The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 47 - Bricklayer Bill

Episode Date: January 8, 2015

Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the life of William Kennedy.SOURCES -Based on "Bricklayer Bill’s Ultra-Marathon of a Life" by Patrick Kennedy on Narratively.Get Patrick's book about Bricklayer Bill hereTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCHPATREON

When you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca host. Hello my name is Dave Anthony welcome to the dollop each week sometimes twice a week. We do a podcast and it's about American

history and I tell a story to my friend Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. And how does he not? That's not fair. I think it's true. No don't perpetuate that fucking shit because that's when that's what that crosses a line when somebody's just like hey the dumb one no. Alright he's smart. I just ain't read too many books. I ain't a book reading but I lie no stuff. I don't read books I read articles online. Do you want to look who to do? I'll do one buck. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to become a tickly quad cat. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail queen shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle. And do what? Pray. Hi Gary. No. I see you done my friend. No. No. Gary. Gareth. Gareth. Don't even move on without enough notes. You have a story that I would like to hear that happened to you. It's called an American history story because it's about American Airlines. It's about travel domestically and abroad. So what happened this week? Well David I went to England over the holidays to surprise my mother and see my family and it was lovely and I'd normally fly American Airlines. Sure. I'm pretty loyal to them.

They're a shit company but go ahead. Well it's just you know what it's like though when you start flying one airline you're like you know you're kind of in the dumb relationship where you're like you'll do. Yeah. You know so I put a ring on it and I so I flew over there great and then as I was flying back and I guess I'm just dumb as we established and I didn't know that I would be flying British Airways back because I fly American. Right. But I was flying British Airways and so then I flew back and I got and I landed in Houston in the States. Yeah. And and my flight like was leaving at like 9 p.m. that night. That's all I knew. Yeah. So when I was landing I was like six seven you know they were like the local time is 1 30 I was like what the fuck. I was like what is what an eight hour layover because I've never heard of that. I just figured the machine would handle the idea that like three hours is probably great. Yeah. It'll do fine. Eight is visit. Eight is you're hanging. Yeah. And you're meeting Houston. Yeah. You're Texan. And so I got there for eight hour layover. Yeah. Good times. And they just kept delaying and delaying and delaying. So the eight hours is becoming 10. Well it's all perspective right because you're like eight hours. Oh that's going to be a pain in the ass. And then at like hour you know 14 you're like God remember when I hated eight hours. I'd suck a dick for eight hours right now. Those eight hours those were the days. But then so they pushed they pushed they pushed and then it I just had the feeling like this is not going to end well so I was hanging up near the counter and people were kind of like what the fuck is going on. And this woman got on the PA and she was just like she shouldn't have said this probably but she was just like we don't know what's happening. There's a mechanical problem. The mechanic literally just walked off and we don't know where he is. American Airlines. Everybody was like what. And then they canceled it soon after and then so I had to spend the night in Houston and then the next day. What the fuck is that.

So door to door from where from the small town I was in in England to Heathrow to Houston to L.A. to get my car to home it took 37 hours. Holy fucking shit. Yeah. 37 hours you're flying American Airlines. Ah man it's just like that's when you fit that's when you feel the pulse of pride inside your veins. So if you're coming over from Australia. Air New Zealand sounds good. I'm going to recommend you don't fly American Airlines. Yeah. Gareth. Gareth.

The year was 18. Not good. 83. That's right where I am on it. Okay it's in the zone. Yeah. Young William Kennedy was born in Harlem. Okay.

Harlem was supposed to blossom when the subway and railroads arrived. Sure. In a large agricultural community spec speculators readied Harlem as an exclusive suburb for the white middle class. Well and their vision held true. They built stately houses and grand view avenues. Oscar Hammerstein opened his Harlem Opera House there in 1889. People thought shit was going to blow up. People were probably right.

But the affluent middle class did not arrive as fast as anticipated or at all. And in order to survive and attract residents building owners lowered their rents. The result was an influx of immigrants. East European Jews Irish as well as African Americans. No those are not immigrants but. No. Yeah. Remember when you immigrated here.

No. Fuck face. From just I was in the Bronx. So white Harlem never took off. Shocking because that's what I feel like those are like peanut butter and jelly. Yeah. The stockyards alternated with gas works. Modern brick tendiments were erected alongside old wooden shacks to handle the waves of the poor.

Among those poor was an Irish family headed by Larry J. Kennedy. Classic. Classic Irish name. Yeah. Larry. LJK. Larry and his wife cranked out nine kids. Cranked did they?

If you're Irish that's the law. You gotta move. You gotta just keep making fun of your stuff. I haven't healed yet. Sorry it's time. Sorry we're going again. We gotta put more buns in the hot oven. I've got to put me cock in you.

Are you ready Marilyn? No. Here we go. Oh no. I'm hardly healed. Not again Larry. No. Fuck.

Oh this is a cranking. Oh Jesus. Oh cranking Mark. Oh lord. Oh bye. It's worse than Comstock. Alright. Yeah I think we've been rude enough to that woman's vagina.

William Kennedy. Bill was the second of nine children and went to work at the age of seven. I was so excited for the age it really paid off. Seven. Seven. Seven. Alright dad it's time. Oh god the bus is up in my ass.

Bill what are you? Six seven. I'm seven dad. Alright. Time to earn your keep. Seven. Seven. Seven.

Selling newspapers on street corners. Ugh. Right? Yeah. This is just good times. Sure. Don't worry about school. No.

Don't worry about school. Nope. We're giving you a chance. The streets of Harlem. Extra extra your lives fucked. Extra extra I'm going nowhere. Extra extra I'm seven. Extra extra no laws.

The streets of Harlem were muddy past clogged with cows and chickens when Kennedy was a boy. By the time Bill was nine in 1892 his father decided Harlem wasn't the place to be and moved his brood out to another frontier. Port Chester a tiny but bustling factory town in New York's West Chester County. Okay. Which I was just at on vacation. It's not.

It's not that great. The chickens and cows. Port Chester's you know. There LJ. Put that on the sign as you drive in. There LJ as he was known. Applied his trade as a bricklayer. Age eight.

Yeah. Dad's a brick man. You're going to set up papers. He eventually became a somewhat successful contractor overseeing the construction and enlargement of factories, schools, hospitals and libraries across the region. So he's fucking. Yeah. He's rolling.

He's really connected to some Irish. Temony Hall. Sure. Bullshit. Sure. Getting the sweet deals. Yeah. Nothing.

We'll take it. Nothing that my Irish ancestor did back then was above the table. No. It was all fucking. Well it was potato bribing. Do you have the potatoes? How about the potatoes? LJ had learned the trade from his father and so he taught Bill and his brothers the way

of bricklaying. Fascinating. But it's not a slab of fucking this shit here. Put her down there. And then put it down there. Okay. Grab another one. All right.

Now do that to your fucking die. You should have gone to school. Yeah. Bill took up the trial and went to work as an apprentice at age 13. He grew up on his father's building site. 13 years old. Yeah. He's securing a sweet death at 24.

Flying through cliff-noting life. Yeah. He grew up on his father's building site. It's pushing heavy wheelbarrows full of bricks and carefully measuring and staking core lines where walls would begin. Wearing a cloth cap on his head and a button-down shirt and tie under his work overalls. A tie. Yeah.

It's such bullshit that they used to make you wear like a- What the fuck? You're a construction guy. Yeah. Oh, you can't look like shit when you're putting the bricks down. No. Don't embarrass yourself in front of the mortar. Respect the bricks, boy.

You treat every brick like a brick funeral. Oh, Christ sakes. Where's your fucking tie? Uh... They just have to work in tuxedos in a field. He would stoop over to pick up a brick from its pile, place it on the mortar bed and tap it in a place, then stoop to pick up a new brick over and over a hundred times a day. Life in the dream.

I've gone to America! The young Kennedy learned how to build walls, staircases, chimneys, and walkways, and like his old man, he learned to cuss, chew tobacco, and appreciate his union. Yep, sure. At age 14, he was the head of the union, being the eldest. Uh... We want to be paid in chocolate. The union was the bricklayers and masons international, founded in 1865, the oldest continuously

operating trade union in North America. Alright. Bricklayers. Yeah. Bill, as he was known, also learned to drink beer with the older brickies after work. The older brickies. Yeah, they call themselves brickies. I like that.

And I'm a brickie. So he's just... I mean, this is gonna... I don't know where we're headed, but I like some of the details. The drinking... The drinking like a construction worker at 13 is nice. It's a beautiful thing. His father, who was a noted tea totaler, yeah, was not pleased with the drinking.

Wait, what's a tea totaler? People who don't drink. Oh. Do you never phrase tea totaler? No. Yeah, so it means people who just don't enjoy the beverages. Straight edge. Yeah, straight edge.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, now known as straight edge. Now known as straight edge. Oh, the boring people. Yeah. Um, the cheerful Bill and his hot tempered father would fight over Bill's drinking often. Okay. Yeah, yeah, good places.

Maybe butting heads with his father is what led Bill into the ring. Oh, yum. At 14, Bill began moonlighting as a prize fighter. Oh, okay. So just so we've summed up. Okay. By 15, he has lived more life than I have now. I mean, it must be strange for your life to literally play out as a montage for you.

He's been selling newspapers. He's in a union. He's a bricklayer. He fights with his dad and he's a prize fighter. Oh, man, you know what, 16 is going to be weird and in this day and age, he couldn't drive yet. That's right. Um, the death of his mother at 15 probably also made him want to punch strangers.

Okay. So and his mother died at fifth. So he's got it all. He's got he's right now. He's middle aged. Well, she, she saw, she saw a sweet 33, which was far longer than was expected. I would have lived longer if you hadn't fucked me all the time. I think I'm dying from a broken vagina for the next couple of years.

Larry and Bill would struggle living and working together without the tempering influence of the woman that had held their had held them together. All right. So we removed, we removed the border, the motherly presence. Yeah. The bricks. Now it's just two bricks on top of each other. Oh man.

What do you mean? That should be a hallmark. Dude. Technically, the sport of boxing was illegal in New York, but the state's night 1896 Horton law created a loophole for private athletic associations to stage quote, fistic exhibitions of sparring. I mean, yeah, fistic, yo, yeah, I love when the government carves out loopholes too. Oh, you're going to get your fistic removed.

It's places like the Coney Island Athletic Club charge spectators admission fees, which they called temporary membership dues. It's a lot like marijuana here, like a lot of it's like you donate. It's exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're a member of the club. Well, here you go.

Here's how much you have to donate for your weed. Yeah. Gambler is then better. I've heard gamblers bet on the fights and boxes were paid under the table. Great. Shockingly, this led to rig matches between mediocre fighters and dirty promoters. I don't know how this all led to that, because it seems so up and like such a good lie. Well, no, there's definitely a lot of rules, I'm sure.

It sounds like there's a lot of rules. Boxing is illegal unless you do it in a private club and you can gamble and whatnot and everyone gets paid in cash. All right. But it ain't boxing. Okay. Now let's keep it straight, boys. Now let's get this boxing match started.

Let's keep it straight. Let's go fucking around. Young teens like Bill fought on the warm-up undercards, $3 to the winner, $2 to the loser. Bill was the loser much more often than the winner. All right. Two bucks. Two bucks. That's fine.

The big money headline bouts were pretty ugly. Quote, they fought not in a scientific manner, but with true slugging form. And the way they thumped each other made the spectators howl with delight. The police gizette reported the police I'm a little overwhelmed with where to start. But first of all, who who is who who fights scientifically? Scientists. Yeah. But I mean, that's the scientists get the snot kicked out of them when they fight.

They're like, hold on. If I actually look at the angle, oh, God, my face. Oh my God. I used to love the scientific fights of Muhammad Ali. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's tremendous.

Yeah. He's walking his hand demonstrating. But then, OK, so and then the police gizette newspaper is reporting on the is reporting on the law. I saw illegal the loophole fights. Yeah. But as like real journalism, OK, all right, continue continue to further and the quote maher be maher be his opponents bruised eye into a jelly like pulp.

Yeah. Several fighters died during the Horton Law era. The matches attracted the cigar chomping derby clad gamblers who would be seedy characters and brawls and even riots broke out after some fights. Bill started to realize there wasn't a big future in the world of fighting and he hung up his gloves after a few years. However, it was in training for boxing that he realized he enjoyed running simply legging it up and down the paved streets of Port Chester and the dusty country roads nearby.

But he stopped running as he had entered adulthood because back then grown men just didn't run around for the fun of it like you could do it if you like. I'm training for boxing or if you just you just had to pretend you were being chased all the time. He's like getting closer. He's getting closer. Where the fuck are you going in such a hurry and being chased? I'm running for fun.

Where? Running for. Who the fuck runs for fun? You don't. I don't know. We just feel like you're being a little strange. We heard you were running for fun. What in the fuck happened to Bill?

I see something the other day and he's running through the orchards. No boy of mine is out there running for fun. No boy. Christ, you brought sham on our family. Oh, you're goddamn running. You like running? Well, why don't you run out of this house because there's not a bed in here for you anymore.

There's a lot of tears is what there are. As the years went by, Bill and his brother, Joe increasingly enraged their father with their late night browsing. Finally, when Bill was 18, he and Joe, who was two years younger, hopped a train bound for the West. Perfect. That's planning. So 18, he's like, I'm good to go and then he takes his 16-year-old brother.

Yep. Time, you know, living back then was a little bit different. Well, I mean, you definitely could follow Wim's. You could definitely like a lead was all you needed for anything. Nowadays you're like, I don't have a job lined up. Then you were like, that thing's going that way, let's live there. The Kennedy boys were part of a great westward movement that took advantage of the railroads. They were hoboing, sneaking a ride by train to a new town where they would then look for

work. Back then, hobos looked down on tramps who wouldn't look for work when they got to a town. American heritage defined the men this way, a hobo as a migratory worker, a tramp as a migratory non-worker, and a bum as a stationary non-worker. Oh, that's the best. Look at you sitting and not working. That's like...

You're a fucking bum. You should be like my cousin, Bill, he's riding, riding around, moving about, working. Or at least like my other brother, who's a tramp. He's at least moving around. At least going somewhere. At least to get to see yourself. What the fuck are you doing, laying there in the porch? I love that tramps are like, well, it could be worse.

I mean, I'm not a bum. I'm not laying about. Look, I agree. I hear you. I'm not a hobo. I'm just telling you things could be worse. Dr. Ben L. Reitman explained in this way, the hobo works in wanders, the tramp dreams in wanders, and the bum drinks in wanders.

Oh, but when you put it like that, who do you want to be? The bum. Yeah, the bum's got the fucking squee right. Walked into a wall. What are you going to do today? Get shitfaced and walk? Why, where do you get it at one of your fancy trains? Hobos were actually one of the builders of the West called into life by a very special

set of circumstances. Hoboing started after the Civil War. The original hobos were all veterans of the Civil War. They were the answer to underemployment. As a hobo named Ren stated, do you know that this country couldn't exist without us hobos? The Northwest got to us. God, they don't speak well. The Northwest got to have us guys work at lumber in the winter, and then Oklahoma's

got to have us work wheat in the summer. And we got to get there quick or the crops spoil. So the hobos were like this fucking the the infrastructure and they were the infrastructure like they went wherever the work was right John Tucker, who was president of the Hobo College. Oh, whoa, whoa, pal. We'll get back to that. Alrighty, as long as we're putting a pin in it.

He said the hubo goes forth from the crowded slave markets to hue the forest, build and repair the railroads, tunnel mountains and build ravines. He is the labor that harvest the wheat in the fall and cuts the ice in the winter. All these men are hobos. So hobo's hobos is not a bad term. It's become such a bad term that's the tramps of the bad ones. Yeah. If you took me on paper today, I would tell you the most the one I'd want to be would

be a tramp. I'd want to be a find a nice lady. We need spaghetti. Yeah, but you're not working. So how are you making money? I mean, you're robbing people or you're how are you getting by giving me all your money? Okay. See, there we go.

See all the material is unnecessary back on the train. The hobo college went under in 1916. At Tuesday, April 16th, the Chicago Tribune reported and by the way, I actually found this article. I found that, you know, when they it's like a picture of the lady, like a PDF of the of the. Yeah, yeah. I actually found the article of the hobo college closing down headline hobos college

loses students. Chicago's hobo college has ceased to function. The great the great hobo college has ceased to function. Doctor, what is that degree from? Oh, I went to school at hobo college. Now excuse me, I'm going to put a fish in this woman. Now show me that word so I can put a salmon in it. Warm weather has driven its students out of the city to seek jobs and the loafers who

had no real interest in the college anyway quit when free lunch was discontinued. Coffee was the lifeblood of the college and doughnuts were the stuff upon which it existed. So when coffee and rolls were missing recently at a session of the public speaking class, the doom of the college was sealed. Oh, boy. Yeah, they're like, they have a they have a bottom. There's no doughnuts. Fuck, are we doing go lay down in the park?

I'm going to go puke in the park. Classes were held three times a week at 17 East Congress Street. On Tuesdays, the Reverend Erwin John Tucker instructed them in social economics. On Thursdays, Dr. John Cousins taught them sanitation and hygiene. Interesting that they had to be a class. Okay, boys. Today we're going to talk about washing your bowls. Okay, welcome to brushing your teeth.

Now, you probably hear, I'm the tough brushing your teeth teacher I am. Okay. Kind of a hard ass. There's going to be a test. There's going to be a couple of tests and pop quizzes. Okay. Okay. First pop quiz can happen right now.

What do you brush your teeth with? Soap. Nope. Each other. Okay. It's going to be a long year. Okay. Attorney George Waterman lectured on common law with special reference to vagrancy.

Oh boy. I can't believe that college closed. Yeah, it just does not sound like real position. America was in the middle of an enormous transition as the nation underwent the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. It was a period that also had rapidly increasing population, urban development, and geological expansion as the frontier pushed itself westward. These conditions were of fundamental development to the hobo as with the expansion of the railroads

growing from 30,000 miles in 1860 to 230,000 miles in 1890 and 254,000 miles by 1916. Nothing was more important to the hobo than the rails. The estimation of the number of hobos varies. A professor Holbrook suggested that in the 1890s, there were 60,000 hobos also believed that the number of hobos in the late 1890s stood between 500,000 and 1 million in 1934. The US Bureau of Transient Affairs estimated there are 1.5 million hobos riding. The conclusion is that it's really fucking hard to count hobos. Oh my god, it's like y'all have the same hat.

Sometimes I wish you guys were just bums. I really do. Oh look, you got a broken cigar too. Yeah. Okay. Oh cool, you've got a fucking handkerchief with all your clothes in it on a stick. Oh god. Go boy.

So the Kennedy brothers lived this way for a while, then they made their way back to New York. Phil wasn't there for long. He went back out on the rails. He went hoboing. This time he left the city alone without his brother. Okay. Hobo solo.

Hobos were likely to prefer box cars, but they rode anywhere. A top cargo in open gondolas, among the livestock and cattle cars, on bumpers between cars, or in the empty ice boxes of the fruit specials. Oh my god. That just sounds horrible. I mean, that just sounds so horrible. Just didn't know you were in there with all the pineapples. What are you going to do?

Oh, I'm going to sleep near these cows and then get off and get work and I'll work. To avoid detection, Bill often went, after often spent a whole trip riding the rods. Oh, just standing in between the- No, riding the rods is so much worse. Oh boy. Which meant hanging onto the brake rods or beams underneath the freight or passenger cars just above the wheels and track. Oh my god.

This life was very dangerous. From 1890 to 1910, 32,276 hobos and tramps were killed on American railroads. See, we can get a count of that. It's just hobo corpses. Yeah, but that's like- Oh, that's a lot of dead people dying from hanging out under trains. That's like a war. Oh, yeah.

That's- no, sorry. That is a lot of dead hobos. Like, it must have been like every 13 feet. Well, yeah. I mean, that's multiple- I mean, that's so many a day. It must have just been like, God, Jesus Christ, there's so many dead fucking hobos. Is it raining hobos? Jesus Christ.

It's just merely multiplying. It's like they're born dead, though. What's happening? It's like they're born full-sized dead hobos. I think some town is just dumping their hobos here, throwing them off the trains. Just be one guy who could kill all those hobos. Oh, God, yeah. And he'd just be like, they should stop hanging out under trains.

They either died by falls or encounters with railroad bulls, also known as private security officers or other misfortunes. So those officers are just killing them. Oh, they would just beat the living shit out of them until they, you know, knock them over the head with a little- Interesting policy. More than one met death when a mishold sent him under the wheels. More than one came to an end at the hands of an overzealous breakey or a railroad bull

or star to death when locked into a boxcar shunted into an unused building. Oh, gee, what a way to go. What could you imagine? Oh, I can't wait to get off in Fresno. Never been there. Ugh. Okay, train stopped. Oh, I guess I'm in a dark warehouse.

Have you seen Into the Wild? That movie? Um, think I'll probably just die here over the next eight days. Well, first I'm going to eat this wood. First I'm going to eat this wood. Many other hobos were maimed for life. Now imagine if 32,000 died, how many were maimed? Like, how many lost legs or whatever, heads, just trying to live without a head.

You meant Charlie doesn't have a head? When Bill was riding- Hard to get a head count. It's hard to get a head count. When Bill was riding a rod on a freight train pulling into Cleveland, he fell asleep and slipped from the rod. Okay. I mean, you can't have it all. What do you mean?

If you're hanging under a fucking train, sorry, you nap when you get to your destination. Well, I agree. You should not nap when you're- You don't nap when you're hanging. If your life depends on you holding on to something, you shouldn't take a nap. Yeah, it's no time. It's just basic rules. Well, and that's just, you could tell he's just getting too comfortable. I always thought that they, that they, because when they show it in movies, they attach their

belt. Right. Yeah. He suffered severe cuts on his right arm, but he lived. From then on, he chose to ride somewhere safer, like the feed box of a cattle car. He later wrote, you can't sleep very well with the cattle eating the bed from underneath you. Fair.

Well, lesser of two evils. Fair. Oh, but they're not going to kill you. No. And you're not going to fall off from your bed. Occasionally, he would get off in a town to eat, like at the free pretzels that Saloon's offered with a beer or sleep someplace stationary, like a livery stable or a 10 cent flop house. So this is just great.

What a lovely, what a lovely life. Yeah. What a dream. Living the dream. Yep. It's called freedom, baby. Hey, look, man, you're just napping wherever you can find and living on a diet of pretzels. Just pretzels and beer and then sleeping next to horses.

Oh man. Now, simpler times, David. There is almost always work for a good bricklayer during this period due to industrialization, population growth and urbanization as a union member. Okay. So he's still a union member. Yeah. Even though all these hobos are cruising out and they're like, I'm a union man.

Yeah. As a union member, he get job leads as well as a network. So he rarely didn't have food or friends around. This was Bill's life traveling from coast to coast and from the north to the south. During a layoff one summer day in 1904, Bill went to a baseball game. He was drinking beer and sitting on a wooden bleacher seat when between innings a brass band struck up the popular song, meet me in St. Louis. Oh no.

He's like, yeah. Bill thought, what an awesome idea. I will meet you in St. Louis. This is how drunk hobos work. Yeah. It's destiny. It's the sign that came on. I'm going.

That must mean I moved to St. Louis. I should go there. All right. Get a sleep with a cow. Got a handful of pretzels. At 20, he decided to head for St. Louis, which was then hosting the world's fair. It really is amazing when you're talking about this because he's aging a lot in my head and now he's 20.

He should be 45. Yeah. Okay. Bill quickly realized that St. Louis was his kind of town. First it was built almost entirely of brick. Hey, can't hate that. We love just some brick. This was partly because of a city ordinance after a devastating 1849 fire and partly because

of the region's rich clay mines. The city had about 100 brick factories at the time. Jesus Christ. The era of the brick. If you're a bricklayer, you're fucking. That's a lot of bricks. It's a shit load of bricks. It's a lot of bricks.

It's brick having. 100 brick factories. So it was an exciting time to be in St. Louis with the world's fair going on. Bill's youthful love of athletics was sparked again while attending the 1904 Olympic Games, which took place in the middle of the fair. Bill was really taken with the marathon race, which was still a new sport, although. As long as it wasn't for fun. Right.

No, it's not for fun. All right. The 1904 marathon was marred by cheating, doping, and other scandals. It's come a long way, but it's still one on to inspire a local version. The following year, the Missouri Athletic Club, all Western marathon, catchy title. Bill joined other enthusiasts of the new niche sport and started going for training runs on the outside roads of St. Louis. Some farmers were livid with the new sport.

Of course. They were outraged that their daughters would see men dashing by in what they took as undergarments. Yep. A very fair way of looking at everything. Perfect. He's running around in his underwear in front of my girls. My girls won't be able to focus because there's a naked man running. Look at him in his shorts.

He's just showing it off. By 1907, Bill entered the Missouri AC Marathon for the first time. He finished in the back of the pack, but was not deterred, and he kept at it. Running was now his passion. Okay. In 1908, while in Arkansas, working, he beat a horse in a 10-mile race. Okay. Alrighty.

So a couple of things. Yeah. You want to... That's a terrible horse. Okay. Yeah. That's one. I think I could find an earlier step.

Two. Who set that up? Yeah. Who was like, I can beat a horse. Who was like, oh, you're a runner? You're one of the runner guys? Well, how about you take out my horse, Bert? Yeah.

I mean, all the horses not like, I need to beat this guy. Yeah. The horse is like, I'm going to walk. I'll run whatever I want to do. Oh, I actually don't have a horse in this race. Yeah. No. I don't actually know what competition is.

I'm a horse, but I don't have a horse in this race. Yep. So... I'm just going to watch. Alrighty. I can't imagine that it was a full sprint race. No. Yeah.

That's like, Fox had that fucking show like, probably fucking eight years ago where it was like, man versus beast. And it would be like, who can do more chin-ups? A Navy SEAL or an orangutan? An orangutan. Yeah. Because he was just like, what the fuck? And the Navy SEAL was like, 41.

The orangutan was like, my life is this. The orangutan is like, also bananas. Yeah. He's like, give a shit. 401 with my toe. Though Bill continued to follow the bricklayer work wherever it was in demand, St. Louis remained his base. In 1909, he did something crazy and actually found a place to live.

He put down roots and moved into the boarding house of Lizzie Herbert, a mother with three daughters. The eldest of these was a pretty 18-year-old redhead named Nelly. Oh boy. Bill was super into Nelly and she returned the feelings. Even though he was just five and a half feet tall, he was described as picturesque. Oh, all right. A courtship blossomed and the couple was soon engaged.

All right, time to crank out nine and die. Yep. In May, Bill signed on with the St. Louis-based SEAL, Gray Construction Company, who paid union wages to build a convention hall in a neighboring state. Bill then traveled to Iowa that spring to help build the Des Moines Coliseum. She was going to be a buked. The Plaint Coliseum would take up an entire city block. Can you imagine?

No. Wow. The size. Think about it. I can't even picture it. I don't have any idea. It would rise four stories high and hold up to 10,000 people. Whoa.

Hello. Well, that's like ancient Rome. Overlooking the Des Moines River, the venue in ensuing decades would host tractor shows, corn growers conventions, and speeches by four U.S. presidents. So there you go. A lot of great stuff in there. Yep. Corn.

Come watch Corn Grow. Corn Grow convention, where you all come in together and you go, so what's going on with your corn? Red growing. How about yours? It's growing up. See you next year. Okay.

Catch you around here. Bye. Bill was one of 20 bricklayers to work on the building, along with 30 carpenters and other tradesmen and laborers. On Thursday, October 21, 1909, the Coliseum was nearing completion. Under a clear blue sky, the bricklayers were standing on a narrow platform on the lower level of what was becoming a two-tiered roof. Oh, dear.

Bill was scraping excess mortar from the part of the wall that rose above him and jetted farther south than the part of the roof holding his platform. This meant Bill had to grasp the wall with his left hand, lean over and stretch himself a bit out over the street. See, okay. Now, like, even, like, I have a fear of heights and I can hear what, like, just hearing that gives me a weird, a weird feeling. Yeah, I feel like vertigo just from hearing that.

He'll be fine. No, I don't like this. So he would reach up to scrape the mortar with the trowel with his right hand. This is why bricklaying was dangerous work and why they were one of the first unions. Just a couple of days before, a fellow brickie had fallen to his death from a building just two miles away. Around noon, the breeze turned blustery. Oh, have fun up there.

Use your one hand. It's going to be a little breezy today. As Bill pulled himself back into his standing position, a 30-mile-an-hour gust caught him and threw him off balance. Bill lost his footing and fell from the platform. The fall was 65 feet to the sidewalk. Well, I'm assuming that there's some sort of canopy he falls through to survive. Well, a month earlier, a city official had asked the sites foreman to remove some sidewalk

barriers. He figured the work was almost done and a state fair was about to increase foot traffic. That's what allowed a tailor named John Holmquist to find himself walking down the sidewalk past the Coliseum when a 130-pound bricklayer landed on his head and shoulders. Oh, Jesus Christ, they totempolled. Bill drove Holmquist into the ground, snapping his neck instantly. Let's get all the good news out right now. Kennedy rebounded from Holcomb's body and landed with considerable force upon the sidewalk,

reported the Des Moines news. Holmquist's body lay prostrate on the walk, eyes staring into the sun. He was dead, leaving behind a wife and five children. Bill was seriously injured. Wait, Bill was seriously injured? Yeah, he fell like, fell on a nice... He's not dead? No, he fell on a nice, soft guy, got a nice tailor.

Tailors aren't like hardened, they just, they're like a pillow. Thank God for that human cushion. Holy shit, there's got to be a lot of guilt that goes along with that. That's got to be weird to fall on another guy. Although in this day and age, I'm sure you're just like, well, lucky me, he sucks to be him. Oh, thanks for being there. Thank you, my gushy friend.

Hey, Squishy Squish. Bye, Squishers. Bill was seriously injured, reported some papers, but apparently only stayed in Mercy Hospital for one week. What? I was just slightly hurt internally with no broken bills, Bill wrote later. Doesn't he sound like a drunk? It's crazy.

Yeah, he was in the hospital, he was like, I got to get some whiskey. His bones intact, Bill returned to the Herbert's boarding house in St. Louis, only to have his heart broken. Nellie had moved out and married another man. It could have been the realization that he had a very dangerous job or the fact that a bricklayer had to spend so much time away, but either way, she decided to break it off. A bricklayer is like a comedian. Yeah, but also this comedian just nailed another man into earth.

Look, that guy was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was there to save bricklayer Bill. Naturally, this created an opening for Nellie's younger sister, Jesse. Your dad's dead because a man fell on him, kids. Your dad's dead and he's not coming back because a man fell on him. Oh, no, you can't see him, he's in half. No, he's honestly, he looks like he's just basically a statue, he's all concrete. We buried him in a hole.

We put him in a bucket. Well, we really didn't have to do much burying. We actually brought him up a couple of feet because he was really down into the crust. Scooped him out. Naturally this created an opening for Nellie's younger sister, Jesse. Why go to a different house? You know, it's all right there. That is true.

The girl got married and he was like, yeah, I'll still stay here. Well, there's another door. I still got that room with the bed. Living in closed quarters again, their relationship suddenly became more intimate. In October 1910, Jesse realized. Sexually intimate? She was pregnant. Well, right.

That's so intimate it was. Yeah. That's super intimate. That he finished. The couple were married on Halloween. He was 26 years old and she was what is now known as 16. Fine stuff. They continued to live in her mother's house.

The engagement didn't start well because Jesse complained that the engagement ring Bill bought her wasn't as big or fancy as the one he'd given her sister. Oh boy. That's. This is why you got to leave the gene pool. Well, that's also the kind of thing that is 16 year old does. Yeah. Well, that's why you don't marry make you imagine his face when he heard that he's

like, oh, shit. She noticed. Oh god. Here we go. Jesse did not soften with age. The couple remained together for the rest of his life and raised two daughters. But all indications are that it was a rocky marriage. Relatives and in-laws would remember Jesse as quote emotional and odd duck and a tartar.

So she's an emotionally tartar duck, fair, fair you've heard it a million times. Fair description. You've heard it a million times. Yeah. She's classic emotional tartar duck. She's an ETD. Bill then stayed on the road as much as possible. Cool.

That's what you do when you marry a tartar. Yeah. Or emotional tartar duck. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Bill wasn't just on the road for the sweet love of Brick Lang. He also went out for what is known as competitive running. He often took a Brick Lang job where there was going to be a race.

He returned to New York to run the Yonkers Marathon in 1911. The next year he came in fifth in the St. Louis Marathon, his first time among the prize winners and close enough to have almost qualified for the 1912 Olympics. Wow. 1913 was a career year. In the space of 10 weeks, he won the St. Louis Marathon, the Chicago Marathon and three road races of 9, 11 and a half and 15 miles, finishing second another 15-miler. His Chicago win came during a deadly summer heat wave.

The thermometer hit 98 that day and Kennedy lost 12 pounds during the race. What? He could not hang here in this day and age. No. He'd melt. Yeah. He lost 12 pounds during a race. And he weighed five, he was five feet five tall on me, so he wasn't, he didn't have 12

pounds to lose. Did he start with a bunch of change in his pockets? He did. He had changed a couple of melons. I knew it. He's running with two melons. Well, a sports writer cracked, not all the nuts are in the strong wards. So he said, not all the crazy people.

Right. Now, most Americans of the era still thought marathon running was a daredevil stunt rather than a sport. What is wrong with the specie? Well, witchcraft, look at that. Look, he's running a long way like some kind of miracle worker. You quit walking so fast, buddy. What's wrong with this one?

Why don't you just jump nine horses? The races drew only a few dozen competitors. Cities wouldn't close off roads for the races, so the runners had to deal with horses, bicycles, and automobiles. Jesus Christ. Just running. Yeah. Just running through traffic.

Yeah. It looked like Rocky. The whole life is just the Rocky run. Sometimes they had to stop the race for a train or a funeral possession. Jesus. You got to beat that train. You got to beat that train. I got a hell of a shot.

You got to get in front of that train. During his running career, Bill was hit twice by cars. OK. Not most runners say that. The conditions were a bit better in Boston, home to the nation's oldest marathon, first run in 1897. Rare sports fans in the press respected marathon runners, treating them as athletes, not lunatics. Bricklayer Bill now set his sights on the marathon's holy grail of victory at Boston.

Unfortunately, in December 2013, Bill was working in Chicago, Illinois, when a typhoid fever epidemic broke out. It killed 276 people that year. Jesus Christ. Bill caught it. Oh, Jesus. In 13 weeks, he lay in Chicago's postgraduate hospital suffering from fever, delirium, headaches, and diarrhea.

Then did he just give it to some poor bastard who was walking by and get better? I need a tailor. Yeah. Oh, no. I'm dying. I feel quite good. Quote, most people survived the bout with typhoid, but only by the skin of their teeth, according to one study of mortality in Chicago.

This is a time when people had skin on their teeth. Yes. They did. Basically. Yeah. The typical typhoid survivor was so weakened and compromised by the disease that he or she later would succumb to other infectious diseases like tuberculosis or diabetes, kidney or heart failure.

So you would survive it just to die of something else. Generally. It's the dream. It's great. It's great. Yeah. Typhoid's not going to get me. My organs are going to shut down.

I can't wait till this shit starts shutting off. Bill was one who recovered, but he was also compromised and weakened. By the time he left the hospital, he was prematurely gray. Okay. So he got gray hair when he got typhoid. Yeah. But, well, I mean, he's 30, so he's basically 70. Competitive running was out of the question.

The Chicago Tribune wrote, quote, his battle for life has reduced Bill Kennedy to a shell. Is doubtful if the marathon star will ever be able to condition himself for another grind. As an added bonus, Bill now owe the hospital $500. He was flat broke. He had no health insurance and he was in no condition for construction work. But Bill was well liked and the bricklayers and amateur athletes of Chicago organized a fundraiser for bricklayer Bill. When the proceeds were tallied, he had enough to pay his medical bills.

Lovely. All right. Yeah. Life is sweet. Yeah. This is great. Oh, everything's great for him. What a great life.

One of the locals gave him a job selling sporting goods in a department store so that he could earn a living while taking it relatively easy for the time being. The name of the store was the Boston Store. Catchy. By 1950, 15, Bill was back in bricklaying shape. Great. Finally, back to the dream of putting bricks in one spot forever. And occasionally falling and killing.

Yeah. And if you're lucky, killing a man. Despite warnings from most of the doctors at the hospital, Bill then resumed running. He started slowly and eventually worked his way up to 20 miles. In April, he applied to the Illinois Athletic Club, which he had joined before contracting typhoid for expenses to travel to Boston for the marathon on St. Patrick's Day. Okay. But club officials wouldn't pay expenses for runners whose days of glory were behind him.

They knew the tall typhoid took on a body, saw Bill's gray hair and aged face and dismissed him as over the hill. You're done. No, I just ran 20. You're 24. You're fucking done. You're 24, you old piece of shit. You look like you're 90.

Come on. You're 24. You look like you're 40. Jesus Christ. Which is 90. You make me sick. But Bill was like, fucked out. About a week before the race, he wrapped his track suit and running shoes in a newspaper

and with 30 cents in his pocket climbed to a cattle car on the south side. I don't need no money. I was a fucking hobo. He traveled for five days. I want to say that someday. Really hoboing but occasionally paying a fare. He described a pit stop. It's so funny to be like, I'm going to actually pay for this one.

I'm going to be a citizen and not a hobo for a ride. Oh, yeah. I don't want to ride. I don't want to ride with the cows that arrived with the people. It was the custom with most breweries that an out of town visitor could sample their product. So paying my respects, I was the recipient of four schooners of brew my vitamins for the day.

So every doctor or nutritionist would agree. Four beers a day and a handful of pretzels. I'm just having my vitamins. Yes. You mean alcohol? Yes. I'm a bit of a health nut. I like that.

I like that. I like 20 vitamins. I'm on this new health kick. I'm full of vitamins. You got to cure yourself. So he doesn't really know what a vitamin is. No. Bill arrived in Boston riding on the roof of a baggage car three days before the marathon

and secured a brick laying job to pay his way back. He's there for three fucking days and he's like, I'll be a bricklayer and then run a marathon. It's insane. The next morning, the Boston Globe ran a big feature with cartoon illustrations relating how Bill had thumbed his nose at his skeptical skeptical athletic club and made his own way back east. The Globe noted incidentally, he abhors the idea of enriching the coffers of the railway

magnets. He's a fucking hobo, the hobo runner. Right. He's a bricklayer Bill, but he should have been called the hobo runner. Bricklayer Bill incidentally became a local celebrity. He only finished 15th in the marathon that year, but in 1916, he came in sixth. Okay. Cheered on by the Boston fans.

So he's a fan favorite. April 6th, 1917, the US officially entered the war in Europe and the Boston marathon held two weeks later, turned into an especially patriotic day celebration with up to half a million spectators waving American flags all along the 25 mile route. The runners favored to win were two Finns, one of them a 1912 Olympian gold medalist. The home crowd didn't want to see any kind of foreigner win at this of all times. Right. Yeah.

That's a good thing. No, no, no, no, we're at war. No goddamn foreigners. Foreigners can win. The Finns are on our side. No. We're crazy. We must repel the Finns.

Bill told the globe before the race. We must repel the Finns. Go get them. One of the Finns, Coruannon, Coruannon dropped out in Newton, where the runners dealt with a stiff East wind along with a cloud of auto exhaust and a macadam dust. First of all, okay. All right, let's just jump to it. What the fuck is the last one?

What is that? A wizard sneeze? It says macadam, but I hope it was macadamia. Okay. Am I auto correct? Just changed it. Okay. The other way.

It's just crazy dust. So macadamia dust is a thing in Boston. Yeah. Look out. Macadamia does. This is where the nuts explode. Oh, look out. Walnut snow.

Macadamia dust. Here comes the almond mist. Yeah. And Boston, man, this weather's nuts. So Bill passed the last fin to take the lead just before Wesley college. There a young woman dashed out to hand him a full sized old glory banner, which he waved while running the next quarter mile. And then I guess he just threw on the ground.

Yeah. Like, get the sign trying to win. It's the fucking old glory. You can't. What's he going to do with it? Like, he must have given it to someone. I look, I'd be like, I'm trying to win a fucking race. I don't want to wave this shit around.

Yeah. Okay. I'll be a patriot and win this fucking race. But I'm too old to win. Well, Bill was still in the lead. He passed a construction site in Brookline and his brother, Brickies, clapped bricks together in support. Anyway, you can say brick a little more in that sentence.

All right. All right, Brickies, get your bricks and get ready to get brickin' because old bricks is coming. Here it comes. Clap your bricks together. It's brick time. By the way, we have so many fucking bricks. Hey, Bricklayer Tom.

Yeah? You see Bricklayer Bill coming this way? Yeah. Hey, Bricklayer Cliff. Yeah? You see Bricklayer Bill's coming. Yeah. Hey, Bricklayer Bob.

Yeah. Then Bricklayer Bill, wearing a homemade Stars and Stripes bandana, beat the odds and finished first in two hours, 28 minutes, 37 and one fifth seconds. And that was, he did that in 20, 25 miles? Yeah. After he fell on a guy and then after he got typhoid, he then won the Boston Bandana. He then made his own bandana and won the Boston Bandana. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a man. That's a man. Bill then volunteered with the Army's 23rd Engineers, a road building regiment, quote, Bill is over the draft age and has a wife and two children, but he wanted to serve his country, read the globe. Jesus. And his wife backed him up and has resolved and to the race.

Oh, sure. Yeah. She hated it. She was like, go, yeah. He was like, can I please get the fuck away from you, you tartar? Yeah. Yeah. You fucking, you duck tartar.

Fucking duck tartar. You emotionally duck tartar. Work there, Bill, reported for training at Camp Mead in Maryland in December 1917, five months later, Bill's company landed in France. He remained in France throughout the war and a year after it ended, finally returning home in December 1919. He became a bricklayers union president in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Okay.

But it was not a good place to be a union man and after a few lynchings and watching the KKK gain power of stoking fears against labor unions and alcohol, he got the fuck out of there. He moved back to Port Chester and worked with his father and brothers again. Jesus. He co-founded the Port Chester Marathon. In 1927, he finished third in the Boston Marathon and he continued to run in the Boston Marathon every year.

Quote, sometimes they asked me why I don't give up marathoning. He said in 1941, when he was 57, I always tell them I'd rather give up bricklaying, honest, I get more tired laying bricks than I do running these things. I love that this was a time when that would be like a shocking comparison. Yeah. No shit. Yeah. No shit.

Oh, I believe it. You're going to think I'm crazy, but I'd rather run than just constantly put bricks on top of each other. No. Really? Yeah. I know. I sound nuts.

I'm old fashioned. I would rather be able to run and just soak in nature than just stand and pick up bricks forever. So you don't enjoy the joy of bricklaying. You don't. Look, I love the monotony of picking up the exact same shape over and over again and just placing it on top of another shape. So.

So you're going to run tomorrow? I like to run. He ran a total of 29 Boston marathons in his life, 107 marathons in total. Jesus. On May 10th, 1959, it was reported Bill had died, but that was not true. Reporter found him alive and well in St. Louis where he was taking five to 10 mile walks a day at the age of 75. Who's the first reporter?

I don't know. They just. I'm just going to assume that he's dead because I haven't seen him in a while. Yeah. Bricklayer Bill is dead. Oh, here we are. That's how you found out. Son of a bitch.

But there is no record of his death that I actually could find. So he may still be out there. How old would he be? Oh, he'd be pretty. He'd be 100. 100 and some odd years old. Yeah. Probably oldest man alive.

200 probably. But we can't. We can't say that he's definitely not alive. God, I hope that guy's still that 200 year old man is still out there running. So that's a man. That is a man. That's a real man. A guy who falls on another guy and then gets typhoid and then wins a marathon is pretty

important. He falls on a guy. He fell on the guy. God was like, no, you're going to win the marathon. Yeah. This guy's a loser. I don't want a guy to fall on me. You play.

Oh, God. Because there's no, you at least, you at least want like, I would rather have a second to process that I'm going to die. You don't even have a second if a guy falls on you. Yeah. No, but dude falls on you. You're not, you could not be more comfortable. How often are you looking up to see if dudes are falling on you?

I do that a lot now after reading the story. Yeah. Well, yeah. Since yesterday, I've been doing it quite a bit. Although, we're going to be doing that about drones, I guess. So that's the new. Yeah, drones are. That's the new.

That's the new guy falling on you. That's the new bricklayer drop. The new brick. Oh, God. Another guy got killed. Another guy got killed. That's what they're doing is the drones are just dropping bricklayers. Oh, shit.

Take cover. Just landing into bricks. Well, it's bricklayer Bill. Well, it's a pleasure to meet him. Not a sad story. No. I think he. This is actually, I think we can say that this is a feel good dollop.

This is a feel good dollop. Yeah. I did a feel good one. So infrequent. Yeah. I might. The next one might be a feel good one too. So the next one will be, we're going to put up the Will Anderson live at LAPOD Fest

one on Saturday. So that'll be the next one. That'll be good. Do we have any, anything to announce or anything else? I think we're all good. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing.

Yeah. We got nothing. Okay. Oh, you know what, please, a guy from iTunes sent me a thing and said, hey, you actually should leave reviews. It does help your, help you out. So go leave an iTunes review if you like the show. Yeah.

Apparently it's a good thing. Yeah. Subscribing your phone. And we're on. Yeah. And subscribing your phone and we're on Facebook, the dollop and we're on Twitter, the dollop. Active communities on both. Yep.

Active communities. People are really talking to each other. It's a great, great, great album cover that I put up on the Facebook page and then the Photoshop. Yeah. The Reed Parker Photoshop. It's fucking amazing. I mean, Gary, the guy didn't call himself Gary.

Yeah. No, I know. And you know what's funny is that that was not the first time I've seen that. Really? Yeah. Someone else had sent me that. All right. Well, this, this turned out to be a full dollop as opposed to a small up.

Well, that's what happens when you get into brick laying and hoboing. Yeah. That's what happens when hobos fall from the sky. God damn it. It's raining hobos. Um, how about a new sign off? How about we say, uh, nope, just go. We love you.

Nope. Love and kisses. Let's just leave. Love and hugs and kisses from Gary and Dave. Christ. Tut, Tut, Tut. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you. Fuck you lemon! Fuck you, fuck you.