Latest / The Story Behind The Ink / Episode : 4 What it takes to be a Eagle Scout
Transcript
- Robert Moss: You see the tattoo, you don't see the story. Welcome to the story behind the ink, where we go beyond the surface and hear the stories that made us who we are. I am Robert Moss, and today's guest is Jacob Taylor. So Jacob, what's your tattoo? Who did it and when did you get it? so I got a big arrowhead on my arm, this arm, and Mr. Robert here did it for me. And that was last fall, right after getting graduating school, and it was just something to tie it all in for me. What what's the story behind it? basically a whole lot of things. The Arrowhead is a big part of scouting. which I'll go into later. It was called the Order of the Arrow. it was just a higher level thing in scouting, which was an awesome time. then it's got a cross in the background 'cause I came from a very religious background growing up then it goes in the little like stream and it just all ties in from my love for nature and How this planet even became a thing. That's pretty cool. did you know exactly what you wanted? No. it's always just a I'm kind of just a point and shoot guy, and once something sticks, it goes. So that's how it just happened. Well, I know you ain't got too many tattoos, but which one's your favorite? Probably that one just because I look at it and it's like, And it just reminds me of all the cool stuff I've done Gotcha. And yeah, I remember that tattoo. So it's a it's a big arrowhead. And then inside the arrowhead, there's a waterfall, there's a moon, I think some trees. it's arrowhead itself. And then around it, we've done like a a bald eagle soaring. a little bit. Also, he has this Route 66 gas tank. It's really cool. I did that as well. it's on my Instagram. If y'all want to follow me, it's at Tattoos by Frog. Y'all check it out. So where did you grow up and what was you like as a kid? from Candler, North Carolina. big town next to it's Asheville. I was always this nerdy, smart kid. I always had straight A's, perfect attendance, the whole nine yards. I was that kid. I was the opposite. Always had gotten an ISS, always getting in trouble, like never paid attention, never had good grades, like none of that. so what was the best time of your life? Since I haven't been here long since I'm only twenty, would probably be my beginning teenage years, my oldest brother or my youngest brother was just graduating high school, so I was running around thinking, I'm a high school freshman, I can do whatever I want. No, it don't work that way. But it was always some funny stories back then. Tell us what your family's like. I was the youngest of five. and the two older ones were out of the house by the time I was born. There's twenty years between me and my oldest brother, and then there's fifteen years between that, or the next one, and then my sister's twenty six, my brother's twenty just I was always the bullied. I always got bullied, picked on. It was always 'cause I was the youngest, but I know I was probably the most loved. So when was the when was the actual turning point to where you came out of your shell? Probably once I got more into like F F A and all that in high school and it was just more of, Hey, I actually know what I kinda wanna do now in life and it was just when I got an FFA it was like showing me, Hey, you can do more than sit a high on a desk and that and make good money and you can go pick a trade and once you get good at the trade you can make well into six at a career. And that was something that like was very enlightening to me. That's cool. What's something you have been through that most people don't know about? probably my parents' divorce. it was pretty pretty rough there for a little bit. Thankfully I got my driver's license right when it happened, so I had a way to escape from a lot of it. let's talk about welding since that's an interesting job. how did you get into welding in the first place? my dad's a general contractor, and so he gets to do some of Crazy one off jobs here in Asheville. just he had a project car. It was the first truck he had or the first thing I ever saw him work on was his nineteen sixty two Ford F one hundred but that's besides the point. And then actually my first ever merit badge besides first day, which is just the scouting requirement, was welding. So that was always a soft spot to me. that's cool. What made you decide this is what I want to do? the fact of it can be one off. I hate doing the same It was just I would got tired of doing the same thing over and over and over for eight hours a day. And I just was like, Nah, I need something different to do and I already was dead set on going to welding school and then once I finally got the opportunity to work for Mr. Larry thanks to this guy over here, I actually got the job. explain the job The company's name and what you actually do. So it's Pinnacle Waste Processing, which we build basically it looks like a large coffee press that goes on a semi-trailer, but it's actually for water filtration. So it'll go it'll go from a like waste pond into a tank and then it goes on to our machines and it filters the water so it can be recycled back into like power plants or recycling plants and stuff like that. So we actually take He'll buy an old retired machine, we'll refurbish it, and then it'll go back to work within six months. for sure. do you remember the first thing you ever welded? Was probably helping my dad on some small things, and then my first ever little project I ever did was in sixth grade, and my sixth grade math teacher, Mr. Keller, little thing where he'd play the guitar in the morning and we would like pick songs and he would play So I actually got asked to make the box that all the little note cards went in and I made this little metal box that had a little hinge on okay, that's cool. so how bad was the weld, do you remember? It was a little rough. thankfully since it was a box, I took a grinder out, it was pretty funny. who taught you actually how to weld? probably my dad and then it would be more my shop teacher in high school, Mr. Franklin. that's when I got big in the F F A and was actually competing in state and regional and which we won both. And then went the nationals and got forty-fifth out of two hundred and forty kids. So it was always cool to look back and be like, hey, that's how I learned. What did you struggle with when you first started? Consistency and which I mean you go anywhere, any welding school, any big name welding school in the US or even not in the US, they tell you the first thing you work on is consistency. It can look great, but it can be inconsistent, but it can also look shit and be consistent and it's gonna be way better. So why is that? Just more uniform and then the more uniform it is, the more it like burns together and get better penetration and that. So it just makes it a good consistent or a bad unconsistent weld. Got you. So when did you realize you were actually getting good at it? during school, I was taking night classes at our local community college, A B Tech here, and everybody was like, Hey, asking me questions on how how I can do this or they could do this them and it just it felt good to be like, hey I'm getting good. What's the hardest part of the job that people never see? Probably it's more tiring than you think 'cause you think, yeah, you're just pushing a button and pulling a b trigger all day. No. Like like I say with a consistent you have to have patience. Especially when you're tig welding, which tig welding you need both hands, so it's all coordination and and patience is a big thing with tig welding too. And it's just having it all have to work together to make it look good. How old were you when you got involved in scouting? I was going in in my fifth grade year, so I was twelve. Twelve years old. why did you join? a good buddy of mine at the time, whose grandfather was like, Hey, you need to get into out of it. I stayed in it because I met great people there and realized I could get a very good opportunity to go in life with this. What made you stick with it? Probably once I knew it was more than just everybody sees like the ads on T V I go camping all the time. No, it was more of you're actually helping the community out. you're helping bond, you're meeting new people and it was just like a place to get out and realize you can be yourself and just everybody connects with you. When did you first decide that you wanted to become an Eagle Scout? Probably my second year in the scouting. There was a kid that got his when he turned sixteen, which was like a very big deal. It still is a very big deal to get it by the time you're sixteen. So why is it such a big deal? Because that's like if you start out when you turn twelve, chronologically 'cause you have to be a certain rank for a certain amount of months, the last two before Eagle. Your star in life rank and it works out to like perfectly 'cause one's six months and then one's a year. So if you do it right, it all ends up right on the time. but most people wait till last minute like I did. Gotcha. at all. did you ever consider quitting? Yeah, during the coronavirus, just everything f tumbled. And I mean, I know that wasn't a single person's fault. So how did it affect affect you? we had cancel meetings 'cause of the way the school was and that and social distancing and the two week break that we were supposed to get that turned into almost a year, but I'm not gonna go there. it just then rules got changed and then that's right when girls got big into it. So all those rules got applied and just it was like a whole Gotcha. What was the hardest part of the journey? Definitely it was a commitment thing. a lot of the merit badges you had to take were very detailed. Like there's one at family life where you had to track your life for s three months. And like get to write down your chores you did every day, what you did to help around the house, what meals you helped cook, and then which also helped thankfully a couple of the badges like tied in together. So like when you did that one, you could take your cooking one too, and 'cause you had to write meal preps and like actually make the meals and all that. So it all like blended together. And then there was a couple other ones that were very lengthy and just a lot of it was just the commitment to get done. question, but what was the hardest part of the journey? Definitely probably the last six months before I aged out, I was doing let's see, one I turned in my paperwork August twenty-eighth. I turned eighteen on September 14th that year. So that was twenty twenty four, right before the hurricane. And It was just that last six months from like February, it just I dragged my feet. And in May is when I did my Eagle project and then after that I even drug my feet some more 'cause I thought, I have enough window and then it was like the last week of August before I got my paperwork all turned in. Y'all make sure y'all hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, share the channel. We can't grow unless y'all share the channel. What was your scout project? my local church, Brownsview, we th we had a little handicap railing that was falling apart. So I actually went and re welded in some two by two square tube and redid most of the hand railing. And then we painted it and then painted all of the rest of the handrail around the church and then did a bunch of mulch work and just cleaned up around the church. Just basically a big beautification day. What church? Brownsview Church in Candler. I think you said that too, didn't you? Yeah. how long did it take you? combined hours. you had to have I had ten people working that day, so I had just under a hundred hours in it total. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. I I still get compliments when I go to church on Sundays. Hey, that looks amazing. It just it's seeing people happy. Why did you choose that project? to tell you the truth, it was kind of a time thing. I had a bigger project planned out from the hurricane and unfortunately things fell through for it. I was gonna go help one of the fire departments that got washed away and build a couple benches with all the firefighters that got lost and just it time and didn't work out. Said, hey, you could do this and it just all fell together. So it was I'm very grateful he was there to have that suggestion. What did completing the project mean to you? It was like the last big, big step I had to take to get my equal. that's what everybody says, the project's your last punch before the smooth. it was just a big breakthrough and then looking back and like you have to do a big project report and all that. And just reading all that, it's like I did it. So did you have all your badges before you had to do your project? no, thankfully I didn't. I had I think five left and of course it was like one of the hardest ones. It was camping, and then a couple more I to get. So the camping, what did that consist You had to like plan a camp out as a troop. you had to have a full agenda for the three days. So let's say you went in Friday night, hiked, in down into a campsite, and then you had to make sure everybody had all their things. So you actually had to do a gear check the meeting before and just you had to make sure everybody had all their stuff and then you had to document what everybody did that day and then it goes through and it's just make sure everybody's prepared and had w what could you done differently for your next camp out and all that. Okay. What did becoming an Eagle Scout actually change about you? when people ask me about it, they're like they just see it 'cause most I mean, you don't hear it anymore. I mean, you used to hear, yeah, everybody's an Eagle Scout Eagle Scouts have declined just because there's more kids want to stay and play on their phones and stay in front of an iPad instead of going outside and actually taking a deep breath of air. When someone asked me and be like, Yeah, I'm an eagle scout you just watch their face all light up and it's like, You actually did that? And it's like, Yeah. I started I started as a Cub Scout and moved all the way up to a We Blow Scout and then our say that? Or group I guess got split up somehow and they like shut it down and shut the funding down and stuff and we wasn't able to c to finish it off. But I remember having contest and and winning first place for this cake. And this cake was it was like a cookies and creams cake. But like we had put all the icing on it and wrapped it with silophane. And then so when we got there took the silophane off, all the icing came off with it. So it was like the ugliest cake you've seen, bro. But I won first place. I always remember that. It was so cool. Just to like know that First place and it had the ugliest cake and still win because it tasted the best. yeah. Yeah, the the Dutch oven cook-offs were always the good ones to be at 'cause like dump cakes and just everybody made whatever they could in that little cast iron Dutch oven. Yeah, them are bad. I like to make I take a friggin' thing of cake mix, two sticks of butter and some like peach filling or cherry filling or whatever, and just literally dump it all in there, put the sticks in there. Cover it and let it cook for a couple hours and that stuff turns out bomb. If you ain't tried it, you need to try it. if you if you had never joined scouting, do you think you'd be the same person you are today? I definitely would say no. so once you got above your first class rank in scouting, which was your fourth rank, it went scout tender foot, second class, first class, you were eligible to enter the other it was a higher up program called The Order the Arrow. And then there was actually three ranks in that, which was your ordeal, your brotherhood, and your vigil. And if it wasn't if I didn't get into that program especially and met some of the people I still talk to almost on a daily basis, I probably wouldn't have been who I am just because all the stories I've heard for them. And a great good friend of mine, Matty Gates, is actually works for AFD on station one and just all the stories he had to tell me and then who he became, it and how much the scouting has impacted a person, especially like him. That's cool. All right, y'all, we're down to the final five. What is the hardest thing you have ever survived? since I'm so young, I'd probably say my parents divorced just because it wasn't peaceful. describe it. things got rough. Some some things thought it might end up better, and then there was other days it I had no chance but just to leave and go clear my mind. How long ago was that? Five years ago now. Gotcha. How old how old were you? I was I just my permit. So yeah. My parents divorced when I was two. So I completely get it. What are you most proud of? definitely all the accomplishments I've done. I I got my basic welding certificate before I graduated high school. a bunch of regional champions in FFA. state champion in F of A and then Gold at National. So what is F F A? that's Future Farmers of America. It was a high school thing that you could do like the 4 H Club, but it was more mechanical based. So there was one like there was tractor and a tr little five by eight trailer through a course. There was truck driving where you had to drive a truck through a course. and then there was Ag Mechanics. Well there actually the first one you do as a freshman was it's tool identification. So you had a hundred tools you had to name and actually know their use. then ag mechanics was the one that everybody wanted to do in high school if you were big in the ag or big in the hot your hands or even welding. That was a competition that you welded in. You had to work on something and then it was a bunch of knowledge questions. And then it was a twenty question math test. Which thankfully I've been very good at math. I got into A B Tech doing the welding program and there was stuff that I learned from high school that I used in the program that helped me go further. to the teacher. What is the biggest lesson life taught you the hard way? you don't know what's gonna happen five minutes from now. And it was like the day that the governor announced that we had two weeks off from school due to COVID, I was playing basketball in my buddy's backyard and we didn't even think nothing about it. We're like, nothing's gonna happen. And it turns out it was a year later before we could even think about going back into a classroom. and just zoom meeting after zoom meeting and getting assignments done and it just it was a big difference to go Wow, that was a year ago and then it's like five minutes from now you don't know what's gonna happen. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? If you had the chance to do something, do it. And I mean, there was a bunch of things I missed out because I was doing other things that looking back that I should have went and done the other thing, 'cause it would have probably got me a little bit further ahead than I am now. matter of if it takes you five minutes to do go do something, just do it. Just do it. And My man Rob Dial says that all the time. Shout out to Rob Dial y'all. If y'all ain't listened to him, you need to. He is great. He's a mindset mentor, number one podcast in the world. He's a great dude. I ain't never gotten to meet him, but one day I will, I'm sure. But yeah, he always says if something takes less than five minutes, just do it. When you're gone, what do you hope people remember about you? I hope they wanna know that I was committed. And I say that because I always did the one thing and I hyperfixated on it. So like when I got into scouting, I knew there was days where I was gonna give up, especially that last six months. But in the bottom of my heart and my chest, I knew I was too committed into it to give up now. And the big thing with like winning state and placing it nationals and F F A, I did not give up. And there's days I go to work and I don't even say a word to anybody and it's just because I'm trying to get what I need to get done and it's because it's a commitment to myself so I don't feel like I wasted time. Trying to think of other ways just to not do it. That's what this That's what the story behind the ink is about. You can see where somebody is today, but you don't always know what it took to get them there. The tattoo is only the beginning. The story is what matters. Before you go, hit that like button, subscribe, and share this video. Don't keep a good story to yourself. Send it to somebody, start a conversation, help us bring more real people and real stories to this podcast. The story behind the ink. Everybody has a story. Let's hear it.