband, wife, nuclear family and their
starter home, second home, dream home, whatever that may be.
You're often talking about government provided housing. Well, government provided

(03:09):
housing ends up in about the condition of a rental
car or a public swimming pool. Individuals who live there
don't have a sense of ownership, and we know what
ownership does to pride. We all get a kick the
first time our kid buys something with his own money,
how proud and protective he is of that item, and

(03:31):
all of a sudden he changes, or when he gets
his first little job washing cars or babysitting, and you, hey,
can I borrow some of that money? And your kid
that always wants to borrow money from you? No, no, no,
no no. Ownership evokes what we would consider commendable traits characteristics,
and when that is absent, it is part and parcel

(03:53):
of a bigger problem. So a kid shows up to
school at six years old, arguably through no fault of
his own, because he is a creature of convenience and
a creature of the community, and he has learned the
lifestyle and traits and patterns of the tribal community in

(04:14):
which he lives. So his idea of justice, or his
idea of how you get ahead, his idea of how
you make money, his idea of right and wrong, is
very different because he's not learned the same as you have.
The music he consumes would be quite different than the
music of other communities, although that music is now spilled out,

(04:37):
which makes for an interesting and interesting social experiment. All
of these things. So, this kid arrives at a school
where and six years old is a little deferent. Let's
get it. Let's move him up to middle school where
Haley was teaching. So this is becoming a young man
and young woman. Let's focus on the young man. He
might be bigger than the teacher. He's certainly strong. He's

(05:02):
seen violence, maybe perpetrated against his own mother or grandmother
or neighbor. He might have seen somebody shot down in
the streets. He might have seen somebody fight with the
cop and the cop had to take him down. He
might have seen somebody fight with the cop and win.
He might have seen cars stolen, homes burgled, departments burgled anyway.
He might have seen rape, pedophilia. He might have witnessed

(05:25):
some things that you have never seen in your entire life.
And he's in sixth grade. And so what we're really
arguing over is, since there is a community, public desire
to educate that child, the consumer of public education is
not the child nor the child's parent. I hear that

(05:46):
said often, it's not true. If that was true, they
would pay for it. Neither the child nor the parent
pays for public education to any greater degree than you
and I do. Now, the consumer of private education is
that child and their parent, and that's why they pay
for it. Separate aside, and imagine this, Imagine how imagine

(06:09):
how much people value private school that there is a
public school already offered, and they say, no, I see
a marginal improvement in the quality of education to such
an extent that I'm willing to pay, and typically pay
really good money to send my kid here instead. And

(06:31):
I would argue, in many cases, it's not that they're
sending their kid to get this, it's to avoid that.
How many times have you heard me say this. The
reason you don't go to the inner city churches fried
chicken is not. The reason you go to another place
in another neighborhood is not to get the chicken because

(06:54):
it's so much better. It's to avoid the element that
is inside that restaurant. So what we've done to avoid
dealing with these very difficult things with which we struggle
to grapple is that we've made it evil and awful
and horrible and socially unacceptable to discuss these things in public.

(07:15):
If you are a person who talks about these things
in public, then you are a threat to democracy. You're
an awful person with a dark heart. But we all
know they're true. We all know when to lock our
doors and when not to. Everyone knows that we all
know what neighborhoods to walk around and what not to.
And by the way, if you don't, If you don't

(07:37):
and you get out in the wrong neighborhood and you're
not part of the majority demographic of that particular block,
and you start walking down the street, there's a good
chance that might say, hey, hey, hey, hey, you in
the wrong neighborhood. Brother, You better pack it up and
get out of here. How does that person know? What
do they know? These are things we all know, we

(08:00):
know them, we choose not to we choose not to
talk about them, but we make decisions based on that.
Why don't we buy the cheap house in certain neighborhoods
that cost ten percent with the same house two miles
away would cost me?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
What?

Speaker 1 (08:19):
What are we getting in the other house or what
are we avoiding? We're all we all know these things,
but we don't talk about them. And that's the problem. Doc.
I was boughted Donna Bargo born Yvonne Vaughn was a
school teacher singing on the side a Nashville contract. And

(08:41):
the rest is history. And if I told you we
were going to play two Dona Fargo tunes in a row,
and I told you that funny face was the first one.
You either know what the next song is going to
be at the next break, if vermone will take my input,
or you don't. And if you don't, then you're willfully
hide on your Donal Fargo. My friend Patrick Pacheco and

(09:03):
I over twenty years ago, we're driving around. We had
rented a house out in Gay Hill. That's what's called Ramon.
Shut up, it's called Gay Hill. I can't help, but
it was the Gay family and we rented a house
off of three to ninety. So I'm gonna take you there,
all right, I'll take you there. So you we're on

(09:26):
two ninety. We passed Chapel Hill. We waved to the
right to Rick Doak and Donnie Roberts and Gail Doak
and and god dog it, what's Donnie's wife's name, Corn
Brad and all our friends out in Chapel Hill. We
keep going. You got the little Chapel Hill diner on
the right, and you got the Chapel Hill cut off.

(09:47):
They got a new gas station. Unto we keep going.
Get that beautiful house used to be the rendhom Country Club.
Back on the right. When we go up and there
is what is known as a jug handle turn that
will take you you that will loop you around, and
there used to be a k Bob's right there once
you do, just to your west, and then there's a
believe Exxon station just south of you. And on the right,

(10:09):
I think it's a Shell station and there's some outdoor art.
You go up just a little fur oh As dairy
queen right there on the right, and then on the
left you'll have bluebonnet power and electric and then you
move on up and then you have the cutoff or
was it two thirty seven? That's the round top cutoff.
But go back. You don't take that jug hanil turn.

(10:31):
You don't go to the right end of Brenham. You
just keep going north on was that thirty six? And
in short order you come up to three ninety and
you make a left right there on three ninety that's
the old Independence Trail. Now to your east you go
down and that's Independent. That's Independence. That's where Roman Martinez

(10:52):
and Deanna Davila live. That's where my old friend Wido
Piquette lived. Widow owned Cafe Piquette, the best Cuban restaurant
in town, with his wife Nelly, and Guido was driving
back from visiting his mom, being the sweet son that
he was, and in the middle of the night, at
about two o'clock in the morning, he was trying to

(11:12):
make it back to Houston, and he had left too
late because his mom, being a Cuban mom, had spoiled
him and she wanted to feed him, you know, she
just want to keep feeding him. And he'd had enough
rice and had enough food, and he had a full bell.
And he started driving back on Ien and I forget
where it was, Mississippi, Alabama, Missisippi, Wisia. Somewhere along the way.
He fell asleep about two o'clock in the morning and

(11:34):
drove off the side of the road and died. That's
how your buddy Brian died. Right. How old was he?
He was twenty seven. So anyway, so Guido was on
his way back to Houston and his wife, his widow
then Nelly, took over Cafe Piquet. But anyway, they had
a place out there, and he and I had met

(11:56):
a week or two before, and he wanted me to
sell the restaurant, and because he knew I had a
background in real estate, and I said, I'm not really
your guy, but we're going to find you somebody who
can sell the restaurant. And when he died, Nelly said,
you know, Guido wanted you to sell the restaurant. And
I said, yeah, but it's not a good time for me.
I don't I don't have the time to focus on

(12:16):
it right now. But I will find you somebody. And
she said, well, I'm just going to run it for
a little while and until let me figure out what
it's worth. Because Guido was kind of checked out because
he was spending all his time out at this little
farm he had in Independence. So Nelly dives in and
as often happens, this happened with the Gahunya is on

(12:42):
the play Roger sweets on Hillcroft and our friend Yoga
Gahuna ran this wonderful sweet shop and they were doing
very well. And he dies prematurely pancreatic cancer. But he
gets it and dies in short order, and his wife
Rachhim takes it over and his daughter Sharon, and his
son Roger and lo and behold they take this thing

(13:05):
to New Heights. Who would have thought that they could
do it, you know. So anyway, so Nelly does that
with Cafe Piquett and she says to me a few
months later, you know, I think, I don't think I
want to sell this thing. And here we are years
later and Cafe peqat's doing better than ever and now
her their daughter Christine, runs it, and we just had
dinner there recently. If you want great great Cuban food,

(13:26):
cafe piquet p i q u e t on bel
air or bisinette. I get those two confused. It's right
around the corner from Uncle Jerry's office and it's it's wonderful. Anyway,
fast forward, So we rented a house right there off
three ninety on a street called jack Rabbit Lane in Gayhill.

(13:47):
Oh no, no, no, there's a gay Hill church right there.
And if you drive two ninety, if you drive sorry,
three ninety, which is Independence Trail, great great signs. It's
like a Davy Crockett arm holding a holding a thirty
thirty holding a rifle and holding it up in the
air is the three ninety sides. They're fantastic. So you
drive west on there and you drive under a train

(14:10):
track and it's only one car wide, but it's a
stone I think that's called a trestle there that you
go under it's just beautiful. And just past that on
the left his Jackrabbit Lane, and we rented an old house.
It was a nineteen twenty house had no air conditioning,
so I went, I like to sleep cold, so I
went and got a big old honker of an air
conditioning and I hung it in the window right above

(14:34):
our bed, and so this thing would blow freezing cold
air right on us. Welcomed my wife's world of misery.
I like to be freezing cold anyway. So we rented
that for a year while we looked for a house,
and we ended up buying out and car me me,
but I tell you all that tell you this. One day,
the four of us are driving around. Patrick and his
then wife and me and my now wife were driving

(14:57):
along two ninety looking at houses, and we're somewhere around
Burton and we're listening to the radio and this or
maybe we listening to a CD, I don't know me
it's radio and this song comes on and we start
singing it. My wife and his wife just looked at
each other because we're singing. Funny face, it's not really
a song you expect two dudes to sing. And so

(15:21):
Patrick's then wife, Sarah looks at my wife and says,
how does he know the words of this? And she said,
I guarantee it was one of his mom's favorite songs.
And that's true. I grew up listening to my mom
walking around the house singing, and to this day I
sing those songs. Or you realize that's not a song, girl, man,
not to sing God. She originally wrote that as I'm

(15:41):
the happiest girl in the whole World, but it didn't rhyme,
so she changed it to the whole USA. Feels so
good to say I'm the happiest girl and the whole USA,
because we're natural to say happiest girl in the world,
the happiest girl in the world. Bir if you ever
said that, Remont, I think Lindsey Graham has That is

(16:06):
for my money as pretty a love song as you
will ever hear. Yeah, yeah, because it's real. It's it's
it's a story song, but it's real. It's it's not

(16:27):
you know, your love is higher than the pine trees
growing tall upon the hill. That's fine, that's pretty language.
But you know the sound of a whipper wheel and
and and all of those things are beautiful, they're they're
flowery language. By the way, that's also one of the
greatest love songs of all time. But this song is

(16:48):
so good for its time. This was when country music
was for working class people. It spoke to working class issues.
There's a song shoot what's his name? Uh? She said,

(17:12):
I'm gonna hire a whino to decorate our home, David.
This kind of thing I know and I don't. I
can't recall. It doesn't matter, what is it different? So, uh,
she said, I'm gonna hire a whino to decorate our home.
You'll feel more at ease here and you won't need
to roam. We'll take out the dining room table and

(17:35):
put a bar against that wall, and Neon signed to
light the way to the bathroom down the hall. I
think she's basically saying, you get off every Friday and
you get your paycheck. And this was what was going on. Man,
I know these families, and he'd get off of the
plan on Friday and get his check, and he wouldn't
he'd go and just make one stop on the way

(17:58):
home before he got home, and then he comes staggering
in at midnight. Because you didn't get defense, you didn't
get drunk driving cases. Back then unless you hit somebody.
He comes staggering in at midnight, and he'd spent the paycheck.
So now she and the kids were going to have
to struggle for a week. And so the idea was
just come here and drink. It's pennies on the dollar,

(18:19):
and your buddies can drink here too. They can pinch
my ass if they want. I don't care. We'll convert
this house to a bar. At least we'll keep your paycheck. Man.
That is real. That was country music. That was real
music talking to real people about real issues. That was
that was trailer park issues. That was working class issues.

(18:40):
That was guys that worked. At the point, none of
this stuff you hear today is I don't want to
focus on today. Let me just focus on This is
nineteen seventy two, and this is as good as it gets.
Just listen to these lyrics ramon good morning morning, Hello sunshine,
Wake up, sleepyhead. Why do we move that bojangle clock

(19:02):
so far away from the bed. A real love song
talks about waking up the next morning, not what you
did to night before, right, Because that's the real love.
Just one more minute, that's why we moved it. One more,
hug will do? Do you love waking up next to

(19:23):
me as much as I love waking up next to you?
And here's the light, man, This is it. This gets me.
Every time you make the coffee, I'll make the bed.
I'll fix your lunch. I'll fix your lunch and you
fix mine. Now tell me the truth. Do these old
shoes look funny? Honey? It's almost nine now you be careful.

(19:47):
Got to go. I love you, have a beautiful day,
and kiss the happiest girl in the whole USA. Now
that is just that's good right there. That is just
good stuff. That takes me to a very good place.
Right everyone, but you did you grow up on the
happiest girl in the whole USA? Well, I'm sorry to

(20:09):
hear that you were Abba? Whatever wrong with album? My
wife loves Abba. My my wife absolutely loves Eba. You know,
we haven't talked about the Southern Poverty Law Center. Sounds
like something that we could all be behind, doesn't it.
Southern Poverty Law Center, poor people in the South? Yeah,
why not? Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center is just
really in the business of calling the rest of us racist.

(20:31):
And we find out last week after the indictment. Grand
jury agreed that they're spending money on hate groups to
commit crimes so they can raise more money about the
hate groups and committing the crimes. And that's a crime.
It's fraud. But I hope they that story doesn't disappear
amidst their scandal. In fact, they're back. They have released

(20:55):
a new ad to explain exactly who they are here
at the Southern Poverty Line aw Center. We hate hate.
In fact, we hate hate so much it's kind of
our thing. Some people click stamps, some people run marathons.
We wake up every morning for a fair trade cup
of coffee and say, how can we hate hate even more? Today?

(21:15):
It's a calling really.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Now, Over time, we've realized something uncomfortable in our passionate
opposition to hate. We had developed a very strong dislike
for hate groups, and that got us thinking, aren't we,
in a way participating in the very thing we oppose hate?

Speaker 1 (21:30):
So we did what any reasonable organization would do.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
We took a step back, held a series of deeply
funded workshops, and came to a groundbreaking conclusion. If we
truly want to eliminate hate, we must begin by addressing
the hate with ourselves, and how do you confront your
hatred of hate groups? Qua naturally by engaging with them
in the most paradoxical way possible. Some might call it ironic,
others might call it confusing. We call it transformational, because

(21:56):
you can't just say.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
You oppose hate.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
You have to really wrestle with it, fund it, study it,
put it under a microscope, and occasionally wonder if you've
tied yourself into a philosophical pretzel.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
But that's the work. So, yes, we hate hate.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
We hate it so much we're willing to go to
extraordinary and occasionally bewildering lengths to prove just how much
we hate it. So, in an effort to end our
own hatred and be the change we wish to see
in the world, we've decided to fund the very hate
groups we once hated.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
You you're listening to Michael berry Strouse Lifeless Eyes, Black
Eyes like a Dolls. There's a line in that song
that I wonder how many people know what it means.

(22:56):
It says, instead of a family quarrel, we'll have a
barroom ball. Oh sorry, barroom brawl. When the hams Bear
says it's closing, you won't have far to Crawl nineteen
seventy three, one of the best beer commercials of all time.
There's a fellow that looks like a really, really rugged

(23:19):
Jeremiah Johnson. His teeth aren't I mean, he ain't as
pretty as Robert Redford. He's got the same look, this
mop of blonde hair, outdoorsy guy, you know, Colorado Montana look.
And he's driving a Willie's Overland and that'd be cool enough.

(23:40):
He's got a like a tartan print flannel shirt and
a vest and you got this rugged red orange Willi's Overland,
which he comes over the hill because that makes for
a great shot and the lighting is just right for
a beer commercial in nineteen seventy three. But that's not it.

(24:01):
They had to have one more thing. Oh, we'll put
a grizzly in the passenger seat with him. That's the
Ham's bear. And there were signs at the time. You know,
the fish that says, what is the shiny ribs has
a line about this, take me to the lake. What

(24:22):
is it you're talking about? The fish that flops the bass?
What does he say? Gosh, I'll get anyway. That's where
that line comes from. That's the point of that line.
That's a great If you get a minute, go to
the YouTube's and look up that ad. It is an
absolute hoot. So the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass,

(24:47):
has spent more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
on four hundred and fifty anti ICE signs put up
at city parks, libraries, parking lots, and transit hubs, stating
that city property is not to be used for immigration
enforcement activities as staging areas processing sites are operational basis.
US Attorney Bill A. Sale, who's doing a great job,
by the way, says the signs have no legal weight, force,

(25:08):
or effect on anything the federal government does. So she's
very concerned that illegal aliens not be picked up and
deported out of Los Angeles. It also emerged this week
that the fellow who set off the LA fires, which
would end up killing twelve people and destroying sixty eight

(25:30):
thousand houses, none of which have begun rebuilding. By the way,
it's a year later. Remember Trump came to town and said,
you people are a joke. I want the construction to
begin immedting. And she said, mister President, why would you
say that. I will give permits and they gonna start building.
They haven't and they won't. But now it has turned

(25:51):
out that it has emerged that the guy who set
the fire that did all this damage, twelve dead, sixty
eight thousand homes, could have been worse, but that that
guy was searching things like free Mangione, radical left wing
violent topics before he set that fire. It's another example

(26:16):
of left wing terrorism. You never hear democrats talk about
left wing terrorism, but that's the real terrorism in this country.
That's Antifa that's taken over the cities. You look at
the number of small business owners in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis
who had to shutter their businesses and move because of

(26:36):
the violence of Black Lives Matter and Antifa. But again
we go back to where we started when we talked
to the teacher earlier. You can't have a classroom where
you teach children when you've got disruptive elements that take
up all the attention and you can't help those kids
because nobody wants you to help those kids. They want

(26:56):
to create an entire structure around We're not going to
allow this, and we're not going to allow this, and
you can't make laws for this. You look at the
drive through versus the walk in traffic at fast food restaurants.
Now you look at how many places, Starbucks among them,
no longer allow you to go in and sit down.

(27:18):
They don't want you inside, they want you to walk
through the drive through. You look at how many public
spaces that used to be public spaces that work in class. See,
the rich people will create their own world. They don't
want to be around the trash. The rich people will
find their own places Martha's Vineyard asspen, They'll find Montana, Wyoming.

(27:45):
They will find ways to get away from this. It's
the people who can't. It's the poor blacks, the poor whites,
the poor Hispanics that have to interact, that have to
ride the public transit, that have to stand at the
trains a box, that have to sit in the cheap
seats at the sporting events, that have to interact with

(28:06):
this element. That's where the rubber hits the road. But
the fact is, it's just entertaining content to the rest
of us. But now you're trying to make rules to
effect a very very small subset of society that is
complete and utter