October 6, 2025 • 26 mins
We’re going inside the mind of author Bro. Russell Dickson to explore his captivating horror story, "Children Shouldn't Play with the Dead." Bro. Dickson’s book explores a thrilling narrative of a young man's journey into the supernatural, taking place in a small, upstate town of Gloversville, New York.
Show notes:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/craftsmen-online-podcast--4822031/support.
Show notes:
- Join us on Patreon. Start your FREE seven day trial to the Craftsmen Online Podcast and get instant access to our bonus content! Whether it's a one time donation or you become a Patreon Subscriber, we appreciate your support.
- Visit the Craftsmen Online website to learn more about our next Reading Room event, New York Masonic History, and our Masonic Education blog!
- Follow the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Spotify.
- Subscribe to the Craftsmen Online Podcast on Apple Podcasts.
- Follow Craftsmen Online on YouTube, hit subscribe and get notified the next time we go LIVE with a podcast recording!
- Yes, we're on Tik Tok and Instagram.
- Get our latest announcements and important updates in your inbox with the Craftsmen Online Newsletter.
- Email the host, RW Michael Arce! Yes, we will read your email and may even reach out to be a guest on a future episode.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/craftsmen-online-podcast--4822031/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant Body,
Asonic Authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman on my podcast, the
only Masonic podcast endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
We are so proud to get that on her each
in every week. I'm your host, right worship of Michael Arsa,
and you've joined us for an episode on well, the
title of it should kind of maybe send an eerie
chill up and down your spine. Children shouldn't play with
the dead, Oh man, the conspiracy theories are going to
(00:50):
have fun with this. Actually, I don't know who's going
to have more fun with this, the conspiracy theories, the
comments that we're going to get on social media for
that title, or our production team, who's probably sitting here going, oh,
we know how much RC is afraid of scary movies,
still sleeps with a night light at as an adult.
As we get ready for our conversation with Brother Russell
Dixon on his latest book, if you are a writer
(01:11):
or have questions haha. We are going to be doing
our very first listener Questions and Answers episode on the
Craftsman Online Podcast. I do get email from our listeners
from time to time. Our email addressed is podcast at
Craftsman online dot com. You can reach out to me
and send me any question you have about the podcast,
(01:32):
my personal life, maybe why I still sleep with the
night light. Those are all fair game and we'll answer
them on our upcoming Questions and Answers episode in October,
So fire away those questions. The email address is podcast
at Craftsman online dot com. All right, let's go inside
(01:55):
the mind of Brother Russell Dixon to explore his captivating
horse story children Shouldn't Play with the Dead. Now, little
background on Brother Russell. He has been writing for the
Craftsman Online blog for a few years now. He's a
proud member of Saint Patrick's Lodge Number four in Johnstown,
New York, and we're honored to have him on here
to talk about the first book in his series that
(02:16):
takes place in a small upstate town in Gloversville, New York.
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Russell.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Hi, Miike, thanks for having me on. I've been really
looking forward.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
To coming on and speaking to you and seeing you,
I think for the first time, well not in person.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But at least in video. Anyway. I think eventually we'll
meet up in the real world.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I think that'll be sooner than later. Yeah, my wife
and I were moving back to upstate New York in
targeting mid April before May one, twenty twenty six. So
the chances are we're going to run into each other
for sure, both being upstate New Yorkers and men and
Mason's let's start with your book and speaking of upstate
New York, this is what caught my attention. It takes place.
(02:58):
It's a fictional story that takes in a real place,
which is Gloversville, New York.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I grew up in Mayapak, New York. It was very
similar to Johnstown.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
There was a lot of apple archers and farms, and
it was like a kind of a nice country setting
and and sort of f NI eleven at urban sprawl
and a kind of area got overpopulated. And I went
to college at University of Albany, and that's when I
really got to know this area Upstate New York.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, the Copper region in Mulong Valley. I just
really really liked it up here.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's interesting when you pick up a book and
you're like, wait a second, I recognize this place, and
it didn't. I didn't have to use my imagination to
create the picture of Gloversville, New York in my head.
I've been there before. But as we get into your book,
children Shouldn't play with the dead. When you talk about
this story and where it's taking place, I kind of
(03:51):
got the Stephen King vibes a little early in your
book where he paints like these picturesque, like sleepy, nice
little towns where nothing bad ever happens, and kids riding
down the street and their bikes and you know, playing
outside and all those good things. When you talk about
some of your childhood was coming into this book, where
(04:12):
did you get the inspiration for this story?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, A big fan of Stephen King and and Dean Coots.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And I was an avid reader as a child, and
a lot of it comes from my surroundings, you know,
and Cloversville and Johnstown in particularly has very interesting history.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
A lot of people don't.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Really realize it goes all the way back to I'd
say probably this sixteen hundreds where Fonde is a nearby town.
Oraysville Shrine was founded on property where some Jesuit priests
were murdered by Mohawk Indians back in the sixteen hundreds. So,
and there was a lot of battles, and battles of
(04:51):
the Revolutionary War took place in Johnstown. I believe the
last battle Revolutionary War took place there. There was a
lot of bloody skirmishes. At one point the Mohawk come
through the town like bird every resident at one time.
And Gloversville it had this proud long history as being
the gloat and the leading glove manufacturer in the world,
(05:11):
the on the Twin Cities, and it was it was
like the place to be.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Like the eighteen.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Hundreds and nineteen hundreds, Glowersville was booming, you know, the theaters,
they had their own opera house, they had their own museums.
I mean, it was a real vibrant town and founded
by a lot of these big names of the city
like Nason Latour. And there actually was a Potter family
(05:36):
that was here Potter my book is Podder. There actually
was a Potter family. They were very influential in the
leather industry. And I just thought it was fascinating how
all of a sudden this city kind of just crumbled,
I guess because of new environmental laws in the nineties
and because of competition overseas. It just kind of killed
the leather industry here. And so this once proud town
(05:59):
kind of wilted, you know, And now you go through
a lot of neighborhoods, it's just abandoned factories. And so
that's kind of inspired my imagination about what this city
must have been like, what some of the characters in
this city must have been like. And some of the
folklore actually came from downstate. I introduced a serial killer
called the Leatherman in this story. The Leatherman was this
(06:24):
wandering kind of vagrant who wandered around the Tri state
area Connecticut, sleupping caves and people fed him and they
gave him work, and I'm sleep in his barn. And
he was this guy who was clad in leather who
just wandered around this area. And they say he had
a broken heart and he kind of just was wandering.
Was his way of dealing with his broken harp.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I'm sitting here going where does a guy get a
story of a kid who's hanging out with his friends
in the summer, riding bikes, having fun, getting ready for school,
and then all of a sudden they find this zombie creature. Kid,
Was this a dream? Was this like a story that
you heard as a kid around the campfire?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The story?
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Almost I almost put it away, never bought it out again,
which I'm glad that I did it. If it wasn't
for Most Worshipful Steven Adam Rubin and brothers of Saint
Patrick's and my good friend brother Paul at Saint Pat's,
I probably wouldn't have published a book.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I had actually started on it about ten years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I don't want to like bring us all down in
the story about my father kind of passed away ten
years ago when I was about to publish it, and
he was a big influence.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
On my write and he just loved everything I did.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And we had a table lodge a Saint Pats and
Most Worstful like has come to the St. Pat's a
few times and we just got talking about it and
I told him that I haven't written in a very
long time, and that's when he suggested that I write
for Craftsman. So that's kind of got me back into
it again, and I started thinking, well, I have these
old stories, maybe I should look into doing them again.
(07:59):
So then I started showing him to some of the
brothers at Saint Pat's and something like guys were like, no,
this is really a really good story. You should do
something with it. So it's really the inspiration for this
story itself came from. Uh, there's a few movies that
I really loved, Stephen King movie, Stephen King books.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
So in the River's Edge, one of the friends murders
is a girlfriend and instead.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Of running or no body, he just leaves it laying
on the river's edge, and he brings all his friends
to come see this body, you know what I mean,
and just and stand by me. It's a bunch of
kids that as all though from the story, they decide
to have like a high camping trip to go see
a dead body in the woods, you know. And then
there was also a movie that was called Children Shouldn't
(08:42):
Play with Dead Things, which was like a nineteen sixties
horror movie, which was about a bunch of kind of
hippies experiment of black magic that go onto this island
and they start messing around with black magic and accidentally
wake up all the dead people on the au, all
these zombies. And that's kind of loosely where it came from.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
A lot of that spirit is captured in this story.
We're catching up with the brother Russell Dixon. He's the
author of Children Shouldn't Play with the Dead. If you're
looking for it, it's on Amazon like everything these days,
so you can start your search there or just look
for the in the show notes. We'll make sure to
have the link to get right to it. Children Shouldn't
Play with the Dead by Brother Russell Dixon. Russell, I
(09:19):
wanted to get to that point you started opening up
on it, and you know, the movies and the things
that you drew the inspiration from. There were some common
themes there. There's a lot about like coming to age
and like the growing pain that teenage angst. And early
in your book, like I found myself really connecting with Johnny,
who's the main character. What do they call him? Stilts?
(09:40):
That was his nickname.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Still, yeah, that was splud. That was actually my nickname
when I was a kid.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, and that was back when kids had cool nicknames
that your friends gave you. It wasn't you know something
that you just decided to call yourself. It's what everybody
else gave you. I got this book in January. I
read it on the train ride from Washington, d C.
Where I live now, to New York City. And then
I was like, Okay, we got to book Russell and
we got to get up close to October. So this
(10:07):
is a great Halloween story if you're into that. The
characters you kind of, you know, mold a Johnny around yourself.
But Danny is like the kid that everybody knew. Somebody
like this kid in school. He probably went on if
if the story continued into high school, there's no doubt
that he was probably a kid that smoked cigarettes and
was like drag racing his car in the parking lot.
(10:29):
Tell us about Danny Protter. This this this cool, tough
rebel kid. Who is he based on?
Speaker 4 (10:34):
So I think it's a lot of the characters were
based off of me and my childhood friends and my
recollection of him. My father always warned me to not
hang out with him. I fell as he had a
stack of juvie cars because he was in and out
of my honors to call it the bad Boys Home,
you know, that was always her a threat. If we misbehaved,
you gonna putus in a bad boys home, you know.
But see, I was in I was in a special
(10:56):
education when I was a kid. I was kind of
put in a special class. His small classrooms, small buses.
That's kind of alienated from all the other kids. So
to kids that were in special ed, he was kind
of like a Robin Hood figure to us, and and
we almost kind of looked up to him because he
just didn't care, you know what I mean. And even
even the kids in the mainstream classes were afraid of
(11:17):
him because he just he just did what he wanted,
you know, he just he was badass. Yeah, and he's
kind of not even all one person, you know. But
there's there's a few characters in my neighborhood in the eighties,
Like my brother read his story and he said of
gave him flashbacks that he actually could picture who the
kids were town the characters or model after because he
grew up in.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The same area, same dude, same I had the same experience.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Yeah, I really wanted to capture that Generation X experience.
You know, what we were up to and our parents
weren't looking, you know, we were what were we doing
we didn't have TV or anything. We we wandered in
the woods, we explored empty houses, We hung out with
kids that we shouldn't have hung out with, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
We played with zombies and poked them in a box.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
So like Johnny, the Johnny Stills character, he's just kind
of a regular kid. But his sort of tragic flaw
is he's a people pleaser and he just wants people
to like him. You know, he wants the things that
all of us wanted when we were kids. We wanted
we wanted to have a girlfriend, we wanted to be popular.
We just you know, Johnny still has just wanted people
(12:21):
to like him. So because of this need to be liked,
he was often drawn into these worlds with kids that
maybe he shouldn't have hung out with, like Danny Potter.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And when you get into the characters, and each one
(12:59):
of them are very well to find and like Danny
and all of his friends, right, but then the parents,
they kind of come off as like any parent that
it would have been on like an eighty sitcom that
we would have watched, like Growing Pains or like any
of those shows. Right, Like they just were background noise
to the kids, you know, they were basically just police,
like be home at this time, make sure your room's clean,
do this, do that, and so this you know, small
(13:20):
town story. It's going great. And then as you said,
like the kids go do what kids do. It's like
an abandoned camp.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Is that where they uh, yeah, Camp Henry's called And
that's actually a model after I grew up in Mayopak,
New York, on Lake Seacorp and on the other side
of Lake Seacorp actually was an abandoned a summer camp
called Camp Henry.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That must have been so creepy to walk around in.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Oh my, it's creepy.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
And it was well and that's part of like that
age like the characters of the book is like it's scary,
but you still want to do it, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That's kind of how Stilts was.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Like he was scared of Danny and he was scared
of his creature, but he's still I had to do
it because that part of you.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
You know, Yeah, it's funny when you talk about this,
because I think of my son. Here's a kid that
you know, yeah, he rode his bike around the neighborhood
a little bit, you know, hangs out with his friends,
but he's not doing what we used to do, which
would be like, hey, you want to go check out
that abandoned camp. I'll dare you to go over there
at midnight, and this is what you got to do
to prove that you were there. Like, that's the era
of this story. That's that's the life that we're going
(14:24):
up with.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Stilts discovers that Danny has found this zombie that he
decides to kind of keep as a pet.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
All was a zombie when he found it.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It was kind of a mummified kind of kid's corpse
that he found in the swamp. And he was out
couching frogs one day and he bought a bag of course,
and that kind of There was another kid that I
grew up with who found a dead squirrel that was
mummified and he thought it was cool and he kept
out in his clubhouse. So that's kind of where that connection,
okay came from. You know, as in most small towns,
(14:56):
most families have been there for many, many years. So
Danny Potter and Johnny Still's character are connected by family
lineages you'll find out in my next story, but they're
both natives to Gloversville. They're both connected by the secret societies,
which I explained more of my next book that's going
to come out soon.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Danny Potter is a descendant of the Potter family that
was in a secret society called the Order of the Shadows.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Johnny Still's grandfather, as.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
I talked about in this book Chili Shouldn't Play With
the Dead, father was a Freemason, and there's a scene
where he's talked that scene where he's talking to his
uncle and his uncle explains who the leather Man is
and and how his father, grandfather, his father was a Freemason,
and how they kind of vanquished the Leatherman. So that's
(15:50):
also going to be my next story. But so these
two characters are tied by by family history, you know,
and they don't even realize it, you know. So Danny's
kind of on the side of evil, this Order of
the Shadows, this kind of older fictional secret society, even
older than freemasonry. And and Johnny Stills, you know, is
(16:14):
from the Freemasons, you know. So he has this kind
of in neat control over evil and bad things, and
he doesn't really realize that the creature actually is woking
up when they do the sound. So when a bunch
of kids are sitting around in this prop closet in
the auditorium of Camp Henry and they start messing around
with it, and you know, and there's a couple of
(16:36):
funny moments in there, well, kind of sick funny moments,
like where Danny kind of routs around, was on his
head with his sticks. It's looked upstairs, and they're kind
of being disrespectful to it, you know, and they start
messing around with the egy board and.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Almost start eating one of them at one point. That
was the part I'm like, whoa, this is getting kind
of gross.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
So that was when the creature actually got woken up,
you know, the creatures like a, you know, the spirit
had enough of what was going on. And this is
kind of disrespect for the dead, which is really what
the title means is respect the respect what you don't understand, respect.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The dead, you know, don't play with them, don't mess
with them.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
You know. That's kind of what this group of kids
were doing. They were messing with this poor victim. Caleb
was actually a victim of the Leatherman and you'll learn
about him in my next book. They kind of accidentally
reanimate and Caleb, you know, and Caleb kind of jumps
down and at first he's just kind of angry monster,
you know, and he explains how he's smelling nothing about
(17:35):
the stumps of rock for the last hundred years, and
he's kind of cranky, and you know, he's what you
would expect an evil, little you know, zombie.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Creature to be.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, as clean and as crisp as the town you describe,
like fall and I'm picturing like the leaves and Halloween
with you know, the pumpkin and trick or treat. Underneath
all of that is like all the decades old pollution
that from all the industry that was happening in town.
And here's the price, Like this, this zombie kid, this
this creature comes around and for our listener, you're like,
(18:08):
wait a second, Okay, I hear where a lot of
this story is getting pulled from. I think I've seen
this movie before. I've heard this story before. I'm like, nope, no, nope,
you haven't. There's a really crazy twist at the end
where I was like, wait, is there a couple of
pages that is missing here? Like I got the digital download,
I'm like, did it not put it because it quickly
jumps from like as you pointed out, like zombies. You
(18:30):
got the weiji board, you got the leatherman witch, the
leatherman myth, and then you get into like a witch
slash gypsy thing that gets brought in here. So when you're,
as you said, storyboarding, like mapping this out, like you're like,
how am I going to wrap this all up? Ah,
a witch. I'm gonna introduce a wit, Like I'm just curious,
like how you pulled this story together?
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Oh well, I was another story back from my child
that I grew up on this sleepy little road called
Redbrook Road. It was like mostly woods halfway up and
as you'd walk up and walking home on the bus,
there was this little shack up in the woods next
to this stream, and there was this really old woman
that lived in there and she didn't speak to anybody.
She had no power, she had no running water. She
(19:13):
used to wash her clothes in the in the brook.
She used to use leaves to blow her nose, and
we used to call her the Witch. So that's where
I got the idea for the the Witch, this character
that lives in the woods, and it was also an
abandoned church in the woods from when I was a
kid that we experit her.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
So I kind of messed those two together.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Man, you had the kind of childhood where you were
primed to be a horror writer.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I was just always been obsessed with horror fill I
loved horror movie all of Stephen King and Kotslas.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Who grows up like right across well, not across the street,
but like across town from like an abandoned you know,
kids summer school camp area and also has a witch
and in an old abandoned church in nearby. Like, you
must have had a pretty exciting childhood yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I had. I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
And then I'm very much inspired by my surroundings, the
people around me. Like a lot of articles that I
wrote for Craftsmen were inspired by the brothers the Saint
Pats or some of the brothers I met at Scottish
Rite or so like, my surroundings inspired me. So now
you take me and then put me into Gloversville. The
city kind of with this really cool history going back
(20:20):
to colonial times. Even Saint Pats has got a fascinating history.
I mean, Saint Pat's number four existed before America was here.
I mean it was original shard from England, and there's
just so much history here. It's just fascinates me and
then you and there's this kind of creepy air. It's
just certain parts of town, like Gloversville, especially these big
abandoned factories and faded lettering on the side of it
(20:44):
and twisted metal. And my idea for children should play
with the dead is I wanted it to be a
jumping off point. I wanted to meet Gloversville especially, and
Johnstown Fonda sort of my Banger Maine. Which Banger Maine
is Stephen King. I want Blowersville, not the apparently sold
with Stephen King. I mean, the guy's a brilliant writer
and I hope I could be as well known as
(21:05):
him one day. But I wanted Gloversville to be this
trumpet off point. So this book is really intended to
be like the starting point. So there's gonna be a
lot of other books that are going to come out
from this world I created in Gloversville. So you'll see
a lot of these characters again and other stories that
I'm that I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
So we're catching up with a brother, Russell Dixon, and
when he's not senior deacon of his lodge, Saint Patrick's
Number four in Johnstown, New York. And he's also not
providing awesome blog articles Assent Online. His real job, at
least the one that pays the bills. Uh, he's a
newspaper reporter. And I found that really interesting when you
came to join us at Craftsman Online, because we had
(22:11):
never had anyone who was a journalist before. And the
way that you can describe and talk and really paint
that picture in your blog writings, it's fantastic. So when
I got the copy of the book from you, I
was like, Oh, I can't wait to read this, And yeah,
there's parts of it roun like that was just, you know,
so beautiful when you talk about the town and the scenery.
I myself have always had the idea to want to
(22:32):
write a book about some of the stories in my life,
but time it always comes down to that and like
where do you start and how do you do it?
And should I go take a community college class. So
for someone who's listening to this episode who has a
story idea or maybe someday would like to write their
book or story, Brother Russell, what advice do you have
for them, like where do you start.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
First thing is, don't want anybody to talk out of it.
People are naysayers, People are closed minded and they think
you're not a writer. You know, don't don't listen to
people that spent too many years doing that. So when
I was when I was a kid, I was I
had dyslexia and I spell out of time in special ed.
And the one thing that was very hard for me
to do was right. And I remember telling teachers that
(23:14):
I wanted to be a writer one day, and I
had a few of them just kind of taking about
a shoulder and tuckle and say, you know, it's not
really for you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
You know, it was really a dreamline.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
I really wanted to be a writer one day, Like
imagine myself as a foreign correspondent, you know, putting a
pulitzer or something like that.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
That didn't quite happen, you know, but see Hollywood kind
of threw off.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
What a real writer is, you know, like in the movies,
the writer sits behind the type typewriter and the magic happens,
you know, just sit down and they got the old
timey metal keys and they're just clicking away on it
and then poof there's this novel, you know, and it
really doesn't work that way, at least not for me
and our friend and all writers I know. You know,
so right when you know, do your research, do the storyboarding,
(23:59):
and I talk about writing an outline and.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Start off small.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
You know, don't don't maybe don't don't write the great
American novel yet. Maybe a lot of local newspapers have
guest calls, you know. Maybe that's how I kind of started,
I wrote. I was a guest columnst for Leader Harrold
for a long time. I've wrote dozens of oracles for them.
I wrote for this corrected because they're really open to it.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You just just call up your local paper and you
talk to the editor as for the news editor or
the op ed editor, and just say, hey, I have
an idea for an op ed. Would you let me
write it for you? And then they'll say, okay, give
me five hundred orders.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You know, honestly, I think you're you know, I'll make
a local joke here. The most famous person I know
from Gloversville, at least in our lifetime, would be Sean McMaster,
the DJ that's on WGNA for years. So children Shouldn't
Play with the Dead. It's out now on Amazon. You
teased the next book is going to be on the
Leatherman character. Do you have a working title for that?
(24:54):
And you have any idea when that will be released?
Speaker 4 (24:56):
So the working title is the Curse of the Leatherman.
How long it takes your release is usually up to
the publisher. I know when I had finished product for
children should Play with the Dead done. Took about a
year from when I handed to the polisher and then
had to find a product.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
So my book is selling on Amazon, and it's also
selling on forty different platforms, and it's also in paperback.
Pretty soon it's going to be in fifty different bookstores
across the US.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Hey, if you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow
us on Spotify, or you can get The Craftsman Online
podcast on Apple by hitting subscribe. That's how you get
our latest episode each and every week. Again, thanks to
all of our friends and brothers who continue to show
some love and sponsor this show. For just five dollars
a month on Patreon, what you get ad free early
(25:46):
access and the complete back catalog of our subscriber extra episodes.
What we get your support and advancing our mission to
connect men with free masonry. I'm right, Worshipel Brother Michael Arsa.
Until our time together next Monday, let peace and harmony
prevail
The Commons. Opinions and views shared during this program are
of those individual Freemasons and do not reflect the official
position of a Grand Lodge, concordant Body, a pendant Body,
Asonic Authority, or Craftsman Online dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hey, welcome back to the Craftsman on my podcast, the
only Masonic podcast endorsed by the Grand Lodge of New York.
We are so proud to get that on her each
in every week. I'm your host, right worship of Michael Arsa,
and you've joined us for an episode on well, the
title of it should kind of maybe send an eerie
chill up and down your spine. Children shouldn't play with
the dead, Oh man, the conspiracy theories are going to
(00:50):
have fun with this. Actually, I don't know who's going
to have more fun with this, the conspiracy theories, the
comments that we're going to get on social media for
that title, or our production team, who's probably sitting here going, oh,
we know how much RC is afraid of scary movies,
still sleeps with a night light at as an adult.
As we get ready for our conversation with Brother Russell
Dixon on his latest book, if you are a writer
(01:11):
or have questions haha. We are going to be doing
our very first listener Questions and Answers episode on the
Craftsman Online Podcast. I do get email from our listeners
from time to time. Our email addressed is podcast at
Craftsman online dot com. You can reach out to me
and send me any question you have about the podcast,
(01:32):
my personal life, maybe why I still sleep with the
night light. Those are all fair game and we'll answer
them on our upcoming Questions and Answers episode in October,
So fire away those questions. The email address is podcast
at Craftsman online dot com. All right, let's go inside
(01:55):
the mind of Brother Russell Dixon to explore his captivating
horse story children Shouldn't Play with the Dead. Now, little
background on Brother Russell. He has been writing for the
Craftsman Online blog for a few years now. He's a
proud member of Saint Patrick's Lodge Number four in Johnstown,
New York, and we're honored to have him on here
to talk about the first book in his series that
(02:16):
takes place in a small upstate town in Gloversville, New York.
Welcome to the Craftsman Online Podcast, Brother Russell.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Hi, Miike, thanks for having me on. I've been really
looking forward.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
To coming on and speaking to you and seeing you,
I think for the first time, well not in person.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But at least in video. Anyway. I think eventually we'll
meet up in the real world.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I think that'll be sooner than later. Yeah, my wife
and I were moving back to upstate New York in
targeting mid April before May one, twenty twenty six. So
the chances are we're going to run into each other
for sure, both being upstate New Yorkers and men and
Mason's let's start with your book and speaking of upstate
New York, this is what caught my attention. It takes place.
(02:58):
It's a fictional story that takes in a real place,
which is Gloversville, New York.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I grew up in Mayapak, New York. It was very
similar to Johnstown.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
There was a lot of apple archers and farms, and
it was like a kind of a nice country setting
and and sort of f NI eleven at urban sprawl
and a kind of area got overpopulated. And I went
to college at University of Albany, and that's when I
really got to know this area Upstate New York.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, the Copper region in Mulong Valley. I just
really really liked it up here.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, it's interesting when you pick up a book and
you're like, wait a second, I recognize this place, and
it didn't. I didn't have to use my imagination to
create the picture of Gloversville, New York in my head.
I've been there before. But as we get into your book,
children Shouldn't play with the dead. When you talk about
this story and where it's taking place, I kind of
(03:51):
got the Stephen King vibes a little early in your
book where he paints like these picturesque, like sleepy, nice
little towns where nothing bad ever happens, and kids riding
down the street and their bikes and you know, playing
outside and all those good things. When you talk about
some of your childhood was coming into this book, where
(04:12):
did you get the inspiration for this story?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, A big fan of Stephen King and and Dean Coots.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
And I was an avid reader as a child, and
a lot of it comes from my surroundings, you know,
and Cloversville and Johnstown in particularly has very interesting history.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
A lot of people don't.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Really realize it goes all the way back to I'd
say probably this sixteen hundreds where Fonde is a nearby town.
Oraysville Shrine was founded on property where some Jesuit priests
were murdered by Mohawk Indians back in the sixteen hundreds. So,
and there was a lot of battles, and battles of
(04:51):
the Revolutionary War took place in Johnstown. I believe the
last battle Revolutionary War took place there. There was a
lot of bloody skirmishes. At one point the Mohawk come
through the town like bird every resident at one time.
And Gloversville it had this proud long history as being
the gloat and the leading glove manufacturer in the world,
(05:11):
the on the Twin Cities, and it was it was
like the place to be.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Like the eighteen.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Hundreds and nineteen hundreds, Glowersville was booming, you know, the theaters,
they had their own opera house, they had their own museums.
I mean, it was a real vibrant town and founded
by a lot of these big names of the city
like Nason Latour. And there actually was a Potter family
(05:36):
that was here Potter my book is Podder. There actually
was a Potter family. They were very influential in the
leather industry. And I just thought it was fascinating how
all of a sudden this city kind of just crumbled,
I guess because of new environmental laws in the nineties
and because of competition overseas. It just kind of killed
the leather industry here. And so this once proud town
(05:59):
kind of wilted, you know, And now you go through
a lot of neighborhoods, it's just abandoned factories. And so
that's kind of inspired my imagination about what this city
must have been like, what some of the characters in
this city must have been like. And some of the
folklore actually came from downstate. I introduced a serial killer
called the Leatherman in this story. The Leatherman was this
(06:24):
wandering kind of vagrant who wandered around the Tri state
area Connecticut, sleupping caves and people fed him and they
gave him work, and I'm sleep in his barn. And
he was this guy who was clad in leather who
just wandered around this area. And they say he had
a broken heart and he kind of just was wandering.
Was his way of dealing with his broken harp.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I'm sitting here going where does a guy get a
story of a kid who's hanging out with his friends
in the summer, riding bikes, having fun, getting ready for school,
and then all of a sudden they find this zombie creature. Kid,
Was this a dream? Was this like a story that
you heard as a kid around the campfire?
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
The story?
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Almost I almost put it away, never bought it out again,
which I'm glad that I did it. If it wasn't
for Most Worshipful Steven Adam Rubin and brothers of Saint
Patrick's and my good friend brother Paul at Saint Pat's,
I probably wouldn't have published a book.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I had actually started on it about ten years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I don't want to like bring us all down in
the story about my father kind of passed away ten
years ago when I was about to publish it, and
he was a big influence.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
On my write and he just loved everything I did.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
And we had a table lodge a Saint Pats and
Most Worstful like has come to the St. Pat's a
few times and we just got talking about it and
I told him that I haven't written in a very
long time, and that's when he suggested that I write
for Craftsman. So that's kind of got me back into
it again, and I started thinking, well, I have these
old stories, maybe I should look into doing them again.
(07:59):
So then I started showing him to some of the
brothers at Saint Pat's and something like guys were like, no,
this is really a really good story. You should do
something with it. So it's really the inspiration for this
story itself came from. Uh, there's a few movies that
I really loved, Stephen King movie, Stephen King books.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
So in the River's Edge, one of the friends murders
is a girlfriend and instead.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Of running or no body, he just leaves it laying
on the river's edge, and he brings all his friends
to come see this body, you know what I mean,
and just and stand by me. It's a bunch of
kids that as all though from the story, they decide
to have like a high camping trip to go see
a dead body in the woods, you know. And then
there was also a movie that was called Children Shouldn't
(08:42):
Play with Dead Things, which was like a nineteen sixties
horror movie, which was about a bunch of kind of
hippies experiment of black magic that go onto this island
and they start messing around with black magic and accidentally
wake up all the dead people on the au, all
these zombies. And that's kind of loosely where it came from.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
A lot of that spirit is captured in this story.
We're catching up with the brother Russell Dixon. He's the
author of Children Shouldn't Play with the Dead. If you're
looking for it, it's on Amazon like everything these days,
so you can start your search there or just look
for the in the show notes. We'll make sure to
have the link to get right to it. Children Shouldn't
Play with the Dead by Brother Russell Dixon. Russell, I
(09:19):
wanted to get to that point you started opening up
on it, and you know, the movies and the things
that you drew the inspiration from. There were some common
themes there. There's a lot about like coming to age
and like the growing pain that teenage angst. And early
in your book, like I found myself really connecting with Johnny,
who's the main character. What do they call him? Stilts?
(09:40):
That was his nickname.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Still, yeah, that was splud. That was actually my nickname
when I was a kid.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, and that was back when kids had cool nicknames
that your friends gave you. It wasn't you know something
that you just decided to call yourself. It's what everybody
else gave you. I got this book in January. I
read it on the train ride from Washington, d C.
Where I live now, to New York City. And then
I was like, Okay, we got to book Russell and
we got to get up close to October. So this
(10:07):
is a great Halloween story if you're into that. The
characters you kind of, you know, mold a Johnny around yourself.
But Danny is like the kid that everybody knew. Somebody
like this kid in school. He probably went on if
if the story continued into high school, there's no doubt
that he was probably a kid that smoked cigarettes and
was like drag racing his car in the parking lot.
(10:29):
Tell us about Danny Protter. This this this cool, tough
rebel kid. Who is he based on?
Speaker 4 (10:34):
So I think it's a lot of the characters were
based off of me and my childhood friends and my
recollection of him. My father always warned me to not
hang out with him. I fell as he had a
stack of juvie cars because he was in and out
of my honors to call it the bad Boys Home,
you know, that was always her a threat. If we misbehaved,
you gonna putus in a bad boys home, you know.
But see, I was in I was in a special
(10:56):
education when I was a kid. I was kind of
put in a special class. His small classrooms, small buses.
That's kind of alienated from all the other kids. So
to kids that were in special ed, he was kind
of like a Robin Hood figure to us, and and
we almost kind of looked up to him because he
just didn't care, you know what I mean. And even
even the kids in the mainstream classes were afraid of
(11:17):
him because he just he just did what he wanted,
you know, he just he was badass. Yeah, and he's
kind of not even all one person, you know. But
there's there's a few characters in my neighborhood in the eighties,
Like my brother read his story and he said of
gave him flashbacks that he actually could picture who the
kids were town the characters or model after because he
grew up in.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
The same area, same dude, same I had the same experience.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Yeah, I really wanted to capture that Generation X experience.
You know, what we were up to and our parents
weren't looking, you know, we were what were we doing
we didn't have TV or anything. We we wandered in
the woods, we explored empty houses, We hung out with
kids that we shouldn't have hung out with, you know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
We played with zombies and poked them in a box.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
So like Johnny, the Johnny Stills character, he's just kind
of a regular kid. But his sort of tragic flaw
is he's a people pleaser and he just wants people
to like him. You know, he wants the things that
all of us wanted when we were kids. We wanted
we wanted to have a girlfriend, we wanted to be popular.
We just you know, Johnny still has just wanted people
(12:21):
to like him. So because of this need to be liked,
he was often drawn into these worlds with kids that
maybe he shouldn't have hung out with, like Danny Potter.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
And when you get into the characters, and each one
(12:59):
of them are very well to find and like Danny
and all of his friends, right, but then the parents,
they kind of come off as like any parent that
it would have been on like an eighty sitcom that
we would have watched, like Growing Pains or like any
of those shows. Right, Like they just were background noise
to the kids, you know, they were basically just police,
like be home at this time, make sure your room's clean,
do this, do that, and so this you know, small
(13:20):
town story. It's going great. And then as you said,
like the kids go do what kids do. It's like
an abandoned camp.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Is that where they uh, yeah, Camp Henry's called And
that's actually a model after I grew up in Mayopak,
New York, on Lake Seacorp and on the other side
of Lake Seacorp actually was an abandoned a summer camp
called Camp Henry.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
That must have been so creepy to walk around in.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Oh my, it's creepy.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
And it was well and that's part of like that
age like the characters of the book is like it's scary,
but you still want to do it, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That's kind of how Stilts was.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Like he was scared of Danny and he was scared
of his creature, but he's still I had to do
it because that part of you.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
You know, Yeah, it's funny when you talk about this,
because I think of my son. Here's a kid that
you know, yeah, he rode his bike around the neighborhood
a little bit, you know, hangs out with his friends,
but he's not doing what we used to do, which
would be like, hey, you want to go check out
that abandoned camp. I'll dare you to go over there
at midnight, and this is what you got to do
to prove that you were there. Like, that's the era
of this story. That's that's the life that we're going
(14:24):
up with.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Here.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Stilts discovers that Danny has found this zombie that he
decides to kind of keep as a pet.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
All was a zombie when he found it.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
It was kind of a mummified kind of kid's corpse
that he found in the swamp. And he was out
couching frogs one day and he bought a bag of course,
and that kind of There was another kid that I
grew up with who found a dead squirrel that was
mummified and he thought it was cool and he kept
out in his clubhouse. So that's kind of where that connection,
okay came from. You know, as in most small towns,
(14:56):
most families have been there for many, many years. So
Danny Potter and Johnny Still's character are connected by family
lineages you'll find out in my next story, but they're
both natives to Gloversville. They're both connected by the secret societies,
which I explained more of my next book that's going
to come out soon.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Danny Potter is a descendant of the Potter family that
was in a secret society called the Order of the Shadows.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Johnny Still's grandfather, as.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
I talked about in this book Chili Shouldn't Play With
the Dead, father was a Freemason, and there's a scene
where he's talked that scene where he's talking to his
uncle and his uncle explains who the leather Man is
and and how his father, grandfather, his father was a Freemason,
and how they kind of vanquished the Leatherman. So that's
(15:50):
also going to be my next story. But so these
two characters are tied by by family history, you know,
and they don't even realize it, you know. So Danny's
kind of on the side of evil, this Order of
the Shadows, this kind of older fictional secret society, even
older than freemasonry. And and Johnny Stills, you know, is
(16:14):
from the Freemasons, you know. So he has this kind
of in neat control over evil and bad things, and
he doesn't really realize that the creature actually is woking
up when they do the sound. So when a bunch
of kids are sitting around in this prop closet in
the auditorium of Camp Henry and they start messing around
with it, and you know, and there's a couple of
(16:36):
funny moments in there, well, kind of sick funny moments,
like where Danny kind of routs around, was on his
head with his sticks. It's looked upstairs, and they're kind
of being disrespectful to it, you know, and they start
messing around with the egy board and.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Almost start eating one of them at one point. That
was the part I'm like, whoa, this is getting kind
of gross.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
So that was when the creature actually got woken up,
you know, the creatures like a, you know, the spirit
had enough of what was going on. And this is
kind of disrespect for the dead, which is really what
the title means is respect the respect what you don't understand, respect.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The dead, you know, don't play with them, don't mess
with them.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
You know. That's kind of what this group of kids
were doing. They were messing with this poor victim. Caleb
was actually a victim of the Leatherman and you'll learn
about him in my next book. They kind of accidentally
reanimate and Caleb, you know, and Caleb kind of jumps
down and at first he's just kind of angry monster,
you know, and he explains how he's smelling nothing about
(17:35):
the stumps of rock for the last hundred years, and
he's kind of cranky, and you know, he's what you
would expect an evil, little you know, zombie.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Creature to be.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, as clean and as crisp as the town you describe,
like fall and I'm picturing like the leaves and Halloween
with you know, the pumpkin and trick or treat. Underneath
all of that is like all the decades old pollution
that from all the industry that was happening in town.
And here's the price, Like this, this zombie kid, this
this creature comes around and for our listener, you're like,
(18:08):
wait a second, Okay, I hear where a lot of
this story is getting pulled from. I think I've seen
this movie before. I've heard this story before. I'm like, nope, no, nope,
you haven't. There's a really crazy twist at the end
where I was like, wait, is there a couple of
pages that is missing here? Like I got the digital download,
I'm like, did it not put it because it quickly
jumps from like as you pointed out, like zombies. You
(18:30):
got the weiji board, you got the leatherman witch, the
leatherman myth, and then you get into like a witch
slash gypsy thing that gets brought in here. So when you're,
as you said, storyboarding, like mapping this out, like you're like,
how am I going to wrap this all up? Ah,
a witch. I'm gonna introduce a wit, Like I'm just curious,
like how you pulled this story together?
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Oh well, I was another story back from my child
that I grew up on this sleepy little road called
Redbrook Road. It was like mostly woods halfway up and
as you'd walk up and walking home on the bus,
there was this little shack up in the woods next
to this stream, and there was this really old woman
that lived in there and she didn't speak to anybody.
She had no power, she had no running water. She
(19:13):
used to wash her clothes in the in the brook.
She used to use leaves to blow her nose, and
we used to call her the Witch. So that's where
I got the idea for the the Witch, this character
that lives in the woods, and it was also an
abandoned church in the woods from when I was a
kid that we experit her.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
So I kind of messed those two together.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Man, you had the kind of childhood where you were
primed to be a horror writer.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I was just always been obsessed with horror fill I
loved horror movie all of Stephen King and Kotslas.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Who grows up like right across well, not across the street,
but like across town from like an abandoned you know,
kids summer school camp area and also has a witch
and in an old abandoned church in nearby. Like, you
must have had a pretty exciting childhood yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I had. I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
And then I'm very much inspired by my surroundings, the
people around me. Like a lot of articles that I
wrote for Craftsmen were inspired by the brothers the Saint
Pats or some of the brothers I met at Scottish
Rite or so like, my surroundings inspired me. So now
you take me and then put me into Gloversville. The
city kind of with this really cool history going back
(20:20):
to colonial times. Even Saint Pats has got a fascinating history.
I mean, Saint Pat's number four existed before America was here.
I mean it was original shard from England, and there's
just so much history here. It's just fascinates me and
then you and there's this kind of creepy air. It's
just certain parts of town, like Gloversville, especially these big
abandoned factories and faded lettering on the side of it
(20:44):
and twisted metal. And my idea for children should play
with the dead is I wanted it to be a
jumping off point. I wanted to meet Gloversville especially, and
Johnstown Fonda sort of my Banger Maine. Which Banger Maine
is Stephen King. I want Blowersville, not the apparently sold
with Stephen King. I mean, the guy's a brilliant writer
and I hope I could be as well known as
(21:05):
him one day. But I wanted Gloversville to be this
trumpet off point. So this book is really intended to
be like the starting point. So there's gonna be a
lot of other books that are going to come out
from this world I created in Gloversville. So you'll see
a lot of these characters again and other stories that
I'm that I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
So we're catching up with a brother, Russell Dixon, and
when he's not senior deacon of his lodge, Saint Patrick's
Number four in Johnstown, New York. And he's also not
providing awesome blog articles Assent Online. His real job, at
least the one that pays the bills. Uh, he's a
newspaper reporter. And I found that really interesting when you
came to join us at Craftsman Online, because we had
(22:11):
never had anyone who was a journalist before. And the
way that you can describe and talk and really paint
that picture in your blog writings, it's fantastic. So when
I got the copy of the book from you, I
was like, Oh, I can't wait to read this, And yeah,
there's parts of it roun like that was just, you know,
so beautiful when you talk about the town and the scenery.
I myself have always had the idea to want to
(22:32):
write a book about some of the stories in my life,
but time it always comes down to that and like
where do you start and how do you do it?
And should I go take a community college class. So
for someone who's listening to this episode who has a
story idea or maybe someday would like to write their
book or story, Brother Russell, what advice do you have
for them, like where do you start.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
First thing is, don't want anybody to talk out of it.
People are naysayers, People are closed minded and they think
you're not a writer. You know, don't don't listen to
people that spent too many years doing that. So when
I was when I was a kid, I was I
had dyslexia and I spell out of time in special ed.
And the one thing that was very hard for me
to do was right. And I remember telling teachers that
(23:14):
I wanted to be a writer one day, and I
had a few of them just kind of taking about
a shoulder and tuckle and say, you know, it's not
really for you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
You know, it was really a dreamline.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
I really wanted to be a writer one day, Like
imagine myself as a foreign correspondent, you know, putting a
pulitzer or something like that.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
That didn't quite happen, you know, but see Hollywood kind
of threw off.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
What a real writer is, you know, like in the movies,
the writer sits behind the type typewriter and the magic happens,
you know, just sit down and they got the old
timey metal keys and they're just clicking away on it
and then poof there's this novel, you know, and it
really doesn't work that way, at least not for me
and our friend and all writers I know. You know,
so right when you know, do your research, do the storyboarding,
(23:59):
and I talk about writing an outline and.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Start off small.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
You know, don't don't maybe don't don't write the great
American novel yet. Maybe a lot of local newspapers have
guest calls, you know. Maybe that's how I kind of started,
I wrote. I was a guest columnst for Leader Harrold
for a long time. I've wrote dozens of oracles for them.
I wrote for this corrected because they're really open to it.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
You just just call up your local paper and you
talk to the editor as for the news editor or
the op ed editor, and just say, hey, I have
an idea for an op ed. Would you let me
write it for you? And then they'll say, okay, give
me five hundred orders.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You know, honestly, I think you're you know, I'll make
a local joke here. The most famous person I know
from Gloversville, at least in our lifetime, would be Sean McMaster,
the DJ that's on WGNA for years. So children Shouldn't
Play with the Dead. It's out now on Amazon. You
teased the next book is going to be on the
Leatherman character. Do you have a working title for that?
(24:54):
And you have any idea when that will be released?
Speaker 4 (24:56):
So the working title is the Curse of the Leatherman.
How long it takes your release is usually up to
the publisher. I know when I had finished product for
children should Play with the Dead done. Took about a
year from when I handed to the polisher and then
had to find a product.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
So my book is selling on Amazon, and it's also
selling on forty different platforms, and it's also in paperback.
Pretty soon it's going to be in fifty different bookstores
across the US.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Hey, if you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow
us on Spotify, or you can get The Craftsman Online
podcast on Apple by hitting subscribe. That's how you get
our latest episode each and every week. Again, thanks to
all of our friends and brothers who continue to show
some love and sponsor this show. For just five dollars
a month on Patreon, what you get ad free early
(25:46):
access and the complete back catalog of our subscriber extra episodes.
What we get your support and advancing our mission to
connect men with free masonry. I'm right, Worshipel Brother Michael Arsa.
Until our time together next Monday, let peace and harmony
prevail
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com