Latest / The Story Behind The Ink / Episode-3: Around the World, One Weld at a Time.
Transcript
- Robert Moss: You see the tattoo, you don't see the story. Welcome to the stories behind the ink, where we go beyond the surface and hear the stories that made us that made us who we are today. I am Robert Moss, and today's guest is Josiah Cooper. So Josiah, what's your what's what's your tattoo? Who did it? And when did you get it? Well, I mean I got quite a few. The last one I got one on my hand. Done here in Asheville by my friend Darien. over there at the Falcon Lore. And it's Death's a Gamble. It's got the poker card symbols. It's a it's a king, it's a dead king, it's a skeleton, and he's got a you know, a heavy thinking face. And it's like upside down too, right? And then where if you hold it like that then people can see it. And you said who did it again? Darien. Darien, do you know his last name? I can't remember right. 'Cause I feel like Feel like we got a couple Darien's out there tattoos. He wins lot of awards out here at the art shows. He won the l the the award of the year the last one. So probably the same one I'm thinking about. I think he did I think he got his apprenticeship at the same place I got mine, which was at a cross the skin tattoo. He got a little dagger on the side of that back here. Kinda longer hair. Yeah. Got a baby mama with two kids. Yep. Yeah. And she's a tattoo artist as well? Yeah. Yeah, he did that. Okay. Five hours. He's friends of the homie. I met him at a festival. You know, he's good friends with my baby mama. Hm. That's cool. I'm sure you have a story behind it. Yeah, well, when I got it, right, I was I was dealing with a lot of different death near scenarios, including my job, including just doing my everyday dirt. And I felt like my li everyday life was a gamble. You know, like that's a gamble, so that's where then wh I ended up getting it. Essentially. Did you know exactly what you wanted? Yeah. Yeah, when I went in there I showed him this is a picture of just of what I want and then he drew it out in this form. Okay. Cool. What's what's your favorite tattoo? Between this one and the one I got, which is the anarchy and the steely, 'cause it's a steal the anarchy from your face. Mm. I got that when I was younger and I was going through a I didn't believe in any rules I didn't believe in anybody telling me how I needed to do what I needed to do and I was you know, I I thought I was good enough to where I didn't want to hear anybody's opinion. I just, you know, I believed in true anarchy. So that was that was probably my favorite one up till this guy. Okay. For someone who's never met you, who are you? Who am I? That's a deep intricate question. I'm Josiah. I am I'm a I am a Spaniard. I am a missionary son. I am a hell of a fabricator. Heard. I'm anything you want me to be for the right price. What did you think you were gonna do with your life when you were younger? When I was younger, so my dad's a missionary. So when I was ten years old, I thought I was gonna be a missionary. 'Cause you know, my big influence, my dad and everything, and of course that changed really quick from the time I was ten to the time I was eleven 'cause I started smoking cigarettes and whatnot when I was eleven years old. But when I was younger, I wanted to be a preacher. I wanted to be a missionary to Russia. That was my ambition. And then when I hit twelve years old, I wanted to build stuff. That was all I focused on. Like I wanted to build cool things, you know. And I didn't know it was gonna go in the fabrication field. You know, I understand the construction field really well 'cause I got a bunch of older brothers. They all have different fields. You know, one's a plumber, one's master of drywall electrician, and a little bit of everything. I got a brother who does HVAC, I got a you know, just different So I took on to the welding department 'cause I was one of the family that didn't have that, you know. Mm. I'm the youngest one. So how the heck did you end up becoming a welder who at one point traveled around the world welding? Well, the fact that I'm a dual citizen with the European ID w working on mega yachts when I was a Back when I was twenty one years old I started working in the marinas, hopping around, working on mega yes, learning to trade and didn't take long before my talent got kind of recognized and someone came up to me and offered me a position as a project manager, working on cruise ships. And they knew that I knew the field really well, so I took on the position and I I took off, you know, like they sent me to Spain immediately and they put me in charge of two hundred people on a ship called Ventura that w went from Southampton, England around Spain and back and they saw how I handled handled it and everything went beautifully so it went from one to another to another but I realized with traveling comes all the money and you know there's a price to pay as far as when you travel, you know, if you have kids, if you have a wife. yeah, and we'll definitely dive a little deeper into that too. what's something about you that people would never know just by looking at you? Well seeing how white I am and I s I'm a little country you never know that I'm Spanish. Never a million years would have known you were Spanish, bro. My first language is Spanish. You know, I I dream at night in Spanish. So when ta people talk Spanish around me, I have to talk to them in Spanish just to blow their mind. Like, what the fuck do you do how you know? That's cool. how how did you how did you start welding? Well, when I came to America at sixteen I moved in with my dad's got a lot of friends who are bikers and whatnot and these guys these biker guys they had a Harley shop, they would rebuild Harleys and I wasn't I didn't start off welding. They started me off by running a grinder, learning how to cut a straight line, running how to lathe and mill and run every big tool that they could that was the bigger the bitch of the job, that was my job, you know, and I had to do that for a couple of years before I finally got onto welding. But they wanted me to learn the hard part first to before they taught me how to weld. And they knew that once I caught on the welding, that was it if I could catch everything else first. You know, because that's what happens with kids that go to school. You know, they only learn that part and they can't pull a tape measure or they don't want to pick up a heavy tool because they feel entitled because they went to school and that was they didn't want me to be one of those I call princesses. Do you remember the first thing you ever welded and how bad was it? First thing I ever welded first thing I ever welded was stick welded. And it was just two pieces of steel put together and I got complimented on he was like, For being your first time, the fact that you kept a beat is is insane 'cause he he had me running really cold 'cause he was just trying me out. But I remember it didn't look nothing like my weld today. You know? But you gotta start somewhere. It was it was rough but not not rougher than some wells I guess you know, come across. I had a natural talent for it. Y'all make sure y'all hit that like button, subscribe, share this video, tell others. We can't grow unless y'all tell tell everybody, y'all. Yeah. When when did you actually realize I'm good at this? I still don't think that way. I don't think in the way of I'm better than anybody. I I know that my wealth can look pretty. But I know that I could set a machine and a twelve year old can make that look pretty. So it's not really about being good at it, it's a more or less of a gist of understanding of getting the process done right. Mm. And that's just how my brain works because there's that ego and everything that kicks in when you start thinking, I'm good at it. You know, you try to not take on things that way 'cause you know that does ruin things. What what's the hardest thing you've ever had to weld? Hardest thing I've ever had to weld. I was on a ship in Spain. It was a Carnival cruise ship, which carnival cruise ships for on my on my point of the line from my from what I've experienced, they're on the cheaper end. They're really old. They're rust buckets. They got a lot of maintenance needs done. But I was standing seventeen stories up 'cause we were running the exhaust. It's called a scrubber of the ship. There's four scrubbers. And they're big pipe, you know, and I'm standing at the we we're putting in a whole new pipe. These pipes are about sixteen feet wide, each one of We're running one of and we have seventeen stories of a drop. And at the very, very top of the seventeen stories there's a plank of wood running across a a handrail. And I had to stand on top of that plank of wood in the middle part of it with a a short harness, but it's the plank of wood there and weld overhead with a not a nauto lens, just a black lens helmet that was just weld overhead staying balancing myself on this board. And if you look down you shit yourself, you know, it's it's seventeen stories, it ain't no joke. You know and there's packs sticking up. It was some it was some real shit, man. And I I remember shaking because this guy, my the my fire watch, he kept on leaning on the board. The board wouldn't move. And I'm already shaking, like I can look down and I'm I can't see what I'm doing and you know, like and I'm up here. So I'm tiptoeing up to where I gotta weld on a board. You know, that that's probably the scariest I would say. Most dangerous. I was gonna ask you to my next question was what's the most dangerous situation you've ever That was the most hardest because I'm stick well in overhead and there's balls of fire falling on me and it was intense, man. It was really, really intense. I'll never forget that. And I've had a couple other scenarios that are like pretty bad, but that tops everything, man, because I if I would have just took a step one wrong direction I did not trust my harness system. This guy that welded the pad eye on it, he was drunk Russian. So thing about working on ships is you never come across an American. So it's Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish. They don't know English. And they don't like Americans. This is they just don't like the whole 'cause they don't get paid like we do and there's this whole living differential that they they work really hard for what they got, you know, and In comparison, their lives are really hard. So when they see one of us come on that gets paid more and we live a little bit better or whatever, they just don't like us. Don't like us, you know. So to them, seeing me shaking there or whatever They're like, yeah. Yeah. They'll laugh at you, call you names of Lithuanian or whatever, they'll be joking with each other. I luckily after years of working with these people, I can catch on to a lot of what they say. Mm-hmm. But man, talk about rough. You got nobody to talk to about nothing. Except for the boss, you know. Have you ever been in a situation where you generally th gen genuine genuinely I can't even speak. Genuinely am I saying that right? Yeah. Genuinely. Thought I might not make it home. I worked on a ship in New York City where there was these cadets. It's it's it's called the USS Empire. These cadets had spilled some ice cream and some meat in the walk in cooler and it went behind the wall. Where the wall that I had to weld in was on the opposite side. So this rotten meat and ice cream sat there for two years and built a whole colony. When I went to weld, when I consumed the smoke of that weld, I lost all sense of who I was and who anybody around me was and I walked around aimlessly for four hours not understanding what the fuck was going on. I was completely lost. Wow. It was it was super scary, man. I went through a phase of that for six months. And I went to sue the company, but this is a multi billion dollar company, you know, and that was it was extremely scary. I just had my first born or my you know, my my two year old now, he had just been born And I was scared of what if you know, 'cause I went through phases of it and this is four hours long. So what if I'm holding my kit and I don't know who my kid is? You know, and it was just and how do you fight something like that? 'Cause I don't have money for a fifty thousand dollar lawyer, so I can just threaten them and they could feel threatened and send me a little bit of money, but you know, ten, twenty grand to them ain't nothing. What's the craziest job you've ever been hired to do? Craziest job. I went and worked at SpaceX on a rocket called Falcon Nine. Over in Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach. And that was the craziest because it was I was never expecting to be blessed in that kind of way in the first place. Mm-hmm. And it was just the most coolest scenario. And I thought it was crazy because they threw me in there at twenty six years old, kinda just here's a blueprint. Mm. I thought that was crazy. That and also Johnny Depp shot. Johnny Depp they just threw me a blueprint, like here, you figure it out. And they just trusted me like that, you know? And I made it happen, I made it look beautiful, but I thought it was crazy that they would throw that on someone young that never went to college for any of this, never went to school for any of this, you know, just grew up doing it. Right. What's the mm what's something people completely misunderstand about being a welder? Something they misunderstand. Welders get cranky really easy because they're used to fixing other people's shit. So I think that they misunderstand when someone's always complaining about what they're doing as a welder, usually 'cause they're fixing something and they just think that they're just cranky. You know? So like that could be funny. And also your body is taking abuse twenty four seven. You know, you got all this heat coming in and I'm not the safest person when it comes to I think you t you can testify to that. I don't wear glasses, I don't wear gloves, and it's nothing to be proud of, but my body takes the beating. So it makes me cranky. and I feel like I'm misunderstood. It's not like I'm trying to be against anybody or anything. It's cranky for the work I'm doing, you know. Yeah, I guess people wouldn't ever guess that. But I could understand why for sure. Yeah. How many how many countries have you worked in? Oof. I worked in a lot of I over ten for sure. That is definitely a achievement. I can I got a lot and I got pictures of all this. I got a lot of countries I worked in. What was the first country you ever traveled for work and what do you remember about walking off that plane? I remember the first time I got off a plane to go on a ship. I was like, this can't be real. Like, holy shit. They sent me out here and I I boarded in Southampton, England. I boarded on a cruise ship. It was a royal cruise ship going to through Spain and back. It was just past Ventura. or right before Ventura and they were sending me to England and Spain on the constant when I first started because they know I have citizenship. I'm born and raised in Spain, so I have a passport from Spain that I can use. So the paperwork and everything was just really easy. And flying out of America for them, because they're based out of America, one of their their three companies, it's the same company, but their American shop, I was their first employee. So bringing in people from America, I could guide them and everything. And if I needed resources or if I needed to order something, whatever while I'm Spain, that is my language, you know, like I can figure it out about the Gaudis, whatever. But it was leaving out of Southampton, England. I remember being not I wouldn't say scared and nervous. I felt like I had achieved something big in my life and I felt found my career. I found I felt in the right place, you know. I felt like I figured it out finally to where now I can provide and buy my big house, supply for a family, have a family, you know. Start all the things and yeah, I took my life and different adventures that I probably shouldn't have because you know, I like to have fun and a little bit too much fun. So yeah. One thing led to another, but I got presented with all that at an early age per se, you know. Very, very exciting. What's the strangest place you've ever worked? Strangest place. Strangest. New Zealand. The people from New Zealand are they're strange. Or Alaska the people from Alaska are probably even stranger because honestly, like I don't know, man. Being in the dark for as many months at a time as they are and just just them I don't know. There's just something about the culture that really threw me off. And the people from New Zealand they like surfer vibe. I don't care. And they see that you the surfer, you the indigenous people that are just tough and Maui Mauies with all the tattoos on their face and whatnot. So it was it was like the yin and the yang. But it was just strange to be exposed to like you got your complete hippie culture that don't give two craps about anything. And then you got these people that are just they're tough as nails. You know. What's the most beautiful what's the most beautifulest place you've ever worked? Definitely Australia and New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand? Definitely be you know, Japan was cool. Mm-hmm. But New Zealand tops all of them because they're a bunch of little islands that you go around and these little islands all have waterfalls all over. I heard there's some really good skiing out in Japan. I wish one day I'd had the money to go there. Yeah, they got Mount Fuji and all that out there. It's they say it's like s like crazy. Bro, they're like the just the lifts alone are like electric and like you're sealed in with heat just going up the mountain. It's crazy. what's the craziest thing that's happened to you in another country? had cancer as a kid. I had a bone marrow transplant in Spain when I was six years old. You know, my br I'm a s the most rarest blood type, and the only person that had my blood type was my brother Josh, which I'm only here and alive 'cause of him. I was there's twelve of us in my hospital room as a kid and I'm the only one that survived. Dang Yeah, it's a stage worse of leukemia. It's called a plastic anemia. I had no white blood cells. And that's probably the most intense or strangest things that ever happened to me in another country 'cause now here in America I can't have any kind of blood transplant or blood transfusion or of any kind of sort because I had surgery in another country. Huh. Yeah, I can't donate blood, I can't receive blood. That is wild, bro. Yeah. What's the biggest cultural shock you've experienced? When I came to America at sixteen. Ain't nothing like southern Spain, Seville to be specific. Sevilla en Málaga. I'm like went from Sevilla to Malaga when I was twelve years old, came to America at sixteen, and going from southern Spain on the beach to Buffalo, New York. Two polar opposites. Tell them about cold and peep Brick City, you know, from this beautiful everybody on the beach and, you know, free liberal, every good time having you to very serious, dark and cold. You know? Yeah, that could Definitely be a cultural shock. Especially when it's two different languages. And I didn't understand the mentality of America yet. I did not understand what you know, even just what racism was, like the whole big comparison of the black and the white people at the time when I was sixteen. This is twenty years ago, you know, so ten years ago, sorry. Twenty years. Twenty years ago. Have you ever been somewhere where you couldn't speak the language and had to figure everything out anyway? yeah. Most of the time I was on a ship. 'Cause they all spoke either Ukrainian Polish and they would do it on purpose. Even if they n if they knew that I knew the words they were saying, they would find a way around a sentence. You know, they would say different words and work their way around it because they knew I would pick up on certain words and I knew what you were mentioning. Mm you know? Now I'm I'm pretty good at Polish and whatnot, like I'm a lot better at Arabic and French and stuff like that, but man like it was really hard being on a ship with a bunch of older dudes and I'm the youngest one there and You know, and I'm the project manager and it's nothing to brag and boast about. It's just that I'm in a position to where I'm supposed to be telling you what to do, but you're gonna this is a kid. You know, and here's a blueprint. This is what I'm gonna have you do, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm still working too. You know, but nah, they didn't they can't you can't tell an older Ukrainian that their job. They you need someone who's been grandfathered in, you know. It was rough. what's the strangest thing you've eaten while traveling to work? Strangest thing you've eaten. I don't know, man. I didn't know that was gonna be such a hard question. That's the strangest thing. I mean it maybe Caracoles, so in Spain they like eating snails. I like escargot Yeah. I love some escargot, you know. They have like open buffets on on all these cruise ships and yachts always take care of your you go wherever you want and they pay for it. I'm I'm so American, bro, but I guess my strangest thing would for me would be like raw fish and sushi. Is that strange though? I mean, not I mean but I mean at the end of the day it's probably stranger because it's raw fish, you know. I mean I've had a lot of octopus salad stuff. it's real chewy though. Yeah, but it's really good. It is good. That Russian salad where they put a little bit of mayo and deviled eggs and I've never had I've never had no Russian salad. The Russian salad they do deviled eggs. Then they use red peppers and they put olives in it. Huh. A little bit of mayo. That's pretty cool. What's the most interesting person you've met somewhere completely unexpected? On my flight to Australia, it was a twenty-two hour flight from California. And I was stuck sitting next to this guy that was my same age, but he just graduated out of college as an engineer. And he was the most interesting dude I ever met 'cause I've been to a lot of festivals, like different burns, like I've built things for festivals like Love Burn and different ones. And this guy's mindset is Anything we talked about, whether it was just the window or the plane, he was talking about the solar cells inside of the window panels that they use to charge the plane and stuff and this is people that things that people don't even know or what tints the window with just the sun hitting it. And he explained to me the whole process. He was just so smart. Anything we talked about, if I had a question about I want to run gas through the water so that the flame just pops up and sits on top, he could tell you the exact PSI. Like the whole shebang bang, you know, like he's just super interesting guy. And I had his number and I ha but I had a traveling phone, I had a traveling laptop and phone and it got stolen from me. So I lost his his phone number and everything. But he was that kid, man. If I ever had a question that's just something I couldn't figure out, I knew I could call him. He was from Australia, but they'd fly him around the whole world to work on things. He was such a smart kid. That's cool. Have you ever gotten into a situation overseas where you thought, shoot, what have I gotten myself into? yeah, almost every time. Almost every time. 'Cause like you look at the big project and like, all right, so who's doing what? Blink. So I'm doing what? You know. And it's like Lee y'all know I gotta chill and I go I always feel like I end up in that situation. You know. It's just always been a thing. I'm climbing in a hole where it's like it's an escape and you're climbing into a fuel tank, but you gotta climb through all these what they call rat holes and you have to wrap your all your leads and your oxygen celline torch and all your extension cords and run everything through these holes into the thing while they sit out there like my fire watch, whatever is gonna sit at the entrance and just make sure that he doesn't hear nothing go crazy. You know? It was always some shit like that. It was always some crazy project. If you had to choose between an ordinary life where you're home every night and the life you've actually lived traveling the world, taking risk and being away from home, which one would you choose and why? Well at this point in time now I choose to be with my family 'cause I done lived it, no done it. And there's priorities and I feel like as a man, once you have a kid, you should be there for your kid and there's no if yets or buts about it. That is your job. You know, so that trumps everything. There's nothing I would rather lose a job and be homeless than not be around my son. And it was a huge, you know, difference in life when you get used to it and you do it for years and years and years. But, you know, there should be priorities and that's just how I I believe about it. There's a lot of people who just can't give up the life of traveling. But I would I would not change anything. You know, I I I love the life I lived, but if you know, at any day in time, I need there be there for my son. I need to be there for my son. Heard. I'll we're down to the final five. It's been a great podcast. Hell yeah. The final five, man. And so these questions I ask every Every guest that comes onto the show and I'm trying to make it like my niche, my thing that that's that's gonna be like the gif of the show pretty much. but what is the hardest thing you've ever survived? Cancer. Can't beat that. That's a hard one. That one and I went homeless for a little bit and it was in a winter time where it was really, really, really rough when you have nothing or nobody. I've I've experienced that a time or two, bro. That can be My buddy, my buddy Ryan, he he still has cancer to his to this day. He had some kind of like blood cancer where it was in his blood. So like every day he has to take like a eight hundred dollar pill a day, bro. A day. And if he if he if he doesn't take the pill, the cancer will come right back. And he's living every day of his life like that right now, bro. But he's he's a good dude. he takes care of my dog all the time and he's real good dude. I hope that they figure out some kind of like program for like you know, kinda like with diabetics, you know, with diabetics, like they have to pay my sister's diabetic, just like Morgan. And, you know, it costs a lot of money for the insulin and insurance ain't trying to cover that, man. You gotta pay a lot of money for insurance to cover it. So you're either spending giving them the money or you're giving it to Big Pharma, which They're finally trying to figure something out for it, but man, it is expensive. And I feel like it is unfair that doctors and people in the medical industry like you're supposed to be there to help people, not profit off of their sickness. And I feel like that's what that is, is you're just trying to profit off people being sick. Should it be that expensive? There's no reason it should be that expensive. This person's got a lifelong sickness that they gotta deal with. And they gotta pay a lot of money to deal with it. You know what's a th it's a really fucked up situation. Doesn't work like that in countries that are Sweden and other countries. That's free. You're sick, I'm gonna help you. For free. For free. In Spain, you go to the hospital and they take care of you first and then they ask you where's your money at? They don't ask you for the money first and reject you if you lost a finger. They fix your finger and then they ask you, you know? It's a whole different mentality here. And that's why anywhere anytime I've traveled, they call America a business. This place is a business. You know, anything that happens here, it's all about money. It is. It's all about money. You go anywhere else, there's some kind of heart, there's some kind of culture. Definitely is. So what are you what are you most proud of? What am I most proud of? My son. That is the best thing that's ever happened to me. that is my most proudest achievement. And I've done a lot of cool things in my life, but I ain't never made a cool creature. You know, you know my number one. I built some cool things for festivals, you know, like the last one we built this big jellyfish water tower and it was to give, you know, clean water to people that are partying their ass off at burn. But it was really cool looking. And I got to build some cool creatures, which is what they're known as as creatures with a K. And they go up on stilts and one's like a one's a a a big spider, one was a dragonfly and the other one was a butterfly. But they're big creatures that walk and they have like special decorated faces and Walk around a festival and try to creep you out. That's dope. What is the biggest lesson life taught you the hard way? Settle down. That was my biggest lesson. I didn't know how to calm down. It took me my whole life to figure out how to stop living in the now and plan for a future. You know. That was it's very, very, very hard to settle down. I've traveled my whole life. I've never lived in one place for multiple years. So I've always traveled, I've always I've lived in seven states since I've been in America at sixteen, you know. I've always been somewhere else and if something went sour then I'm moving again. I don't like this no more. You know, and settling down having a f kid and a family was the hardest but most best thing that's ever happened to me. That's cool. Well, that's what changed my whole everything and how I handle myself. I hear a lot of people come come out of bad situations when they have kids. Really the make you or break you. Mm-hmm. You know, 'cause lot of people can't handle it. A lot of people don't like the stress. They just dip out. You know if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be? That one that one can go a long list right there. One piece of advice, fuck. You know what? I probably wouldn't give myself advice. I do it all over again, man. You know. Whatever you're doing, you know. Maybe there's a couple of things you should slow down on when you're younger. Mm-hmm. But other than that, like, you know, shit gets real, real quick. It only takes one time. When you're gone, what do you hope people remember about you? That I'm not an asshole. I don't know about that. You are a welder, right? Ain't that what you said? Yeah. Welders are assholes. you know, I'm a special kind of asshole though. I'm a bleached one. I don't know, man. I hope that people see that I'm I've never really was out in it for myself. I've never been that kind of guy. never been the type that I feel like I'm better than anybody or anything and I hope that that shows. You know, because I know that I can be a lot and everything, but I do feel misunderstood in that way. Never trying to be above anybody. I'm never above you. I'm never below you. I'm always beside you. You know Y'all 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 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.