Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 263: Fish City
Episode Date: October 6, 2022We talk about some more cheating scandals, then visit a story about a Tuskegee airman landing in Loretta Lynn's childhood backyard, and finally present an exciting new opportunity for Trillbillies fan...s: a Trillbillies Essay Contest Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I always forget that Marvin spent much of his life in Lexington,
and his father was the leader of something of a cult here.
What kind of cult?
Like, what kind of cult are we talking?
It was a church, but had some little cult overtones, it felt like, reading about it.
His dad, Marvin Sr., is from Lexington.
Uh-huh. cold overtones it felt like reading about him. His dad, Marvin Senior, is from Lexington. So
Lexington not
known for producing
great fathers.
Or great cults.
Not a lot of good cults have come out of Lexington.
Too few, honestly.
But had great
potential in the 80s with all that
Al-Fayed stuff,
Khashoggi stuff, CIA stuff.
Yeah.
Just really kind of didn't really live up to its potential.
It had great potential to be a seedy, weird place.
A little too buttoned up for it now.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Man, these fucking goddamn assholes.
It's just like tinnitus to you, isn't it?
I'm sorry.
I'm fine.
I can't even hear it.
Do you think it'll pick up in your mind?
Probably not.
It's like...
Probably not. I can like... Probably not.
I can barely hear it.
Like, they're just doing the classic, like, lazy workday thing
where, like, they hammer for literally five minutes
and then talk for half an hour
and then hammer for five more minutes
and then talk for another half hour.
Classic job site uh
pattern yeah this is the basis of jokes like what we got what what is this here boys a union meeting
and see also yeah i could tell us the state job we got five standing around to working. At this rate, East Kentucky will be back to the extremely impoverished,
dilapidated state it was at three months ago in about, I don't know, 20 years.
You're being a little generous with your timeline there but yeah am i being
am i being uh i don't want to be a naysayer i think that we've got potential but absent
leadership man you just don't really stand a chance right now i mean it's like i was thinking
about this i mean my sister and i were talking earlier we're talking about just the health care system and dealing with all this shit since mom died and everything and it's like it's like
just going back and looking at like every step of that process every step of the way
were concerns over what was going on having to constantly advocate and like it i mean that's
not just health care that's everything in fucking in the world yeah so i don't know yeah it'll be a matter of time before um
well you know like how in school they make you take standardized tests and i guess the
goal is ostensibly to make you like a better worker
or to make you more easily sorted into various worker categories in the future
yeah they kind of measure your aptitude to see where that you can be best exploited
yeah but jokes on them i didn't really test well in any on anything
the the time and effort would be much better spent though teaching kids how to be better
advocates for themselves in in the health care world uh and like don't don't don't like
fill them with this sort of pollyannish view of how the world is like you know people are more like no this world will roll you unless you stand up for yourself yeah right but you gotta like
teach the like the minute ins and outs like you know you never never say anything that can even
remotely be construed as insulting a doctor's intelligence yeah like you
have to game it a little bit yeah be confident and assertive but don't ever make the most fragile
people on earth think that you're insulting their hard-earned uh and licensure expertise.
The way you have to approach that, and this is a great skill.
If I could teach in part to my children that don't yet exist and may never,
one skill, it would be this.
Learn how to make somebody else feel like it was their idea.
Invaluable. that is the best honestly that is one of the best skills to have in today's day and age where everybody's extremely hubristic people
yeah well and also like with social media the way it is with uh i mean you've got like TikTok accounts of like nurses doing the moonwalk next to like someone like with stagefork in a coma.
Can you imagine that?
The last thing you see on this planet is I sawhodes say this one day on the tweet is fucking hilarious
but he was like uh
this talk about these nurses that post shit on tiktok and they'd like get in their like
drop top jeeps and open mouth kiss a pit bull mix.
They're good.
Yeah, imagine that.
Your last thing you see on this planet is like a sort of...
How would you say it?
I understand wanting to do the moonwalk
because they got those booty things,
you know, like this foot cover things
that make perfect moon perfect moonwalking yeah i understand i understand the impulse to want to
dance on someone's not grave but like their pre-grave like like literally a whole tiktok
genre of people dancing on death like ma'am or sir unless you can produce the real michael
jackson to do that moonwalk get the fuck out of here okay yeah he ain't walking through that door
anymore and and maybe that's a good thing and these but these are the people tasked with you
know taking it like i saw a video i saw a video and i don't care how this is construed i don't care uh
but i saw like a video of like an elderly home like i saw a video of these like two nurses in
an elderly home just like picking up like an 87 year old man and just like basically like
you know he ho like throwing him into a bed
because he like was complaining about having like stomach pain or something
like that.
It's just like, shut the fuck up.
Oh, man.
It's like.
And that was meant to be like endearing.
Yeah.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
It was like it was it was to teach him a lesson.
It was meant to teach him a lesson. It was meant to teach him a lesson.
I'm not trying to slander healthcare workers.
No, listen.
No, listen.
There's a ton of great nurses out there.
During my mom's illness, we had a ton of great nurses.
But when they were bad, God fucking damn it, they were bad.
And that could be a number of factors, too, being overworked or anything else.
I don't want to name that up front.
Well, I think the whole system has basically, it's made into a factory.
It's made the hospital into a factory so that the product of your work,
it is made in the same way that most people at work just want to hammer five nails and then spend 30 minutes to an hour talking about the, I don't know what people talk about on the job site, the bold and the beautiful.
They talk about soap operas.
You know what?
I'll be honest with you.
Soap operas come up a little more often
in my experience a little more often than you would think
but it's transferred that basic desire to like to the one industry where you just can't do that
and that's not the fault of the workers in that industry like there's no it's it's like in the classic marxist sense
there's nothing morally good or morally bad about the workers themselves like they can be bad people
like you can have a hospital filled with 100 evil nurses and that doesn't change the fact that
they're still their labor is still exploited practicing satanists libertarian yeah like actually doing
rituals on children it still it applies yeah i mean it's a systemic relation it's it's uh
you know like their labor is still exploited um but it's a little different when you talk
about doctors because doctors that
are like the skilled in the sort of like hierarchy of those segmented
workplaces,
that those doctors are the skilled,
uh,
like they're the ones who they're not the bosses necessarily,
nor are they management necessarily.
Although some doctors will take on roles of like, you know, medical director or whatever.
Have you ever watched the movie Coma?
Uh-uh.
Michael Crichton.
No.
Is that his name?
Directed.
The Jurassic Park guy?
Yeah, we should do an episode on Coma.
Okay.
What's it about?
It's like Jacob's Ladder?
Well, no, I mean, there's a lot of themes that are a little
a bit on the nose i guess you would say that it's basically you know um
uh this woman has an abortion it's all about abortion and like women's issues and stuff like
that's a hospital drama i guess michael crackton was a uh was a medical doctor. I didn't know that. I just
know him from Jurassic Park. Did he
write Jurassic Park? He did, yeah.
Yeah.
This is one of the films he
wrote the screenplay for and directed.
Did he write
the book, Koma?
I don't know if it's a book.
I think he just wrote the screenplay. Or it might have been a
book he wrote and then the screenplay was derivative of it. I can't know if it's a book. I think he just wrote the screenplay. Or it might have been a book he wrote, and then the screenplay was derivative of it.
I can't remember.
I love it when people ask for book recommendations,
like on Twitter or whatever.
Like, listen up, y'all.
I need some book recs.
And it's like, why would I give you this sacred knowledge?
Like, I have every incentive to give you bad book
like i'm not gonna give you knowledge that'll help you get ahead in life fuck no like no
i'm gonna give you recommendations that will widen the gap between me and you
just like yo i got some book right rex it's like mind comp the bell curve never checked out the
fountain head the fountain head and then they're like oh wow this sounds good and then they read
it and then they're out with some friends and they're like i read this amazing book that this
guy on twitter recommended to me called mind comp do you think there's a guy that's that's that dumb
that doesn't know about mind conf yeah
i have to assume that if you're soliciting book recs on twitter you're that dumb
if you're soliciting book recommendations on twitter you are dumb enough to not know
i got it my about my here's a here's an idea go to a fucking library go to the library open a book read the
first sentence if you like it read the second sentence and if you like that keep going if you
don't add the pioneer way uh-huh i do you hear it now do you hear the hammering now i kind of like that it kind of adds a good
ambiance the next 10 weeks of trill billy's episodes might be construction work in the back
it's like we're past the we're past the phase of tearing down like i think that the phase of like gutting and tearing out
ended in early september and now we're in the rebuilding phase so it's kind of like
it's it's spring for us yeah i know why sort of like an arab spring
these kentucky should have an Arab spring.
How would we even do it?
I rack my mind thinking about this every goddamn day.
Well, I'll tell you how.
I'll tell you how.
We make a Facebook event for a protest at Tahrir Square,
and then we set up a fake Tahrir Square in the middle of Whitesburg, and we
have a general, what was that guy's name?
Like Al-Sisi or something like that?
Oh, yeah, the guy that's Muslim Brotherhood, dude.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, we need a Muslim Brotherhood in East Kentucky.
East Kentucky needs a Muslim Brotherhood.
It's like Nancy Pelosi said,
we need a strong GOP in America.
What Letcher County politics needs
is a strong Muslim brotherhood.
I mean, you say what you want about it,
it would give things a shot in the arm.
It wouldn't be that much different,
I mean, in terms of...
It wouldn't be able to... i mean in terms of yeah it wouldn't
be able to swap out faiths yeah they wouldn't be able to get anything done they'd be just as
corrupt but it would be probably more assassinations remember when the muslim brotherhood popped uh
and where else did that didn't they was that mus Muslim Brotherhood? I think they were responsible for that, yeah.
Interesting.
Blah, blah!
He's like, oh, they got me.
I used to read a lot of Jimmy Carter books when I was dumb.
I was a dumb guy.
I'm still in that era,
but I'm on the thinner end of it now.
You're exiting the dumb era?
Right.
And Jimmy Carter would always talk about
his friends Yitzhak Rabin
and Anwar Sadat and
you know
Shimon Peres. Yeah, all the
characters. All the characters, right.
Half of those guys I think were
assassinated.
Right, right. Yeah, everybody I named basically got done. Yitzhak, were assassinated. Right.
Yeah.
Everybody I named basically got done.
Yitzhak Ravine, Sadat.
Yeah.
So he was just talking about lamenting that he felt like if he would have done a few things different, like he could have engineered peace over there.
Uh-huh.
And so it's really all on Jimmy Carter.
Right.
The whole situation in middle east you can
chalk back up to one man and that's james carter well plains georgia you know he's got his home
building stuff and i've not seen him so what the fuck jimmy you should be in east kentucky
rebuilding homes but you're not yeah really where are you yeah get your ass get your 95 year old ass down here motherfucker looks like kano
right now he's got like a bloody eyes old people getting like a big bruise around him he's probably
on his way he's probably been on his way for two and a half months he's just making it slow
he's driving two miles
it's president carter just let him go he'll show up in mid-november we'll give him a hammer i really here's what i would like to do
i would like to supervise jimmy carter on a job site i would too i would like much is written
about this man's construction ability i would i'll be the judge of that i really don't just want to see how i just want to see what he's made of i just want to see this
motherfucker hanging drywall i want to yeah no uh same well first of all i want to see his skills
but second i want to hear his his workplace banter. Does Jimmy Carter have some good dirty stories?
Some good dirty jokes to tell at the work?
He's a Sunday school teacher, but he's probably one of those guys
that likes to slide one every once in a while,
and then just, oh, no, I'm joking.
I don't, you know.
Like Walter Ruther.
Every man, listen, if you're listening out there
and you think your father's a paragon of morality
at some point he's made a lewd joke about a woman's sexual reputation uh-huh just to fit in
that's the sad fit in with the guy it's something yeah i hate to break burst your bubble but your
father at some point has been a misogynist. Didn't even have the misogynist conviction.
Like, actually probably literally respects women.
Yeah, actually 100% respects women.
But doesn't want the other guys to know that.
Yeah.
That's called being a man.
Part of rural southern manhood is constantly being on skates with misogynistic and racist jokes because they just come at you like goddamn turtles in Mario Kart.
You know what I mean?
The group is everybody wants to talk about.
Oh, well, it's no more racist than anywhere else.
OK, sure.
But I don't know if my friends are constantly barraged with
with with racist exogenistic jokes in the same way i don't know man uh one of the most racist
dudes i ever met like when i went to high school i never i never hung out i'm sure they existed but
i never hung out with anybody who used the N word like full throttle.
But I met a dude in college from Kansas who did.
And I was like, what the fuck?
So you think the Midwest is probably that?
Well, yeah, you're right.
They probably got things a little bit later than we did.
Those like we were down here making culture.
You know what I mean?
Uh huh.
There's like farming communities communities in Oklahoma and shit.
That is where the next-
Prime racist country.
Yeah, I feel like.
Yeah.
It's the weirdest thing.
Generalizing broad swaths, by the way, which I love to do.
I love to just generalize regions.
I do, Taz.
I like to make sweeping generalizations
about people in regions i'm saying i was i was working at the water department one time fixing
a leak went out to this guy's house and you know the guys that just open with the racism
yeah i mean we're just two white men i'm i'm sitting here i'm digging a hole in his yard
trying to find his leak he comes out there just like uh what was his joke it was something about
the elections obama romney it was something about i forget what it was called what it was now
but he opened with that oh you remember you just don't want to oh no i do remember but i just don't want to give it any air i'll never forget it but i'm out there digging and this guy comes out there and he opens with
that and i just you i do the thing that every well-meaning white southerner does is you just
look at it as steely faced as you canfaced as you can and just change the subject very quickly.
You know that tactic, don't you?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
All those late nights spent on Wikipedia
come in handy in those moments.
Like, oh, did you know the North American beaver
can retain up to 23 pounds?
You know, I was getting to the bottom of the Boxer Rebellion the other night.
You've got to change.
You have to turn a hard left once that starts coming.
Yeah, it is.
You have to.
Well, it's the only way to do it without, like, you don't want to be self-righteous,
but, like, you also don't want to give it any air.
And there's the other thing is, so after he tells me this joke,
his grandson runs out of the house, and he says,
Papa, Papa.
And this kid's got, I mean, this kid's, he's, like, grandson's black.
And I'm like, I'm just like what what you know that was it was just
weird i don't know well that's the thing it's no different really than like 150 years ago
it is the same old like patriarchal racism it's like
i don't know you know what i mean you know what i'm saying it's like they
they think they know better therefore they that's like the i feel like that's the core
the essence of like white supremacy it's like they know what's best for yeah it's paternalistic
yeah it's yeah yeah yeah his grandson ran out there his black grandson ran out there
and he put him on his lap and he says, this is the boss around here.
And I was just like, that is literally five minutes ago.
That is the essence of Southern racism.
The paternalistic aspect.
It's like cohabitation, but it has to be a clear hierarchy.
Whereas like in the North, it was way more of an apartheid like we'll segregate
them out entirely like put them in entire different neighborhoods of the geography
it's just two two sides of the very same evil yeah yeah i don't know how i got off on that
tangent but uh oh yeah we were trying to figure out how to make a Tahrir Square in Whitespur.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here's what we do.
How about we just relocate the Veterans Museum?
Yeah.
Okay?
Okay.
Put them somewhere else.
Yeah.
Clean out all of their war trophies and artifacts.
Mm-hmm.
And then hang the flags of Syria and and lebanon and qatar muslim brotherhood yeah
yeah like all the most problematic nations and then we'll just call it we just renamed the
veterans memorial parking lot to rear square and then we stage a protest there with 10 million people and then we're gonna have an arab spring
in east kentucky that would be so tight there and then the green horse of the apocalypse will
ride through that too just like what happened that day in terraria square just like what happened
that day that fateful day and much like that that, the revolution will happen on Facebook.com probably.
Power dancing.
Yeah.
Do you think you could fit a million people in downtown Winespring?
1,000% no.
Like, not even a question.
You'd probably top out at 100,000 and call it a million, though.
Oh, man.
I'm thinking even less than that.
Like, asshole to elbow, all the way up Main Street,
curling around some of the back roads down there,
the Veterans Museum.
They'd have to be up in the hills, too.
Like, covering the hills like trees.
Like, if you cut all the trees down and then covered them with people
then maybe yeah you know what i'm saying yeah that would be a beautiful painting that's that
that that someone should do that painting someone should do a painting where the
the hills are not covered in trees they're covered in the beautiful diverse multicultural spectrum of human
experience
that'd be a beautiful painting
would you hang that painting?
it would just be mostly white
and two dumbasses
pretending to be Muslim Brotherhood
i.e. me and you
but that's the thing
it's a commentary on how these hills
they
they hold wonders and potential.
Yeah.
They hold potential for for beauty.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Listen, speaking of racism, what did you think about the Kanye White Lives Matter thing?
The thing that OK, the thing I finally realized about Kanye, and I don't know why I didn't see it before.
You're seeing through rose colored glasses.
That's right.
I was unable to see it before.
But it's kind of the same thing with us circa 2017.
Well, I think this is the case for most people.
But it's like he bases his entire ideology and worldview off of a specific scene.
And that scene is the fashion world.
Like high fashion.
And that scene is the fashion world, like high fashion. And like to him, that statement, why lives matter is like the most subversive, edgy statement you can make in that scene.
Sort of how like in early Trillbillies, like the most subversive, edgy statement you could make was like fucking nonprofits or something like that.
edgy statement you could make was like fucking non-profits or something like that you know what i'm saying like it's all based on a confined contained social silence house like i brought that
you know like yeah like a niche i don't really care honestly right it's like a niche contained
world that only makes sense to a certain select subset of individuals right and everybody else kind of views it as like um
kind of like the spectacle you know yeah yeah yeah and that's and i i think that is really that is his entire thing that does not excuse him for wearing a shirt that says white lies man
it's like especially with candace owens. Oh, man, yeah. The whole shit is...
It's just...
I mean, I guess you could probably sum it up as edgelord shit.
It's edgelord shit.
I mean, that's literally...
I mean, he's always been an edgelord.
Provocateur, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
But the statement that he released with it was like,
Black Lives Matter is over.
You know what I mean? It was always a grift or something like that it was a scam i think is what he said
and like he's not wrong about organizationally speaking not organization speaking yeah yeah
like the people that ran that organization like bought mansions and yachts and well i wouldn't
say it was a scam i mean like a lot of the OG Black Lives Matter people
were murdered under mysterious circumstances
and shit like that.
But as it stands today,
I think he is correct in that assessment,
but not for the reason that he thinks he is.
He's just a provocateur.
You're right.
What I want to talk about is cheating.
I want to talk about cheating some more let's talk about
okay i dude cultural historic because like um you know like time moves at such a and news moves at
such a fast clip things get compressed and so that in the future cultural historians are going to think that adam levine
cheating was somehow tied to like the fishermen who put weights in walleyes like they'll have to
be they'll have to try to tease that out like what i'm saying is that within the matter, within the course of two weeks, there have been multiple cheating scandals in every broad sense of that, in every broad definition of that term.
From the familial, from marriage to baseball.
And it made me think, it made me wonder, like, what is the origin of using the word cheating in the context of like a relationship like it almost seems to imply that
like you're you're cutting a corner or you're getting something that no one else gets like i
don't know does that make sense like cheating in the like you get like you're getting an undue
advantage yeah yeah like no no just be just be slightly miserable with one partner like the rest of us
you don't get you're not special buddy it see it has this context it seems to imply
that everybody else in a relationship is miserable right right right that's what i'm saying right yes
exactly but they're doing it they're following the rules and if you And if you cheat, you're not following the rules.
And you're getting to reap the rewards of not following the rules.
And we don't like that.
This might be the etymology of the phrase player hating.
Exactly.
I looked it up.
The origin of the term cheating in reference
to relationships only goes back to like the 1930s or 40s it's a 20th century thing like it has to be
like in the context of like the heteronormative nuclear capitalist family units. All right, all right. Yeah, maybe it has its origins
in trying to oppress you
and keep you in the familial unit.
Uh-huh.
Isn't that what Adam...
Who was it that said that their marriage
was toxic and oppressive?
Was it John Mulaney?
Some of us, one of those guys.
It's like, God damn it.
I mean, I guess that has to be the it's just it just feels like it's just very funny that there's so many different cheating scandals right now all at once yeah all at once yeah
so much so uh well so much so it's it's sort of relitigating like the baseball steroid era
because you see where aaron judge broke roger maris's home run mark last night and now it's like
here's here's my maxim okay and listen i feel like i'm uniquely attuned to the underbelly of
things just by my disposition uh-huh but i'm saying anything, but all I'm saying is don't be surprised
when you see that Aaron Judge was microdosing TRT here on ESPN 30 for 30
in like 10 or 15 years.
And the disgraced golden boy of baseball.
Because guess what? Ifriguez was doing it
all these guys are probably doing and guess what we either need to quit moralizing about it
or and accept it and just what it is if you're not taking perform peds you're not trying hard enough
or you like baseball just needs to just be kind of stuck in an era
where guys hit 13 home runs and they were the big sluggers of their time.
Yeah, I literally think it's a moral failing if you don't cheat.
I do too.
I think Barry Bonds really is the people slugger.
Yeah.
It's entertainment.
He's on the down slope of his career.
Yeah.
He's already the most gifted baseball player
maybe of his era probably definitely the most gifted hitter of his era and he's like you know
what somebody on twitter pointed this out they're like he'll just become a superhero and hit 72 home
runs 73 home runs for our entertainment it's entertainment like the moment that they stopped broadcasting baseball
games on the radio like it's going high of a left field he's rounding second he's rounding third
the moment it became video and like there was a thousand commercials between every
break and when it's entertainment well i think that's that's really lost on a lot of
people too and also the idea that the further you stray from entertainment in sports the more boring
it gets exactly i'm serious it does like even like i mean people talk about like oh well like
during jordan's era it was so much better and it was all this it was that and it's like it's not that it was so much better that the players are so much gifted or anything
i'm not even interested in who's better jordan or lebron argument like there's just no comparison
watching michael jordan aesthetically is way more entertaining than watching lebron james
aesthetically even though lebron is probably the better basketball player. I would say he is the better basketball player.
But there was a sense of showmanship that's been lost, I feel.
Yeah.
See, the thing is, is like that, you know, again,
I think it's a moral failing if you don't cheat. In relation to sports anyways,
obviously this podcast is strictly pro
monogamy we do not endorse stepping out in any way that's a bet that's a much better term for
cheating stepping out now that's right like you it just is a testament to how miserable people
and relationships were in like the mid-20th century that they called it cheating. They were like,
what's the word
for when someone cuts corners
and gets to reap the rewards
and the rest of us are still
miserable? I guess you could
really draw a straight line between the concept
of cheating in relationships
to wife bad humor.
Right.
Yeah.
Every sitcom of the 1950s was like,
you know, you called your mother-in-law a battle axe
and your wife the old ball and chain and so forth.
Yeah, right, right, right.
I mean, did you see that the, what was it?
Chess investigation finds that U.S. Grandmaster
likely cheated more than 100 times is this you
know plug dude this is the butt plug guy and and you know my line on this is that
i i don't hear anybody you know calling for the cops to be called on him like they were for those
fishermen so what's that's true how are we gonna how are we gonna like are all sports cheaters and like
like are we all gonna see their day like are they gonna see their day in court like what's
going on we got to keep it consistent you got to grab your knife and remove all those weights if you want to go to fish city.
You know, Loretta Libb passed yesterday.
Loretta Libb had a lot of things to say about cheating,
particularly cheating men.
But she also had, listen, she also had some infidelities of her own.
Another man loved me last night from Coal Miner's Daughter album.
Loretta loved fucking that's that is true i saw a tweet that was like if you don't know listen to this song you have to listen to
this song it's called the pill by loretta it's like everybody's heard that fucking song everybody
knows the pill everybody knows yeah come Yeah, come on. I just love
virtue signaling. I love it.
It's my favorite. Twitter's the perfect platform
for it. It's like...
I don't know. It is so funny.
It's like... Yeah, everybody
had to get a piece of Loretta yesterday.
Dude, there was a...
There was like this
thing going around. Like this viral story going around like a
feel-good viral story about harry stewart jr did you read this did you see this going around it
was like i i retweeted it but then i clicked on the link like after the fact i retweeted just
because bill turner tweeted it so i was like okay bill
turner tweeted scott it has and i clicked on it there was no story to it i'll read you the story
if you want it was kind of going around like in such a way it was kind of like that it was like
the retconning celebs thing where it's like look loretta's loretta's family they weren't racist
they took in a tuskegee Airman.
It's an interesting story, though, you have to admit.
No, like, it was racist because they literally thought that he wound up there the way that he wound up there.
They didn't know about the Tuskegee Airman. They thought that he stole an airplane, that this black guy stole an airplane and crashed it in East Kentucky.
Just a thing that was happening. That's what racism will do to your brain instead of thinking maybe this man's a qualified pilot their first thought was no this man definitely stole an
airplane right yeah like a very dangerous theft a thing that happened constantly in the 1940s
like black men stealing airplanes. Yeah.
I don't know.
Let me read you the story.
1948 Butcher Hollow P-47 Thunderbolt crash.
On March 25th, 1948, Stewart took part in a simulated armed reconnaissance
with a formation of Tuskegee Airmen combat fighter pilots
flying from Greenville, South Carolina's Shaw Air Force
Base to their home base in Columbus, Ohio. Suddenly, Stewart's P-47 Thunderbolt began to
experience severe engine failure, sputtering at 20,000 feet above the mountainous terrain of
eastern Kentucky during a bad thunderstorm. Fearful of crashing his aircraft into the side
of a mountain to his death, Stewart reduced his aircraft aircraft's altitude to 10 000 feet bailing out of the plane since the p-47 lacked an ejection seat stuart slid its canopy
back removed his seat belt and directed the p-47's nose forward so that it would dip and safely eject
stuart forward when he released the control stick damn that's fucking crazy that's how good of a
pilot he was dude he just was able to just nudge the
plane forward and basically just tip him out like he was pouring a cup of tea harry stewart was a
badass pilot dude like han solo doesn't have shit on harry stewart that's amazing however the slip
stream struck stewart forcefully propelling him to the aircraft's tail.
Holy shit.
Dude, he was like hanging off the back of this fucking plane, fracturing his left leg in two between the calf and ankle.
He was like hanging off the back of a he got caught in the slipstream and was like, what the fuck?
Yeah.
After opening his parachute in the clouds,art coasted to ground landing on top
of a dead pine tree with stewart's parachute firmly hooked over the treetop his body dangled
two feet above the ground through the tree's dead branches possibly going into shock stewart
noticed that he had lost a shoe on his broken bleeding left leg his otherwise white sock was
now completely blood soakedsoaked. Stewart cut
himself down in the pouring rain, crawled
under a rock overhang, and
removed his white silk
flying scarf, making a tourniquet to stop
the bleeding. Dude, this is
fucking crazy!
Unbeknownst
to him, Stewart had parachuted
into the mountainous forest hills of
Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, a coal mining
community in Johnson County, Kentucky,
and childhood home of married
15-year-old Loretta Webb,
best known as 18-time
Grammy Award-nominated country music
Loretta Lynn.
Though Loretta's location at the time
of the crash is undocumented, Loretta's
younger brother, Herman Webb,
was riding in the pickup truck bed belonging to Loretta's younger brother, Herman Webb, was riding in the pickup truck bed
belonging to Loretta and Herman's father,
Melvin Theodore Ted Webb.
So she would not, at this point, she
would not have been. When did Loretta
really ascend? Like in the 50s?
Yeah, 60s.
50s, 60s, yeah. I mean, like, but she
first, like, was Loretta Lynn
like in the 50s, right? Like
early DECA era, kind of.ca era kind of yeah yeah she was 15
at the time this happened this is in the 40s you said right yeah 1948 okay herman heard a massive
explosion unlike anything his family had ever experienced despite living in a coal camp camp
accustomed to loud blasts after stewart belled the P-47 flew across the Webb family cemetery,
crashed into a hilltop overlooking the Webb family home,
and created a 10 to 15 foot deep crater.
Over the course of several days, local boys and men began to ransack the crash site.
One eyewitness saw Loretta's 22-year-old moonshiner husband, Oliver Lynn,
do little Lynn, who was, what, wasn't he played by uh tommy lee jones in the movie
um driving his jeep with stewart's plane propeller attached to its
that's some hillbilly shit man just like i might could use this
plane propeller fuck it i'll just take it all right yeah i ain't gonna need this ain't gonna miss this one of Loretta and Herman's
uncles converted the P-47
stainless steel nuts into finger rings
that is some hillbilly shit
just like
look at my bling dog
just like hillbilly Liberace
with his bucket
one of Loretta and Herman's nine year old Bill Beliberace with his bucket.
One of Loretta and Herman's nine-year-old neighbor,
Callie Daniels,
now octogenarian and retired elementary school cook,
Callie Daniels Johnson of Hager Hill,
saw Stewart's white parachute converging to Earth,
mistaking it for a large white eagle.
Callie notified her father, Leif Daniels, who hopped on and rode one of his horses into the hills,
finding an injured steward lying underneath a rock cliff.
This is fucking crazy.
After a mutually befuddled, though benign, stare-down...
Just look...
Hey, we want to be clear, this was a benign stare-down.
We want to be clear.
Yeah, this was not... There was no we want to be clear yeah this is not there
was no racial animus or anything like that or being scared it's just the order of things
lafe put the injured stewart on a second horse lafe had brought along taking stewart to the
daniels family home where lafe's wife mary daniels was washing clothes in a large backyard cauldron
i mean if you're a racist guy from East Kentucky
and like a black man parachutes into your community
from a burning plane,
I mean, I guess I could see the legends
that could be spun out from that.
Right.
Mary tore up some bedsheets
and disinfected and bandaged Stuart's legs.
After giving Stuart all-purpose moonshine for pain relief,
much to Stuart's chagrin.
Medicinal.
Strictly medicinal.
It says, much to Stuart's chagrin, he had sworn off liquor for Lent.
Leif reloaded Stuart on the horse and took him onto a mud and gravel road.
Both figuratively and literally.
Took him onto a mud and gravel road. Both figuratively and literally.
Took him onto a mud and gravel road
towards a local store on the main road.
From there, Stuart was loaded into a pickup truck
and transported to the local Painesville Clinic
in Painesville, Kentucky.
Birth home of then unborn Brenda Gale Webb,
best known as Crystal Gale.
Like, all right. Like, i mean you you have to throw that
in there like that's just like come on i think they're trying to convey that like this guy
parachuted into like country music hall of fame basically all right right the clinic's physician
and his team wash stewart placed him in a bed and administered
morphine for pain relief stewart recalled being in a hallucinated state as a result of the morphine
and moonshine that dude that is fucking again imagine you're a black man and you parachute
into east kentucky and these like guys they use your plane for bling they give you moonshine
i wouldn't even know what I would think.
Also, moonshine, I've had...
This is going to sound absolutely stupid,
and it's not the case,
but I've drank so much moonshine
before I feel like I drank myself sober.
Not because I was actually sober,
but just because the effects of it made me feel like i
could operate heavy machinery all of a sudden you know what i mean like you could fly an airplane
from greenville south carolina to columbus ohio right um as news of the p-47 crash circulated
local people lined up to the clinic to view the injured african-american
combat fighter pilot the town's mayor the town's mayor escombe chandler visited stewart followed
by the town's police chief county sheriff and a paintsville herald news reporter who ran a story
on march 25th 1948 the article omitted stewart's race interesting around 1 a.m. on March 26th,
a U.S. Air Force representative
from Columbus, Ohio, arrived at the
Paintsville Clinic to pick up Stuart.
How many days is that? That's March
26th, and his
plane crashed on
March 25th.
All right.
I think they're using some kind of pressure
washer downstairs now.
Perhaps you can hear that.
Still no from me.
They departed the small rural clinic or rural community without any fanfare or formal send-off from the community.
Stewart's wife, Define, did not find out about her husband's
mountainous aircraft crash until Stewart arrived home.
For many years afterwards, local legend, though patently false,
held that U.S. Air Force Republic F-84 Thunder Jets shot down
a B-52 bomber stolen by an African-American man conducting a bombing run
on the town. Wait, so what? It was even crazier.
They said he was bombing the town. Holy shit.
And they said that they shot him down.
Yeah.
The local legend was that the U.S. Air Force shot down a B-52 bomber stolen by an African-American man conducting a bombing run on the town.
Like the idea that he would be strafing.
Like the Tuskegee Airmen were actually a terrorist sale.
Yeah, man, we're actually a terrorist cell.
In 2005, Danny Keith Blevins, a Johnson County, Kentucky teacher and president of the Van Leer Historical Society, tracked down Stewart at his home in southern Michigan.
Stewart was bemused when Blevins shared the stolen B-52 rural legend.
Stewart knew that the B-52s didn't even exist in 1948.
Like the Air Force?
Yeah.
B-52s?
No, the song.
The band.
Oh, the band.
He was like,
that's crazy. The Georgia band.
Yeah, that's crazy.
That's crazy, man.
Rock Lobster,
that wouldn't come out
until much later on.
In 2006,
the Van Leer, Kentucky township encompassing Butcher
Hollow named Stuart
its parade marshal for the annual Homecoming
Day Parade. That's nice. That's pretty sweet.
During his Kentucky visit, Stuart
met the family of Crystal Gale, Loretta
Lynn, and Herman Webb, enjoying
a tour of Loretta's birth home.
Wow.
Damn.
Dude, he was a G.
He was apparently a really good dog fighter.
Well, goddamn, man.
Could you imagine dangling off the back of one of those fucking open points from that era?
Dude, he is still alive.
He's 98 this motherfucker dangled from a plane
over butcher and he's still alive he's fucking 98
that's insane i want to have him on the show
yeah let's hear your your version of events let's hear your version of
events well that's fucking crazy man um yeah wow i guess maybe loretta lynn didn't actually meet him face to face.
But R.I.P.
Rip to a real one.
Loretta Lynn, that is.
Man.
That you know, when Dolly finally
goes, I wonder what it's
going to be like.
Can you imagine what kind of we will hear some fantastical fucking stories that that story will be like recapitulated over her town but like the story
will be like he landed he landed in their living room and they gave him tea and they talked about race relations and dolly
acknowledged her white privilege dolly dolly was the first person to acknowledge her white at age
16 dolly acknowledged her white privilege after a tuskegee airman crash landed in her backyard
everybody's like wait didn't that happen to loretta land like no that was dolly no that was
dolly that was dolly and he was gay
he was black and he was gay and she acknowledged her white privilege and that's when she realized
she was standing up for that's when she realized that she was have to go forth and end apartheid
too by any means necessary he believed from from locust hill Hill, Tennessee to Johannesburg.
Uh-huh.
That's when she realized.
Oh, man.
What a lot of people don't know is that Dolly Parton
was locked up with one Nelson Mandela for many years.
And while they were in there,
they conspired to end apartheid together.
Oh, shit.
Well, last thing I wanted to mention today
was that sort of how, I don't know,
like nothing ever ends you know everything is just a recapitulation
of something that already happened but on stupider terms than before and i'm feeling
very much that way about the announcement this past week that they are reintroducing the idea for a federal prison in our county of Letchbury County.
And the reason that it's even stupider than the first time is that.
OK, so like this story was in.
Well, first of all, I just want to say this.
First of all, I just want to say this.
If you want to read the story, it i just want to say this um if you
want to read the story it's uh there's a story in like the ohio valley resource from our friend
katie myers who who interviewed some people about it i think there was also a story on like
wfpl from louisville or whatever but um i i just want to say this i literally predicted this would happen
i deleted the tweet i deleted the tweet because in one of those like bouts of
like political internalized political self-loathing that you sometimes get for being
like a commie naysayer just i mean i
literally tweeted like you went through and deleted every negative tweet that you'd made
i was trying to exude positive vibes instead of negative vibes because that would prove not enough
yes my therapist tells me i'm too negative not you um and i literally said back in 2020 or probably right after biden was inaugurated in 2021
i would not be surprised if biden revitalizes the plan for the federal prison
in our hometown biden and the dims the dims. And I remember feeling afterwards,
like, you know,
it got like a smattering of faves because no one even knows
what the fuck I'm talking about.
As Terrence is on the sauce again.
Yeah.
But I remember...
Mine's gonna be bringing back that jail thing.
Okay, Terrence. Okay, go to bed.
All right, man.
It's 3.14 a.m.
But no, I have the tendency to see my statements
through the eyes of my enemies sometimes,
and then I actually wind up seeing my own pathetic worm-like form does that ever happen
to you more more frequent than you'd imagine although i probably think you're you were right
to talk to somebody about that to seek professional help about yeah you're doing the right thing but i do so as a result i deleted it i was like
whoa that's ridiculous but apparently it was not so ridiculous always trust your first instinct
always without any hesitation or exceptions always trust your very first instinct on every single thing that's my advice with some caveats but yeah no caveats no caveats always first instincts god don't make no mistakes
you are how you are no exactly uh but i was right they they really are bringing back the prison
if if you are new to this show let me just bring you up to speed.
They wanted to build a federal prison here under Obama.
Trump got into office and took it off the books.
Because of pressure from the local Muslim Brotherhood.
Exactly.
And now the Dems are back in and they want a new prison.
Well, what's funny about it's not funny.
What was so like sort of craving about it is they've made all the necessary adjustments to circumvent people's concerns about it.
Yeah.
Now it's not a supermax like it was going to be, right?
Because that was one of the deterrents to it.
Everybody was like, well, what if MS-13 decides to set up shop here?
We'll be up Schitt's Creek.
The Muslim Brotherhood and MS-13.
Before you know it, black guys will be stealing airplanes again.
Like it's the damn 1950s.
And bombing your town.
And bombing your town.
And then imagine a couple of like Salvadorian guys all tatted up,
like flying like old school bomber jets and led to a bombing campaign.
So, yeah.
So there was all that kind of
stuff. So that
has been assuaged. We're going to knock it
down to a medium security prison,
which probably means you're going to get
who?
Like white-collar criminals.
Finance crimes.
Tennis jail, basically.
Tennis jail.
Or people that have commuted their sentence down to something a little more,
like for good behavior.
Right, right.
You know.
Yeah.
I had a buddy that did time in one of these for check cutting.
Yeah, stuff like that.
That kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Anyway.
So that's been assuaged.
And then I guess the other thing would be they're keying on this time post-flood.
Where, obviously, it's going to be a dire economic situation.
People trying to put their lives back together.
So this is the perfect time for the jobs, jobs shit it is actually a sinister brilliant play on their part
yeah it is really honestly the most cynical thing i could possibly imagine i hope they all die
but i have to give props in the chess game thing they they had the butt plug in and made the right
moves they got the signs that said this was the right move yeah yeah uh no i mean you're absolutely
right they're capitalizing on a moment where uh everything has been demolished you know wiped out
reduced to the bare minimum uh businesses leave more businesses leaving than before.
Even the biggest stable industries around here, health care and service are disrupted, having some problems.
And so it it seems like a good solution to an unstable situation.
good solution to an unstable situation and um and i think it's going to get more support than it did last time the thing is is that in the back of my mind i still kind of think that the local
boosters for it are being taken for a ride and and in that sense it feels like the biggest slap in the face because it just doesn't
make any sense to me even if i supported prisons and i've said this for years and years even if i
supported prison construction thought it was a good idea i thought that you should lock up as
many black men stealing airplanes and running strafing runs on Ohio farm towns as possible.
Even if I supported that, it would make no sense to build a prison here.
And prior to two months ago, the reasons for that were abstract.
But now a flood just came and proved why.
Because the fucking civic infrastructure around here is so goddamn shoddy and and uh
decrepit that it made it it's it's just a ticking time bomb like why would you put a high
tech you know state-of-the-art modern facility in an area that has been so broken down by resource extraction that just the even even even a
flood half as bad as the one we just had would cut that facility off from the outside world for
a good 48 hours at the minimum so it doesn't make any sense and then and then what do you get i mean
i guess it's a medium security prison but
like at that point you're risking like alcatraz type uh like uprising attica type uprisings and
shit like it doesn't make any sense and that's why it always kind of felt like a slap in the face it
well honestly what it was is it was how rogers swinging his dick around as the most powerful
man in washington and being able to make it happen in situations where it never made any sense, like Martin County.
And he doesn't he's not as powerful as he used to be, but he still has some power.
And that's why this is still kicking around.
But it's the biggest slap in the face because once again, just like as we pointed out six years ago and this all started,
Once again, just like as we pointed out six years ago when this all started, you've got $400 million coming in in this area that has obviously the highest unemployment rate in the nation, that has no economic base, that has deteriorating infrastructure.
I mean, why can't that money be put to something else that could actually help the community well now now we're post-flood in an even worse state than we were
five or six years ago that's what i'm saying that's why it makes no sense it's like and this
and this goes for for everything from even like good economic development ideas you can't really
have anything until you actually have a baseline of adequate
infrastructure here yeah so like what makes you think that you're gonna yeah like you were just
saying like you're gonna build this huge massive facility that's gonna host a bunch of like uh
recycled layman brothers guys uh you know and local officials and like you like the water's not even water wasn't even safe to
drink before you think it's like it got better because the flood you think the flood was
flushed all the selenium and well it used to that these allow right that used to work in their favor
like the the poor state of rural resources i feel like that used to work in their favor, like the poor state of rural resources.
I feel like that used to work in their favor because you could just jam it through and say, we're going to upgrade all of your infrastructure when we put this prison in.
But I'm not sure the political base exists for that anymore or the political imperatives for them the the form of incarceration has changed a lot
you know with more of it being put on local municipalities rather than state and federal
federal ones and so i i don't i don't know it's just changed a lot in the last 20 or 30 years and
so like trying to run the same playbook that they did, like if, yeah,
just go back and listen to our episode with Wilson Gilmore.
If you want to know what I'm talking about, trying to run that same playbook.
The reason we had her on is because what they're experiencing in California
right now is they're closing a lot of prisons.
They're trying to close prisons.
right now is they're closing a lot of prisons they're trying to close prisons uh and it's just a testament to how things have have moved how much things have moved and changed over the last
20 or 30 years that again it just kind of feels like a slap in the face and uh i don't know i
mean i don't know what's gonna happen. I just can't see it happening.
But I've been wrong in the past.
Five, six years ago, I was literally convinced that they were actually going to build the thing.
And then we found out that they weren't.
I was wrong about that.
Then I was wrong to think that they would never try to revive it.
And so who knows?
I will probably be wrong again.
Well, it's like such a brazen move
anyway at a
time like this it's like you got people
I had a reporter
friend reach out to me and was like
are FEMA fucking people over down there
and it's like at a time when people
can't even get FEMA funds
to like
redo their houses or whatever for something like that.
What the agency is designed for.
It's like, oh, here we can't give you a pittance, a little pittance of money to start putting your life back together.
What we can do is build you a prison.
Right.
It just doesn't make any sense on any level.
Well, part of the part of this process they're about to do an
environmental impact survey i don't know if they're gonna try to use the same place that
they had identified last time if they're gonna try to use a new place but that means that they
will be soliciting comments from the public and so all i need i'm rallying the troops all we need are 12 all we need are
uh two to three dozen strong trill billy warriors who are ready to send their stupidest comment
imaginable to the bureau of prisons i didn't think about that yeah and flood their fucking
shit to just jam this thing up as long as possible.
Yeah, we've never given y'all homework unless it's to give us money
and get us more listeners and subscribers.
But this is no strings attached homework.
No strings attached homework.
When the comment period opens for this,
I want you all to submit your most ridiculous letters possible
and just overwhelm that system even if you're a casual
listener here your first time that's your homework yeah it's homework and you can have
fun with it they have to respond to it by federal law they have to respond
so last time we went through this bonus points like if you're concerned about the lack of
intersectionality i mean get as ridiculous as you want with it exactly like last time we went
through this you know song and dance we didn't have a show or a platform like this um now they've
made a powerful enemy that That's what I mean
when I say it's all been
recapitulated on stupider terms
than before.
Isaac Gaston,
before you were messing with a couple of scrubs,
pal.
Come up, Nora.
Well, look out for
that
link, email, whatever.
We'll know more in the next couple months.
I will help you get your comment in if you feel so convicted,
and I hope that you do.
I hope that you do, because we need to make this like an essay contest,
almost, where there's a prize for the most ridiculous.
A trivially essay contest for the most ridiculous.
It's in the comment section of the bureau of
prisons uh comment period for this yeah the most ridiculous we'll have a panel and the most
absolutely most ridiculous preposterous letter will win some prize that we'll have to come up
with later uh-huh but you will have parameters because there will have to be talking points
that you're gonna have to nail but that's part of the creative part.
It's kind of like sampling like a hip hop beat.
You're going to have to incorporate some talking points that I give you and make something truly original and unique out of that.
Right.
The true ability.
Your own masterpiece.
You know what's kind of funny is I imagine if they just build these in like you know some town somewhere they're like you know
and they think that we're probably in that same line like whitesburg kentucky this would be a
breeze then all of a sudden they get a blue gajillion comments about the most ridiculous
things out of nowhere yeah we're gonna see how it goes i don't know what's gonna happen but we're gonna see how it goes
alright well I think that about wraps up
the show for today
any final thoughts Mr. Sexton
I guess I guess I'll just rehash
you know the old
Maxim of sports cheating.
You know, if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's the takeaway for today.
Yeah.
And I want to re-quote the late great legend, Loretta Lynn.
Yeah, Loretta Lynn.
That you need to grab your knife and remove all those weights
if you want to go to fish
sitting.
She had a final
comment on the greatest
scandal of our time. The greatest
fishing scandal. In the hardest sport
in the hardest professional
sport, the most difficult professional sport,
fishing. She had a comment on it.
Her words echo through eternity.
It will.
For that reason.
All right.
Thanks for listening. Please go to the Patreon.
P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash
Trailbilly Workers Party and support us
over there.
We've got an episode every
Sunday.
I feel like
we really got into the phishing scandal
this past Sunday's episode.
Please go check that out.
$5 is not a big
ask, I feel like.
Anyways, go check that out.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you
over at the Patreon.
See you next time, friends check that out. Thanks for listening. We'll see you over at the Patreon. See you next time, friends.
Adios.
You've been making your brags around town
That you've been loving my man
But the man I love when he picks up trash
He puts it in a garbage can
And that's what you look like to me.
And what I see is a pity.
You better close your face and stay out of my way.
If you don't want to go to this city.
If you don't want to go to this city. you