Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #252: Joel Salatin Reflects on His Mom’s Passing

Transcript

Episode #252: Joel Salatin Reflects on His Mom’s Passing · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not selfish to imagine your legacy.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: She had an amazing life, an amazing impact on a lot of people, made life more enjoyable for lots and lots of people for a very, very long time.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, this is a way for me to offer a tribute to an amazing lady who had a big influence on me and on and on the farm on Polyface.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want said of you at your eulogy?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone to another Beyond Labels podcast with yours truly, Joel Salatin, the farmer, and of course our favorite researcher, Dr.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sina McCullough.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are recording this one day, Sina, after my mom passed.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: She passed away yesterday morning at 4 15 a.m.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are in the throes of all of our, you know, uh planning our services and different things.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think I think it would be a tribute to her and interesting to our folks to just dig into a little bit of her amazing life.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and Cena, you gotta hold yourself together here for this.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm already crying.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said hold it together.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's okay.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've certainly had my, and I'll probably won't make it through some of these uh here today, but she was 102 and six months.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the funniest things that happened yesterday at the funeral home, they were asking me, What do you want me to do what do you want us to do about her dentures?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I said, dentures?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: She had all of her teeth.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: She had all of her teeth.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She she lost two years ago.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: She was sitting in her chair, and and one just fell out of her mouth.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was back here somewhere.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Fell out.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Other than that, all of her, all of her normal teeth.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: She um uh she had she had this thing where her big toe gradually curved over to where it was underneath her next toe.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um there's a name for it, you probably know the name for it, but it's where the toe moves over.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so as she as she got into her 90s, she became a little bit unsteady on her feet because because her big toe was not beside the next one, it was kind of underneath.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she had some magnificent falls.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um she she came back from one trip, she'd fallen off a uh a curb, and her face looked like somebody hit her with a baseball bet.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, black eyes, everything.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: She fell off her off her um back porch on the concrete, you know, down off of an elevated porch, off um, lots of falls, and never had a broken bone.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ever, ever had a broken bone.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So she was she was tough.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um so so uh I I think I think it'd be fun to kind of start her story.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could just share a couple of um interesting things.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she grew up poor with four O's.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Her dad, her dad, my grandfather, was a drunk.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he abandoned, so she, so all right, she's born in 1923.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, 1923.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just so everybody gets that in perspective, she was 18 years old when Pearl Harbor happened.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So born in 1923, which is so she was six in 1929 when the stock market crashed.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is a huge uh thing in our in our history.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um by that time, her her dad had already abandoned them.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was a drunk and and took off.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So here's here's her mom, and her mom was not an educated, I don't think she was a high school graduate.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: She was she was what what uh in that day we called a domestic.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: So she took in washing, she cleaned people's houses, okay, um, low pay, and she had these two girls.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mom was the older of two daughters, and so she fled to Fort Worth, Texas, where there were relatives, and they lived much of the depression in this little duplex with relatives, probably in a space smaller than a normal bedroom, you know, with these folks.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh one of my favorite stories from from mom's childhood, so we're in Fort Worth.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, Fort Worth was just a cow town.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, today it Dallas, Fort Worth, the, you know, the the uh Metroplex, they call it, um, you know, has just, you know, it's kind of all grown together.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But back then it was a very separate little cow town and a you know, a typical Texas, you know, you had your your town square, you had your your bank, your ice cream parlor, um, you know, drugstore, okay, on uh and maybe a church you go on the four corners.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um the the enjoyment these girls had, they would um they would roller skate down down Main Street, okay?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um so one day they're out roller skating.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, mom's maybe, you know, maybe she's eight, nine, ten years old, okay?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're roller skating, and this very nicely dressed with a suit, you know, man comes up to him.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Would you girls like an ice cream cone?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this was a big deal.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these kids were poor, they didn't get ice cream, or certainly not over at the ice cream parlor.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he took took them over to the ice cream parlor, bought them ice cream cones, and of course they just thought they were living it up.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um next morning, big banner headline in the local newspaper.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the gangs, she always said it was John Dillinger.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was him or not, but one of the bank robber gangs had just robbed the bank on the corner, and this man was part of the gang and took the girls into the parlor to get them ice cream to get them off the street in case there was shooting.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about that.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: See, I mean, this is a day when even the thugs and the bank robbers cared about children, isn't that something?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, and that's unrecognizable today.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, talk talk about civility.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and and look and look at the the kind of verbiage and the kind of whatever, you know, um, burn them down, you know, uh hate stuff that we have today.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, and this was this was the a rufian of the rufians, you know, and we gotta protect these kids.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's pretty so that was a little incredible.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: That is truly inspiring.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that you know, there's good, there's good in everybody, yeah, you know, and just the character back then, like, you know, I wonder that as a as an aside, when you talk about the founding of our nation, we're coming up on the 250th birthday in America, and I'm teaching my children the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and I'm learning.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know that about 68% of Americans have never read the Declaration of Independence?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I can believe it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: 68%.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: 57% have never read the Constitution.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And 53% of Gen Z supports writing a new Constitution.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm reading the Constitution and the Declaration with them, and we're talking about the sacrifices that the men, women, and children made in that day.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm tearing up.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And my kids are like, why are you crying now?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, you know, I tap into my emotions a lot.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said to them, because I don't know that we have the character that we used to have.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the people today would stand up for our freedoms the way that they did.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Would you would you sacrifice, would you promise your lives, your fortune, your you know, sacred honor?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Would you sacrifice that for something bigger than yourself?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so to hear the story of this thief that cared for these kids, like burglar that took care of the kids.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's a totally, totally different, uh, totally different civility.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, uh, it it's a it's a totally different moral moral uh benchmark, moral litmus test, lit litmus test, if you will.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so yeah, uh thanks for thanks for uh pointing that out, bringing that up.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it it is sobering the collapse of that of that kind of personal obligatory ethos for um for people.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that sense of community.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he cared for those kids as though he felt they were part of his community, should be protected.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so your mother, uh grandmother, was potentially literally saved by thug, like you're gonna be able to get away.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: So so mom, so so they they finally that you know uh things eased up uh the depression, and um they moved back to Ohio, where they were, she was born in Worcester, Ohio, and moved back to Ohio, and um and so she she worked as an older teen in a chicken, chicken restaurant, fried chicken, and she never she never cooked and never liked fried chicken her entire life.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: She she said that that experience everything in there was chicken, grease, chicken.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It it like messed her up for life, you know.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I got all the chicken I ever needed.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um so then she she went to college and uh got a um, she was very, very athletic, uh, very pretty, very athletic, and went to college and got her degree in uh health and physical physical education.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um and then and then went to Indiana University.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, by now we were in war.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: World War II was ongoing, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because she was she was 18 in 1941 when Pearl Harbor happened.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so she goes to college, and then she said, Well, I'll go on for my master's, you know, always a little bit of an overachiever, um, kind of like other people I know.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so she goes to Indiana University, and another little fun, you know, cultural story.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So at that time during the war, there were no men on college campuses.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: None.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And all her life I've heard her talk about and get this, get this, you know, little mischievous grin about when the boys came home.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: When the boys came home.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, the college campuses were devoid of all men until 1945, and then suddenly the boys came home, you know, and suddenly the male students came.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, dad was one of those boys, and um, and he went to Indiana V, Indiana University, IU, uh, in uh business, economics, business major, business management.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they met at a at a navigators uh club.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let me say one more thing.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so at that time, um so I I told you, mom, mom's dad was a drunk, alcoholic, and abandoned them.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then my grandmother, her mother, married two more times in her life, both of them drunks, who left her.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so this is three messed up marriages.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: One only lasted six months.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so mom came from this this hard, this difficult.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: The point is, she hated alcohol.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: She hated alcohol.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so when she went to college, of course, she she was this vivacious, bright, you know, um gal, and all the women's sororities wanted her to join their sorority, right?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they're all trying to recruit her.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so she checks in these, well, they're all a bunch of social drinking clubs, yeah, essentially.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and she just she just couldn't stand it, just couldn't stand it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so she went to the dean, um and by this time, by this time she had given her life to Christ and and and had come out of a lot of that spiritual emotional darkness of of uh the the growing up time.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um she went to the dean of the college and said, Hey, um I'd like to start a women's sorority uh that that's uh that's an alcohol free.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, because there might be other girls that would like to be in a non-drinking club and we could do our thing and have fun, and you know, and they blackballed her.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Aren't you satisfied with what we're offering?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the administration went ballistic on her because she could not be satisfied with what they were offering, and put, you know, uh uh whatever, you know, um black marks in her student resume as a troublemaker, a rebel, a rebel troublemaker.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so so anyway, you know, nothing ever happens there, and and she met dad, and um then she's ready to go for her first teaching position.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: She was education major and and all that, and so she puts in her resume.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now she has her master's, so she can be a professor in a college because she's got masters.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so she put in a resume.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of them went to uh Bob Jones College, which was a new uh by the a new college um founded by um Dr.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Jones, who was uh he was a tent revival sawdust trail evangelist in the in the 20s and and 30s, and had developed quite a reputation.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he would have been, you know, a a kind of uh Billy Graham of his day, just so you know where I'm coming from.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um it started as college, and um and so she sends her you know her paperwork in, and uh they hire her basically sight unseen because they were looking for somebody with conviction.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So here here her blackballing at the one school became her entree at another school that wanted people that were willing to question and and uh and buck, you know, uh buck conventional thinking.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those are just great stories.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's just just that's real, that's real person, you know, that that's real stuff.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it gives us hope because a lot of people who listen to our podcast are like us, right?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of trailblazers going against the grain.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you may feel alone a lot of times and you may get backlash like your mom did, but when you find your tribe, right, you're gonna fit right in and be welcome with open arms.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm tired of being made fun of with that kind of thing, or or being discredited or or whatever.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, so um all my life that's been a real, a real great um, you know, what society thought for bad, God had it for good, you know, and and and that's a that's an important important uh lesson.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So wait, and was it common for women to go to college back then?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, or did more women start going to college because of the war and the men were gone?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I I I think um I mean a lot of the women became a Rosie the Riveter, you know, uh building uh warplanes and stuff.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um because the men were off fighting that they had to take place.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And women were in factories building stuff.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how I don't know that backstory.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know that all that part of how of how she uh went there and not.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but no, there the fact is the colleges were empty.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, colleges that would normally have 5,000 students had 500.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean they were just ghost towns.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what, could you imagine that today?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm thinking back and I'm picturing, you know, I went to college 10 years, and if it was devoid of all the men, it's just the women there, you know, it's like part of me thinks that maybe the generations past, like your mother, they had this great sense of community and bond like the person who saved them, that you know, the the the thief that saved them.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because they went through these challenging times together.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a universal experience across the United States, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: They felt the pain together.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: They had to go through that together.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no TikTok.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, so they were um they they had they had their front porches to sit and talk on.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean the churches, um, you know, civic groups.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was very it was a very visceral, uh, you know, visceral personal uh experience.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: You were more I would argue they're more human back then than we are today.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think so.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think this whole digital thing is we've put a little bit of time on it on our podcast, but it's it's a it's it's it's just it's really, really getting um serious now.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and now it's been in it, and and there's enough that there are some studies coming in, and I'm sure you've seen the emotional and spiritual and psychological things that that um that some of this is doing.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so she and she met dad there, and um dad uh had had a dream um before Martin Luther King.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he had a dream of having a farm.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he was thinking, and and a lot of people don't realize that right there at World War II, a lot of colleges were full of socialists and communists.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Ann Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged there in whatever it was, 42, 43, to try to bring America back to its senses.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Folks, you know, the the Fabian societies, all these things, uh the college campuses were rampant with this.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, goodness, John Dewey, I mean, the founders of public education were very much, you know, socialist, um, modeled after, you know, uh Bismarck in the in the um German you know uh Germanic tradition of wanting wanting um um basically human tools for the state's machine.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's where public education kind of came about.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so he says, well, um I'll go to South America.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Land's cheap, small government, pretty, you know, pretty open, free.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um so he conceived of a plan to take his business degree on the GI Bill.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the Navy in World War II and um on GI Bill and got his degree, and then I'll go to South America.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um he he loved language, and so he, as soon as he graduated, he went to Middlebury in Vermont for six weeks.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Middlebury is still known as the language school of the world.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um so he went there for one semester only, and you had when you when you took their foreign language program, you had to sign an affidavit that beginning this moment you will not speak English.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And they had monitors, I mean human monitors in the bathrooms to catch students who were violating their agreement.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, can you imagine that today?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like no.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about suffocating, all right.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: But but um such a rigid environment, you learn really quick.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so in six months, he was vote uh, you know, fluent enough, fluent enough that he hitchhiked.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: He hitchhiked from Vermont to Mexico.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, no money, no, you know, he hitchhiked.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember him telling us, I know this is about mom, but I gotta just bring this in, um, that when he got to Mexico on a on a summer day, um he he walked into town, his last ride.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: He stayed with a family there.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was some sort of you know foreign uh exchange program, you know.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: The the college probably had families that, but he got into town and before he went anywhere, he went into a little ice cream shop, bought a half a gallon of ice cream, sat down on a curb and ate the whole thing.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whole, I think it was hot, dusty, yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been on the road chiking for who knows how long.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um anyway, was there six months, and then came back to the U.S.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: and sat for the foreign civil service exam that all you know diplomats and have to take before they get stationed at foreign countries, passed it with flying colors the very first time, got on as a bilingual accountant with Texas Oil Company, um, which was just so this is this is now 49, um, and they're just starting their um or 48.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're just starting their wildcat ventures off of Venezuela.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the beginning of the petroleum uh OPEC.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and what the what the company wanted, it eventually became Texaco.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um they what they wanted was a bilingual accountants because they used American managers in the oil fields, they called them man camps, and um, and then they used the Venezuelans.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: As the worker bees, and the tension was always about money.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, salary, the commissary, you know, pay whatever.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so they wanted this bilingual accountant.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very, very high-paying, very specific job for a very specific time.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and um, they wouldn't let dad and mom marry for two years till he'd been there for two years.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine a company today telling you, no, you can't, you can't get married.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because they didn't want the stress of new marriage, new culture, new position all hitting at once.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can say that's arrogant, but in a way, it's wise.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: The company didn't want, they didn't want washouts.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't want, you know, people to, they wanted people to be successful and realized you can't load your life up with too many, you know, whatever, life-altering situations and and be successful.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that's so fascinating because nowadays, again, it's comparing now to back then and how our mindset has possibly changed.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because nowadays I hear a lot of people talking about, you know, like fight against the man and the machine, and they want, they feel like the company owns them too much already.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and they're trying to get away from that and kind of put the companies in check, if you will, so that they have more control over their environment as you know, a participatory member of that company.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting that back then they would literally say, You cannot get married for two years, and people were okay with it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um because it didn't load them up with all the stress of too many big life-changing things at once.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was there two years, then he came back and they got married.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so they uh they packed up to go back and they were gonna drive the Pan American highway from the U.S.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: all the way down through Central America back to Venezuela.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: They bought a Studebaker pickup, put a put a this is before before, you know, RVs and camper shells.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So dad constructed a camper shell for this stuff.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: They put all their their stuff in there and um and headed back.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in Texar, Cana, before they even got out of the U.S., there was a construction on a bridge.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh it was uh icy uh um night.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Make a long story short, they they missed a sign and skidded to a stop with one wheel hanging off the bridge to a hundred-foot drop-off into the ravine below, and and totaled the truck.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was quite a honeymoon experience.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But that made him change plan, and then dad got hepatitis, and um, so it took him a month.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was in bed for like three weeks, and uh, and all into my growing up time, you know, um, they would talk about those wonderful three weeks.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, mom read to him for three weeks.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, there's you know, there's no TV, okay, there's radio, but that's it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's no social media, no computer, okay.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so as newlyweds, she sat by his bedside and read to him for three weeks.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they talked about it their whole marriage of how special a time that was for them.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and it would be special, wouldn't it?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be very special.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my heart's longing for that now.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: With how just connected we are and we're on the move all the time and go here, go there, and not really sitting in the moment with somebody looking them in the eyes, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Being fully present.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm sure that love and support that your father felt from your mother helped him recover.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Very very very much so.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and I mean, and just let's re realize how powerful that is reading to your kids.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, kids love to be read too, too.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so so um they picked themselves up and ended up kind of leaving everything and flying then back because he had to get back to work.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was he was on a sick leave by that point, and uh got back.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh within seven years, he was able to save enough money.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: They bought a thousand-acre farm in the highlands of Venezuela, and we had monkeys, bananas.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um is this where you developed your love of bananas?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Teresa calls me her little monkey.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and what when when I do interviews and people say, What's your what's your single biggest food hypocrisy?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Bananas.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're not local, we can't grow them here.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but I I just if I don't have a banana or two a day, I just I just you know, I haven't lived.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it just and I think those childhood things are powerful uh for people, how you grow up.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, um, so we were out there, we built a house, and um, so dad's goal was chickens and dairy.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Chickens and dairy.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: He said, that's what these people need.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so chickens, of course, have a quicker turnaround time.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: We could start them right away.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started growing chickens.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Was your mom okay with that since she didn't want fried chicken?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, would she eat other types of chicken or just not fried chicken?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just not fried.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Roasted, anything, but she just couldn't take the breading, the the oil, the fried, it just that, whatever, that odor, you know, she just couldn't handle it.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but no, no, she she was happy with chicken, you know, any other way except fried.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um and yeah, she and the colonel would not have gone along very well.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, so um, so so they're out here, and um, and you know, this is before there there's no grocery store.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in the city, you know, those Latin American countries, the um the the farm stalls, the farmers would come in with their wares.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically a glorified uh farmers market, but but it was it was the market.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it wasn't like a little subset of of markets like we have in this country, it that was the thing.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so you know, you'd have the the the guy with the bananas and the papayas and the pineapples and and you know rice and and and chicken and whatever, and farmers would would come in uh with their with their stuff, and the middlemen would then buy from the farmers and then they would hawk it through town, through the city.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're uh you know a senora and you're getting ready to fix and you want to think about dinner, um if you want chicken, you wait for the for the chicken man, and and and he would have bought his chickens from a farmer, tied them to two poles over his shoulders, so he'd have like 15 chickens on a side, or that's what he started, and he would walk through the city and he these guys would have routes.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so, you know, uh this guy would go down first street to third street, you know, whatever, and um and if you wanted chickens, you waited until and the the chicken man came.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and the the the middlemen vied for customer loyalty.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they were always looking for the better chicken, so that, you know, the senora was well, um, you know, uh Pedro has better chickens than Carlos, you know, and so they would they would um there was this this and that's another good this was a totally, totally free market.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: There was no government, no, no bureaucrat said how you had to butcher them, raise them, sell them, store them, nothing.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was a completely open and free market.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, the consumer knew what a healthy chicken was.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And all the indigenous chickens had um post nasal drips, not.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they were it was kind of a subtherapeutic pneumonia, respiratory chickens are real susceptible to respiratory things, especially when they're in poor, dusty conditions, which of course all the Tyson and you know concentrated animal feeding operation chickens are.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: But there, the most of the chickens were kind of backyard chickens, scruff chickens, uh running through the open, you know, sewers uh out or or through squat pots, you know, um out on the farms.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and so they they they were just unsanitary, and they all had this post-nasal drip.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the lady buying the chickens, she would go down, you know, the guys here with this polls, the chickens, she'd go down and she'd take her finger and she'd run them down the beaks of the chickens, and of course the driest ones commanded a higher price, and the wettest ones didn't, uh were the uh poorer.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so the farmers were always looking for the better chicken.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, the market actually does work.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: When consumers are informed.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: When consumers are the ultimate arbiter of the decision, and so dad quick our chickens were completely dry because we had them in a clean, hygienic situation.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh dad quickly took over the local chicken market.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here, you know, here's the line of of middle guys waiting for dad to get to his stall, you know, so they can buy and here are these guys over here, they've got chickens and nobody's buying them.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: This created great animosity.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, I bet the other farmers loved him.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and nobody, nobody asked, well, Signor Salatin, come on, you know, how do you how do you do this?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, no, they accused us of voodoo, witchcraft, um, you know, black magic, something, you know, anything, uh, that would explain it.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was a lot of animosity.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So in the spring of 1958, there was a a revolution, a coup d'etat, um known as a junta, you'll whatever, you know.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and when there's lawlessness, when there's that kind of a situation, it allows scores to be settled by the law of the jungle that wouldn't be settled under normal circumstances.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so here we were, you know, American expats out on the land.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: We displaced these farmers, and so they got together and the machine guns came in the back doors and we fled to front door and and just fled, left everything.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was three when that happened.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: We stayed another year, and um, and dad tried to get protection from the local, the constable, the uh then he ended up going to Caracas.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and um our our listeners uh when they're hearing me say these things, I hope they appreciate that you know I spoke Spanish before English, and so my my diction, I I don't say Caracas, you know, it's it's Caracas.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh wait, so Spanish is your native language?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, not my native language, but but but as a child I was 100% bilingual.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: We we the only place I heard English was in the home.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else was Spanish.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, church, social, friends, little, little friends, you know, I had a little little uh uh metal pedal car and little girlfriend, you know, we were this four years old, you know, and we'd uh play with that.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um so so we tried to get protection and um and nobody would give us the time of day.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: That said, I've got a deed here, you know, we paid for this.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um everything was either bribe or shut the door.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um so finally, after a year of just nothing, nothing, nothing, we realized we we just have to walk away.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: We can't we can't stay here.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so you know, and and by that time, neighbors had come in and they were planting, dad had cleared, he had cleared some jungle land, you know, to and they were planting their crops on the land that dad had cleared on our land.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but but we we couldn't couldn't do anything.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't couldn't um do anything.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, so um But he he wasn't was he not willing to pay the bribe?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Was it like a principle?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, here's my deed.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're the sheriff.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: These people are no, it's it it's all it's all bribe.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and it's the way it is today.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of the cartels in Mexico.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: These these foreign countries, um, I mean, I was in um I was in Bulgaria, and my host that was driving me around, he had a back seat full of uh vodka uh uh alcohol bottles.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So what's all that?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said, well, that's in case we get stopped by a police or anything, I can I can uh give him a bottle of vodka and he'll let us go.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some things never change.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you you you can't, and people in this country that are cavalier about property rights, and we need to we need to take land um until it's happened to you, until you live in that kind of situation.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like kind of like when I one of the one of the times I went to Australia and um they I got off the plane and they had me go to um do a speech on the parliament steps, and they were advising me about what I could say, what I couldn't.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, we can say what we want, can't we?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we don't have a bill of rights.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it just struck me, wow, no freedom of speech.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we get so siloed, seeing it, don't we?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: We assume, listen, we are in, we're in paradise here, I mean, compared to the world.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's why every time I every time I come back to the U.S.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: from abroad and I go through customs and I see that, you know, welcome to the USA and that big big flag.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to, I just want to bow and kiss the dirt, you know.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: We got do we have problems?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we got problems, okay?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: But uh man, I'll tell you, you don't have to travel much to realize we live in a very, very special place.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's in history, not only today in the world, but in history.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is the shining beacon of hope.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: That light on the hill.
• 36:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and like you're saying, I it's a shame that more people don't know the their rights, that they haven't read the Constitution Declaration, and that I mean, like I said, 53% of Gen Z wants to rewrite the Constitution.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: How many of them have actually read it in the first place?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem is, like you're saying, when they can't defend our rights, that we don't know when our right has actually been violated, you know, or if it's just something that we think is a right that actually is not a right that we're trying to defend and we're going astray.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like there's a story in the news now about um they want to build a data center right where a woman's home is, and the government's trying to claim eminent domain to make her move so they can build this data center there.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to know your rights, and so we can be able to uphold and defend the Constitution because it works.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it works, but if you don't read it, if you don't know the history, if you don't have gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifice, you're not gonna be able to defend it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one reason our founders so feared democracy.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, anyone who runs for public office and uses the word democracy for us, they're already illegitimate.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, they're out.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a democracy, it's a republic.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and they call democracy mob rule, which is what it what happens.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so the data center, hey, this is this is what society needs.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: We take your land, take your pl take your farm for a solar farm, whatever, you know, and um and and and go with it.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so so when people wonder, you know, why are you so small government militate against you know, regulatory, all this stuff, this is part of what makes me our family makes me what I am.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and it, you know, for better or marriage vows, for better or worse, uh, I mean, this this was our this was our life, our reality.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't remember the farm because we left it when I was barely three.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't remember the farm, but I do remember a couple of times uh dad whipping the car around and outrunning gorillas.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean boo, I mean gorillas with guns.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh uh uh in in in in you know in the the back roads uh to to flee, you know, from from um getting uh kidnapped or killed or whatever.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: So do you remember them coming in the back door with machine guns?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't remember I don't remember the day we fled.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember that.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but we went we went and lived in a in a missionary compound for a while.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dad got a job as an accountant at a at a textile company while he's going to Caracas and convening with people.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it every door shut.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: So finally nothing to do but leave.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so um so we we we got we got our uh we came back on a on a on a merchant marine um ship, the um the mimnong.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I so remember it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh and we we had our tickets.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Drew Pearson came to Caracas.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: So realize, you know, all this is going on, and um the U.S.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: is sending a bunch of foreign aid to prop up the government and you know and be helpful.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um Drew Pearson, who at the time would be equivalent to today's uh, I'm thinking of, you know, a CNN anchor or uh, you know, uh CBS news, you know, uh uh a Brett Bear, Fox, okay, all right.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he comes to Caracas with his entourage and in a fact-finding mission.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go, we're gonna find out what's really going on down here.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he came and dad got an audience with him and uh and told him our story.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, he said, well, I can't do anything.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: So Drew Pearson, so he had a national radio broadcast that was that was back then, you know, radio was everything, and it was listened to some some of our listeners, I'm sure, remember Paul Harvey.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I mean Paul Harvey was, I mean, he was like an institution in our house.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: If it was noon and you didn't hear Paul Harvey, you weren't you weren't, you know, check your pulse.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and and so um so Drew Pearson was like that, like a Walter Cronkite.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so he he said, um, I can't do anything for you here, but he said, I will, when I get back to the U.S., I will uh fly here.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll I'll take your case and let's let's see what we can do.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we got on the ship, came, came back, landed in uh Philadelphia Easter Sunday, uh 1961.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was four.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we get back to the U.S.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: and about um three months after uh coming here to the farm, we get a phone call from the Venezuelan ambassador here in DC.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Senor Salatin, you know, come to the embassy, we have a check for you.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: What Drew Pearson did when he got back to the U.S.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: true to his word, he called the Venezuelan ambassador here.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if you don't give Salatin a settlement for stealing their land and not protecting them, I'm gonna feature them on next week's national radio program, and you will not get another dime of U.S.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: foreign aid.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: They caved.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now it wasn't half of what we lost.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very, it was, but for dad, it was closure.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was we did you wrong.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: We we didn't, we didn't take care of you, we didn't protect you.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: We allowed anarchy and lawlessness to to prevail.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so he never, once that happened, he never mentioned going back to Venezuela again.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I know it broke his heart, and one of the reasons why he, I think why he died so young.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: He he never he never really got over it.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was um it was a it was a big deal for him.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that is part of the reason that I'm such an avid lover of the media, of journalism, of transparency in of why we do this podcast, is to um to to give people the truth.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: The truth.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, dad's 39, he's just lost everything.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I hit 39, so dad passed away when I was 31, so I was young.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was young, he was 66.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um I remember thinking, if I was 39 and lost it all, what would I do?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd start over.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that's just and and and he he went way up in my estimation, realizing after all that trauma, and I still want to farm and I'm still willing to invest my life in this and start over.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, both of their families, dad's family was in Indiana, mom's family was Ohio.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Normally, you know, you thought, well, let's go back to the Midwest where our families are, you know, parents and siblings and stuff.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: But his heart was still in Venezuela.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been there 20 years.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: 12 years.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was like a native.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: He spoke like a native.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: He loved the people.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Loved, I mean, how can you not love a place that you can have fresh bananas from the yard hanging on the backport, you know, door?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: You just pick one up every time you walk out the door.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so, so he um he wanted to go back.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he he thought, well, we'll invest in a farmland, and as soon as things settled, settle, we can go back.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to be within a day's drive of Washington, D.C.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I can be, I can, within hours, I can be to the Venezuelan embassy, get paperwork stamped, and be back on the farm.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we came here to the to Virginia Shenandoah Valley, rather than we looked at farms from from um roughly Lancaster, Pennsylvania, down through the Shenandoah Valley as far south as Raleigh, North Carolina.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I mean imagine that like a three-hour arc drive from DC.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it came down to two places this place and a and a place up near Winchester, Virginia.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mom was pregnant with my sister at that time, and um this farm, this place was a rock pile gully, you know, awful, but it was owned by a couple from Switzerland, and um and they were very, very fastidious.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so the house inside was immaculate.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: The place in Winchester, beautiful pre-Civil War brick, you know, house, stately, beautiful rolling land, better land, but it was owned by an 80-year-old bachelor who was had to sell, who had six dogs in the house as a bachelor.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And mom's got a nose like a bloodhound, and she just said, I can't do it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she was pregnant, remember, she's pregnant, so everything becomes you know, notched up.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Said, I I I can't do it.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we came here.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: This was much cheaper, much poorer land, um, and and farther away from DC, farther away from from society.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what a what a blessing to uh end up here with such amazing well, such an amazing well.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so we started over here.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um mom then uh after a year or two here, unable to make it on the farm.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh dad took a job as an accountant in town.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Mom took a job as a school teacher when a local high school was built and and and started up.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and the off-turn farm job is paid for the mortgage.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um by the time I'm a teenager, uh the mortgage is paid, and now I'm wanting to farm full-time.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do I how do I start?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um so fortunately, the land was paid for.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I stand on the shoulders of greatness.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: I take nothing away from that.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um the land was paid for, but there was no, it was basically an experimental homestead.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we uh we had a big garden, we had a couple milk cows, uh, we, you know, we had our own firewood.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we just kind of, you know, glorified homesteading would be, I think, the the the best, you know, mom canned, and and um she she was she was not the the kitchen domestic that my Teresa is by any means.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: But she but she she was um very you know resourceful, you know, we churned butter and um all the you know made cottage cheese, yogurt, all sorts of things.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and she taught and dad did the accounting.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then I came back September 24, 1982.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um Teresa and I got married in 1980.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: We fixed up the uh attic as an apartment.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our bedroom was the kitchen.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a bad setup, actually, and um started there, and then um mom's when I was about six, fifteen, fifteen, I guess, um mom's mother, so my grandmother, the one with the three alcoholic fathers, um she was having real serious health problems, all sorts of issues, and she had a a bit of a dominant older sister that she was living with at the time that was not a good emotional situation for her.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so she bought a little, this is early, you know, this is mid-70s.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: She bought a little 50 by 10 mobile home.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was in the early days of mobile homes.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: They were just kind of becoming a thing, and um, and moved it in right next to our house.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she lived there uh until she passed away when I was 20, I don't know, 26, 27.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, mom took care of her.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: So mom then taught in the high school until 1984, and um when grandma needed um more attention, she retired uh after 20 years of teaching at the high school and uh took care of grandma.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Grandma passed, and um and then shortly thereafter, dad um came down with prostate cancer, and so then she started taking care of him, and he passed in '88.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: So where I'm going with this is she had roughly five years of pretty intensive caregiving for her mother and then my dad, till he and when grandma died, um, by that time we had our Rachel, so we were now four up in the attic.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so they said, well, you know, uh grandma's gone, so why don't we shift out her house and get a bigger house for uh my mom and dad?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they they did.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: They they bought one of the biggest ones you could get, you know, a 14 by whatever, 80 or something.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy big.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but that put them all on one floor.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because by that time dad had gotten down to where the the stairs were an issue.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so um that put them all on one floor.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: They moved dad in in uh October of 87, and he passed away in February of 88.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he was only in there for, you know, not even a year, uh, till he till he passed.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so now mom's, you know, she's this social butterfly, loves activity and everything, and um she's had these five years of confinement taking care of her mom and then dad.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And she um uh she she uh she did compensatory social um elements.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think we count up, she was in 22 volunteer organizations uh at her peak.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was gone all the time and um and and did her social fill.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then and and she drove her in her 90s, her favorite group, uh, you know, gradually she uh you know, through I mean, because mom was only 65 when dad died, and she was, you know, hearty, healthy, you know, phys ed.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so she had tremendous energy.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: So she traveled the world, she did all this volunteer work and stuff.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: She was a dossier at the Woodrow Wilson birthplace, um, you know, Stanton Visitor Center, uh um Frontier Culture Museum.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: She was in weekday religious education, AARP, retired teachers, weekday religious education.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just all these things.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And but her favorite one was the Happy Notes.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the Happy Notes was a group of retirees that sang old hymns, and they would go to nursing homes on a schedule and entertain and sing at nursing homes.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they were really good.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were really good.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so she sang with them, and she in her 90s, you know, she'd pop over to the house.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're going to sing with the old folks, you know.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you know, most of them were younger than she was.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that was that was her that was her mentality, you know, that she and she she rode her, she had a stationary bicycle, she rode, you know, five miles a day, she had weight, she lifted.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, health and fits ed teacher, she you got to keep moving.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so she and she was so she was in square dance groups, uh, ballroom dancing groups.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just was was all these things.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and finally in 1996, I'm sorry, not 96, uh, 2019, 2019, she is now 96, uh, in one year she had three little um fender deads, parking lots, you know, bump, bump, we call it, you know, parking by the braille system, you know.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: But but, you know, just her her her her response, you know.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the kickers was one of our friends saw her driving uh the wrong way on a one-way street downtown.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, Mom, you know, if you killed somebody, you you it would not be good.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the the clincher was, this is hilarious.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: The clincher was that December, you know, you ever get uh um Christmas cards from businesses?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your patronage, you've been a great customer, blah, blah, blah.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, we always like that.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: We like to think that somebody thinks we're one of their good customers.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she got a Christmas card for loyal patronage, thank you, from the local auto body shop.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: That is not something to become a loyal customer to, you know, the auto body shop.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so February of 2020 at 97, um, we we we took her keys away.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she did not go gently.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: She she was not not happy about it.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that that really changed her world because she could no longer just go.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then COVID.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: So our joke in the family is COVID was the cosmic response to us taking mom off the road and uh taking her car keys away.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we ended up um selling the car so she wouldn't look at it longingly.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and and then and then, you know, at that point, she just started a very long, gentle decline.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: She did a lot of sewing, she had a lot of time then, and so she did a lot of sewing for um an orphanage in um in Ghana uh and Kenya and little sack dresses for girls and stuff.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: She made hundreds, I think, of them.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you go over there and she, well, I got, you know, 30 more.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and so she she was able to, and she took there were uh young girls in the church, and she would um uh they would come over and and she would show them how to sew.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so she she did a lot of that, and then she, you know, gradually, gradually dementia.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: She just started just not uh hitting.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so the last two years have been quite quite rough.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we were we were pretty committed to trying to keep her here and not institutionalize her.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, every every mother would want a daughter-in-law like my wife, Teresa.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she is just a she is a loyal man.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: So she's, you know, she would clean up mom's messes, give her bath, I mean, you know, like toilet messes, clean up baths.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes mom made it, sometimes she didn't.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and just um took care of her.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so a month ago, we called hospice because we we needed some relief.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: I say we, you know, she did 90% of it.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was there to help.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: When mom fell, I would pick her up.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, you know, I wasn't here, and so Daniel would help our son, and um so we we limped along, but with hospice, and I can't say enough good about hospice, every one of those people is like an angel.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're just big-hearted, uh uh like you're their whole world.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: It they're just cut from a different cloth.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where that heart comes from, but I'm glad the world has those people.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so you know, so then we had somebody to bathe her twice a week.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh we had a couple volunteers that would sit with her so we could, you know, take a breath.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um Thursday evening, a week ago, uh not a week ago, uh just this last Thursday, um, exactly a week ago today, she we think she had a stroke because suddenly she couldn't move her legs, couldn't move her left arm, and her speech got real slurred, and she just suddenly had no desire to do anything, just sleep.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and we we we worked with that for two days and realized we we can't do this.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was like a sack of potatoes, you know, and I we just couldn't, we didn't have the facilities, we didn't have um, you know, the we didn't we didn't have uh whatever personal instruction uh you know on and and you know uh I I didn't know how to pick her up probably properly.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: So then she was in that hurt or you know, pain, and she was in uh lots of you know, her joints were all you know pretty well shot.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so Sunday afternoon we um we called hospice and they have a they have a special uh hospice house that in a nine in a 90-day arrangement you can go there five days just for respite.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, I think we're ready to burn two or three of these days.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh so we called them.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: They came out Sunday afternoon, and um I got her got her in a wheelchair, got her down there, and they got her in a gurney to take her in the transport van.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and she she had been pretty much unresponsive now by by this time for you know uh 36 hours.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and they got her in a gurney, strapped her in, got her, got her in there situated, and I'm standing in the back of the the uh van, and in just a moment of lucidity, she she brightens up, she opens her eyes, she smiles, she raises her right arm.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one she could raise, she waves and she says, bye-bye.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was like that was the last I saw her.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then she was back out, and she never regained responsiveness, went in, and uh two and a half days later she was gone.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we wanted to keep her here to the end, we just couldn't quite.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and but we did the best we could by her.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor told me the last he looked at her, he just said, I want you to tell you something.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Most families would have put her in a nursing home three or four years ago.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Mom, time for you to go.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, he said, I really respect you for hanging on and doing all you could for her to keep her there at home.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: So she's really dancing now.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and we're we're um we'll miss her, but it but she had a she had an amazing life, an amazing impact on a lot of people, and uh um made life more enjoyable for lots and lots of people for a very, very long time.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm not very helpful.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're supposed to say something I mean I had the privilege of meeting her when she was still lucid.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she was an incredible woman.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she had incredible strength.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: You could see it, even though I didn't know her at the time when she was driving around.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Still I remember my husband came to the farm with us and you know, we'd bring the kids and we'd meet her, and and even my husband said that's where Joel gets his strength is from his mother.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she was she was something else.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: The uh so we've put uh obviously I've been last day now, I've been at the funeral home and you know, making plans and all the different things.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that that um that my assistant Wendy has done, she went through, she went over to mom's photo albums and stuff, and she's digitized a bunch of photos that'll be in a you know a loop at the at the at the visitation Sunday night.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't look through all of them this morning.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably I don't know, I don't know if I don't think it's a hundred pictures, but it's it's a bunch.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I told Teresa when I when I looked through a bunch of them, I said, you know what's interesting about these pictures, let's just say there's a hundred.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: There probably aren't five of her by herself.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's always somebody else in the picture.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: Always.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was mom.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as I think about that, was mom.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: She was always um with somebody, encouraging somebody, talking with somebody.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um she was she she just wasn't uh that's where I get my extrovert, you know.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: She she was very much a a people, a people-oriented person.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: She was a gift to so many, yeah, and it just came naturally for her, just like with you.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, she was.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're out of time.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that didn't bore anybody.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's um, you know, it's something that that uh that we all go through.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um and yeah, this is a way for me to offer a tribute to an amazing lady who had a big influence on me and on and on the farm on Pollyface and on she she never she never liked the farm like dad did.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: The farm was dad's thing.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh mom's thing was people.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um dad was an introvert.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't he couldn't talk.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: If if there were more than five people in a group, he he he couldn't he couldn't speak hardly.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he just could not um uh so so between the two of them, dad as a visionary and mom as the the the people orientation, that was a good combination.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, to have to have both the people and the vision.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was good.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like a perfect team.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like you got great qualities from both of them.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did, I did.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I got I got a lot of great qualities um from both of them.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and and you know, uh for for me, you know, Theresa's that complimentary um introvert, um, duty-bound, loyal, just you know, get it done, just get it done.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: No excuses, you know, no entitlements, no excuses, uh, get it done.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a it's a it's a rich legacy.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess I would leave folks with just the thought that it's not selfish to imagine your legacy.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: All of us are gonna hit this at some point.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard it said, what do you want, what do you want said of you at your eulogy?
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want said of you?
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if we could, if we could put that foot forward every day, um, I think we'd live better.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'd live more satisfied, fruitful, and um, and with more purpose and be exactly who we're supposed to be.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be a good thing.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, there we are.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's our community question for the week.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a good one.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what what what um what epitaph would you want on your tombstone?
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, what what would what what what uh one sentence captures what you would like people to remember or say about you um and your legacy.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what George Washington wanted to be known about?
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things Farmer.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: Farmer.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know Thomas Jefferson, but um uh I don't remember George Washington.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everybody, thanks for listening to this um different kind of um podcast.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it was I hope it was interesting, encouraging, and it has uh um maybe awakened a new appreciation for our country, our culture, our nation, our founding uh on this 250th anniversary of our country.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: And an appreciation for people in your life upon whose shoulders you stand.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being with us.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be with you again next week.