Unknown: Welcome back to circling the drain. Johnny B,
here, over there. Jay Harper,
Oh, I hear my name. You okay? Johnny B, good. Jay, oh, man,
man, I haven't seen you in such a long time. It's been like two
days.
It has been two days where y'all been. Yeah, a
little behind the curtain stuff. I mean, normally, when we record
these, there's a good elapsed amount of time, but man, we just
like we're knocking them out.
Yeah, we are when we and we just want to be around each other
more.
Well, speak for yourself. Jim,
how
are you?
Well,
thanks, Patrick.
I'm
going hatless today.
Yeah, no,
yeah, you are hatless,
yeah, showing the co op.
Yeah, that's right, you're a striking man. Looks like you
could have come from California,
maybe, like
all these people that are invading the sea area.
I came from LA east,
which is
essentially Las Vegas.
Well, you know, I kind of came from LA Laura, Alabama.
I came from LA, Louisiana,
that's right. So all of us,
yeah, yeah, I never really thought about
but have you guys? I mean, have you experienced living around
our new transplants that have come in from?
Well, there certainly seems to be a bigger influx of them here
in the last, I don't know, five, six years, for a variety of
reasons. But, you know, I first moved here in 1985 from LA,
Louisiana.
Yeah,
and the the migration was, was happening then,
yeah, it was, but it's more so now.
Oh, by all means, I think, for a variety of reasons, back when I
first started noticing it, back in the you know, well, mid 80s,
when I arrived and you got here before I did, but it was
primarily the main reason was because I was working MCA
Records, so I was kind of in the middle of the of Being aware of
what was happening, music wise and musician wise, and session
players and that kind of thing,
people like David Hungate, who
exactly, yeah, correct, correct. You know, he's an old toto guy
with Toto, but because the music was changing so much
yes
out west in LA, and had really started to, you know, those guys
were aging out of the music scene.
That's true
in LA,
that's very
and, you know, things had gone so technical and electric and in
such that, you know, the great instrumentalist Bill Cuomo, whom
we have, yeah, I mean, he's a prime example.
Yes, he is. But
bill's not your typical Californian. He know, he's a
good guy.
He is. Well, I mean, there are a lot of people that have come
from California that I like,
Oh, of course. I was just joking there. But there
are some. There are some I've got, I've got neighbors. Now
they built this human in fact, what we used to have where we
live, it was just mostly farmland, like right across the
street from us, was this huge farm, you know, just pasture had
cattle all over it, you know, an old barn that was barely hanging
on. And that's
probably one of the reasons you moved out there, is you like you
like that tranquility.
Oh, we did. We loved it. And then all of a sudden, in the
past, I'd say, four or five years, all of a sudden, they
first, they knocked down all these trees. There were, like,
hundreds of trees just right by this farmland that kind of
covered it up. Well, they burnt, they knocked them down, burned
them all. And of course, then they started building all these
human I mean, they're not just building homes. They're building
humongous, two and a half, $3 million homes everywhere,
mansion, yeah.
McMansions, how close are you to the grove? To the grove? I'm I'm
on the poor side of college grove. Well, not anymore. I used
to be the poor side. Now we're just the poor and amongst the
rich, but we're probably, we're just over the hill from from the
grove where they play golf and all that. Yeah, but yeah, it's
beautiful area. But this new guy that's moved in, and I did some
background on this guy,
I Googled, oh, wow, you can do that.
Oh, unbelievably, you can just Google somebody's name and,
boom,
what is this? Of which you speak
the Google, yeah.
So you were able to, I mean, this person popped up on Google
and, well,
you know, I looked up who bought the house.
Yeah, you can do that, man. You can go in and look at property,
everything, everything.
So I looked this dude up. And, you know, he came from
California, of course, and he was a big, big Republican out.
There he he was involved in a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.
He also was very instrumental in getting Donald Trump on the
ballot and getting get people behind him. So
initially you would think, well, I might dig this. Yeah, you
might be an okay guy.
But you know, I've nicknamed these people the Duttons,
because they act like they own the entire neighborhood. He has
these two dogs, a German Shepherd and a husky, and they
roam. He just doesn't. He doesn't walk them like most
people do on leashes. He just sets them loose and they're all
over your yard. Well,
those poor animals are gonna get hit. They're gonna get run over.
Well, they're gonna either get run over or, you know, coyotes
are abundant out there. Says, and they're gonna meet those,
yeah, but, but what really gets on your nerves that the dogs are
a nuisance, and then he has a dune buggy that he cranks up and
he,
you mean, like an ATV that
he's side by
side. Yeah, it's like, it's like a little pipe buggy, and it's
loud.
I was gonna say it's probably Gas, gas powered, so it's gonna
be loud,
very loud. And he also, I mean, he'll, he'll go anywhere on it,
including other people's property, looking for these
dogs.
Yeah, that ain't very smart in
these parts. Ain't smart in these parts. And old John Dutton
up there, but that's what's getting on my and I've talked to
animal control about the dog. No, we'll talk to him. Yeah,
yeah. Williamson County, yeah, they're not gonna talk to
anybody that's got two now, talk to me if I had two dogs.
Yes, Mr. Boseman, we need to have a yes. We do what's
your
home worth before
we have this conversation.
But that's, that's the only part of and I've heard this from
other people too, that they're noticing a lot of times, that
people that have moved here from California kind of just expect
us to adhere to their habits.
I mean, is there, like, this sense of entitlement that you're
picking up on?
Well, a little bit. I mean, I would, because when we moved out
there, we were very low key. We didn't try to enforce our
lifestyle on everybody out there, you know, and I tried to
stay out of everybody's business. But this cat man, he
is. It's like he moved in and all of a sudden, well, this
whole place is mine. Now I'm king of college grove.
Is it something? Maybe he just, well, this is the way they do
things out here. Maybe that isn't.
It could be what? It could be an assumption which is false of oh,
this is out in the country. I can let my dog roam free, right?
True? Yeah,
you should never let your dogs roam free. There's, there's a
problem.
He just doesn't know better, ripping
well. I mean, if he had, you know, 45 acres,
yeah,
yeah, then you could probably let your dogs run loose
and they're your own acres.
Yeah, they're yours. They're not, they're not neighbors,
right? But,
yeah, that's one thing I've noticed, is that some of these
transplants are kind of acting like, you know,
well, we're not the only area, the only state, excuse me, that
has been, well, it
was
gonna, I was gonna say a victim, but I maybe don't know if that's
the right word, a victim of these transplants. I mean, you
know, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, a lot of these types
of states are seeing Oklahoma, the influx of these folks,
especially the no income tax states,
yes,
like a Tennessee and a Texas and a Florida.
Well, they're escaping too. I mean, I can understand anybody
wanting to leave California, beautiful state, but, oh,
I know it is gorgeous,
being run by absolutely insane leaders,
yeah, and it's, it's been happening for a long, long time.
You know, half my family from California, my mom was from
California. And you know, even though she's been gone now 11
years, even way back when she used to lament over how
heartbroken she was about what has happened to just her
hometown. Yeah, which was Monterey, California?
Oh, yeah.
You know, beautiful old fish fishing village at one time. You
know, overwhelmingly Italian. My mom was 24 karat Italian,
yeah,
and it was just this warm, loving community where
everybody, you know, the cliche, everybody knew everybody,
yes,
well, that was pretty true, because everybody was related to
everybody,
yeah,
you know, everybody had 10 kids, and you know, it was just as we
always say, was a different time. Yes,
it was.
But, you know, she lamented over how the, you know, the
developers had moved in and had knocked down all you knows, like
music wrote,
oh,
knocked down all those nice old homes and put in the, you know,
the seven. Elevens and the dry cleaners, you know, well, and
these condos,
the condos that look like they came out of East Berlin, yeah,
it's been an ongoing process out there. And then the, you know,
just the political climate. I mean, every day we're hearing
about these multi gazillionaires that are ditching California. Oh
yeah. And many of them headed to Florida because it's, you know,
so beautiful. They want to be on the water.
Oh yeah.
But then they realize it's Florida, and they come up here,
yeah?
Well, and I know, you know, I lived in Charleston, South
Carolina for a number of years, which is a great area, and it's
suffering the same type of thing.
Yeah,
it was a small kind of
Californians and New Yorkers.
It's both, but you're really right. A lot of New Yorkers that
would go down to Florida for winter, you know, the snowbirds.
I
want to live there. But
halfway to Florida, they would stop in Charleston or, you know,
somewhere along the Carolina coast,
sure.
And then it was like, why are we going to Florida? Let's just
stay here. It's cheaper, it's not as crowded, so on and so
forth. But now it ain't that way. It's, you know, it's
expensive and it's crowded and, you know? Well, I've even found
changes,
yeah, I've even found out that, you know, my hometown of
Wichita, Kansas, there's a small town that's east of there, where
I went to school Andover, and somebody was telling me that,
and a few years ago, I went to went back there, and I couldn't
recognize Andover. There were so many businesses, so many it used
to just be a little farming community. And now I'm being
told that the majority of people that live in Andover are the
very wealthy.
Oh, really,
I dare say, they really, they found they love, they love the
planes out there. Where's Dorothy? I dare say it's
like Montana. I mean, yes,
Montana,
huge draw for a lot of wealthy what's Coeur d'Alene in Idaho,
Idaho,
and there's an area, and I'm drawing a blank on the area,
because I produced a concert in in Idaho, and it was in October,
I remember that, and it snowed. And, gosh, I'll think of the
name of it, but anyway, it is a community where a lot of the LA
elite have homes and and, gosh, that was 40 years ago when I was
there. Well, maybe about 3035, years ago, I guess. But you know
it was even happening there, so this And granted, though, I
think a lot of that were maybe second and third homes for some
of these people. But now you've got people that are just
vacating California all together.
Yeah. I
mean even in Zuckerberg, yeah. I mean
Florida,
yeah, you know he's Starbucks, yeah, from up in Seattle. And
yeah, well, there
was a huge migration out to California. What in the 70s,
80s? Yes, you remember that? Yeah, I do. Because my father,
my family, entertained the notion of moving out there. I
almost became a California Wow,
when I was a kid. Why not my father? Yeah,
yeah. There were times when I explored that too, just for when
I was a younger guy and single or whatever, about venturing out
that way just to explore the voiceover.
Yeah,
work, and it is still somewhat of a but depending on what you
want to get into, if you're wanting to get into animation
and, you know, movie voiceover kind of stuff, that's still can
hear that that is still the Mecca, because it's so union
dominated,
yeah,
but some of that is starting to branch out. Canada is giving a
lot of that kind of
stuff. All the Marvel movies were made in Georgia,
yeah, Atlanta has
become a big South
Carolina is giving a lot of Louisiana as well. You know, the
lot of these states, they're offering up all these big tax
incentives,
exactly,
and the union work out in LA, from a movie standpoint, I've
got a real close friend, lifelong friend, that I've known
since the seventh grade. He's been fairly successful in the
movie biz as a screenwriter and whatnot. And he got out of
California because it was just, he just couldn't take it, and he
was starving to death. First of all, because the cost, even
though he was making pretty good money,
oh, that's the thing,
the cost of everything was just driving him out. And again, the
landscape changing. If we ever really want to talk about the
movie landscape and such, I need, we need to have him on the
podcast, because he's like up to his eyeballs and all this. David
Dubos is his name, but anyway, but as he had told me. We just
had this conversation, in fact, that the union writers and
whatnot, they are frustrated things are just moving out of
California because the unions are strangling everybody out of
work, and you but you can't work unless you're a part of the
Union. But the union membership is frustrated that they have to
join the union to get work. But the work isn't coming like it
used to because of the unions.
Yeah,
it's It's insanity.
Yeah, it is insanity. And you know what really makes me sad
about what's happening to us here is that Nashville, to me,
used to be a very unique town. Reason I fell in love with it.
It wasn't too big, but it wasn't too small, either. It was just a
perfect medium sized city. It had a very unique vibe about it.
I love the music, and I loved working on Music Row,
the openness of it.
It was at that time. I mean, I watched so many hit songs being
written. I mean, before they were even, you know, dedicated
to vinyl. I'm watching songwriters come but one was
still doing time by George Jones. I saw that being written.
I saw so many hit songs being written, and got to hang out in
in, you know, like publishing, publishing houses, and of
course, they were all in homes. But it was really cool. It was a
very cool vibe, and that I just saw that slipping away as time
went on, and it really made me sad, because Nashville had just
this great vibe of, I mean it, I can't describe it. It was just
cool. I looked forward to going to work every day because going
down to Music Row was so much fun, and it was wild. Everything
started falling apart right around the Telecommunications
Act happening,
yeah,
it really did.
It did
96 right?
Yeah,
yeah.
Well, in fact, Nashville, I saw changing. I actually went down
to Birmingham to work in radio down there, and stayed there for
two years and got home sick for Nashville, came back in 84 and
just the two years away, I saw a huge change, like you weren't
being allowed into like I went to Cedarwood publishing, because
I used to hang out there all the time. Well, this time it was,
you know, you can't come in, yeah, everything changed. So, so
it really started,
was it when everything got rockified? La Shania, Twain, and
that
news before that, I want to say 84 was more around the Oh,
really
Yeah, was, wasn't? It was just around the time of Urban Cowboy,
I think, well, urban cowboys,
Urban Cowboy, hit 7980
right? It was after that, that right?
And like, say, I came to Nashville in 85 and there was
still some old Nashville here then, but, yeah, it was the
transition was happening. And it's interesting, you say that
you still saw a huge difference from 77 to, you know, then you
laugh, because you got here in 77 right, then came back and
came back, 8485 in there, and it had already had a massive
change. That's interesting, because for me, it seemed like,
and we, everybody mentions this, and there's truth to it. I mean,
when they built the arena, then the predators came, yes, then
the Tennessee Oilers slash Titans came. We just became a
different city.
We did,
in many ways, a good way, at least as far as entertainment
and that sort of thing goes, Sure, you know, when, when I
moved here, I was surprised that there really wasn't a nice size
venue for shows.
No, that was the big,
I mean, the opry house at 44,000 or whatever it was, you know,
there at Opryland was kind of like the biggest thing I get.
You know, Murphy. I mean, when Elvis played Nashville. He
played Murfreesboro,
yes,
because the MTS, you said, Murphy center,
yeah,
held, you know, a bigger
size and people,
yeah, spring played
bigger size. Crowd.
Was it the big round
one now,
auditorium, which, you know,
that
place is, it's a dump in our notes,
welcome. Yeah. Back in those days, it wasn't
Yeah, but yeah. But the time the 80s and 90s rolled around, you
know that that place wasn't up to, up
to stand? Well, yeah, they didn't. They didn't improve it
in any way.
Hey, you know it was good enough for the wiggles. When I saw,
yeah, it was, it's good enough for a Harlem Globetrotters. But,
yeah, my wife made an interesting and it turned out to
be true. But whenever we had the 2010 flood, she said, this is
when the town's really going to change. You're going to see it.
It's going to not be the same place you knew. Before. And she
was right. It seemed like we did change after the flood.
Yeah, I was not here. Then, were
you not here for the big 20 I was in the car. You were lucky.
I, you know, I still was very connected to a lot of people
here. And I heard, you know, I yeah, I know it was, it was
dreadful.
It was dreadful. I remember Joe Lombardi telling me stories.
They had to go. I think they broadcast out of the WSM tower
in Brentwood. Yeah, because, yeah, because everything else,
everything was flooded, yeah, because they were in the opry
area. It
was, well, I remember I couldn't get to because when it was
started happening, I thought, Well, man, I better get to the
station. It was like, everywhere I went, I went crap, I can't go
anywhere. Yep, and it was off. In fact, one person, it was a
kid named John mounts, who was our assistant program director.
He did all the broadcasting and did a great job. He
was a, I mean, that dude was dedicated.
Oh, John mounts, you talk about a great radio guy, and he's
younger than me, and he's one of the young people that I truly
respect, because that we told them when cumulus let John walk
out of the building, we told them how foolish they were
being, but you should have paid this guy whatever he wanted,
because he knew How to engineer the place he knew about talk
radio. I mean, this guy knew every inch of radio. I mean, he
was just a
radio person of radio people.
Yeah, exactly. But it's been sad though to watch Nashville
change. I mean, there's some there's some good things that
have happened, but I just hate seeing Nashville become like any
other city? Well, yeah, they're big. And,
you know, so many people don't realize that Nashville attracts
all different types of industry. It isn't just music, no. So you
had a lot of folks that have come from Atlanta for the
insurance business. Insurance is huge here.
Well, in fact, I was told when I first moved here in 77 the
number one and number two businesses were not music. It
was insurance. Was number one. Number two was healthcare,
exactly, yeah. And I think that's still pretty much the
case,
yeah. I think
Hartford is known for insurance, not insurance. Yeah, yes,
insurance, yeah. And that was a big town for I mean, they're,
like, known as the insurance capital of the world. I didn't
realize Nashville is known for insurance. Yeah, they're known
for it. It's just
so many of those Atlanta companies and financial services
also very big in Nashville. But so many, again, these companies
getting out of Atlanta, because it's Atlanta and then and coming
up here and turning Nashville into Atlanta, yeah, turning
it into California.
Yeah, I know that's what I was that's what I was gonna say. I
mean, there's certain concerns about that. People escaping
California for what's going on there and bringing that crap
here.
Well, it's like when they, you know, when in college Grove we
had this, they put up this restaurant, and I forget the
name of it now, I think it was called sip and scoop. But
anyway, yeah, these people were from California, and they
brought California food here.
Avocado did, and
it was funny, because
avocado toast, Johnny, would you like?
Would you like some pinkies
aren't raised,
Johnny, I dare say, Johnny, you're not, you're not cultured
enough to be in our establishment. But no they so
they had pizza, and we ordered some. And it was very funny,
this lesbian couple comes in to this little restaurant, and one
of the girls looks at me and goes, What's that pizza like?
And I said, Well, it's nothing like what pizza would be in the
South. I said it's very light. I said it doesn't have a lot of
and she and she, they left after I said that. They said, that's
not what we want. We want to eat, but yeah, you can't. And of
course, the restaurant eventually went bust.
Go figure.
Yeah,
yeah, you
can't bring and that was their whole spiel. We're going to
bring a little California to Middle Tennessee.
That's the thing is that California does have a lock on
really good food. Yeah, their Mexican food is is really good.
The
Mexican food is good.
We lived out in Vegas. One of the first experiences when I
realized I was far from home, was going across the street to a
California pizza place for the radio station. I was going to
get some lunch and bring it back to the apartment, where core
apartment where Courtney was unpacking and moving us in and
nesting and all that fun stuff. And first thing was that I
noticed was like, on the menu, it showed all their locations,
and every single one of them was in California, Nevada and
Arizona. And I was like, Holy crap, I am a long way from home
and and. They charge, I think, $26 for a pizza that was roughly
10 inches in diameter.
Oh, wow. And
I was going, What the crap is this? You know?
Oh, I hear you,
yeah.
It's like, first time I ever ate up in New York, and you get this
plate. And I don't know what it is about rich folks, but they
just love, you know, they love
small portions.
Yeah, they like, really small. I was like,
and paying through the nose for,
yeah. I was like, What is this? You know, I'm used to the south
man
copious amounts.
Yeah.
I mean, not seeing us, we're obese.
Yeah, it's reason we have bellies down here. Can't
find the meat. And three New
York, and that's, that's that's the one thing that stood out to
me when I moved here. And again, I'm not a Californian by any
stretch of the imagination. I'm originally from Connecticut.
Don't hold it against me, but I think after 21 years, I am
considered a Tennessean.
You are.
But I moved here in the heyday, I want to say, or at least
probably the lagging days of heyday. Dumb, yeah. We moved
here in, oh, five, and Dave took me. He's like, You got it's a
Nashville thing. It's a meat and three I go, Okay, it's a meat
and three veg. Okay, well, do you have three vegetables? No,
no, no. It's you pick a meat and then you pick, like, potatoes,
corn bread, or, you know, I'm like, well, those aren't
vegetables. Well, they have vegetables too, but they're,
like, completely overcooked, you know, string beans and carrots
and whatever. But, you know, no semblance of nutrition
whatsoever in them.
No. A lot of bacon in them.
A lot of bacon, you know. And I'm going, I could see the
appeal, but dude, I can't, I can't eat here, like, every
other day. There was a guy in the station that ate that one of
those every
Oh, yeah,
every single day,
yeah. We used to have one like that too. And as the
engineer,
he would have grease on his Yeah, on his shirt when he came
to work. Johnny,
do you remember the Sylvan Park restaurant?
Yes, I
that place. I mean, it was fantastic.
Yes, it was,
we used to MCA. We, you know, all pile in one car and head
over there for lunch, pretty regular. And it was also, it was
also it was, there were a lot of characters, yes, that that were
there most the wait staff, more than anybody, you know, a bunch
of older ladies,
yes,
that had no patience for
anything,
you know. You used to have to literally stand in line, you
know, to get in there, and you would sit with other people at
the table.
Sure, yes,
you know it, yeah,
there's a lot of places like this.
No table was going to have an empty chair, right? They
wouldn't allow that. It's like, you know. So that was very
common where, you know, maybe me and another guy from the
promotion staff, David Haley, God, rest his soul. He and I
would go a lot of times, and we would sit at a foretop with two
other people, two total strangers, almost
like monells up in Germantown. Yeah, yeah. You have to sit with
those family strangers, yeah, yeah, you're sitting with
strange, and you get to meet people that was truly, really
cool. But
I can remember, there was just, there was so much personality
and quirky stuff there. The food was fabulous, and the the
chocolate pie was excellent. Yeah, start
on chocolate
pie. And I can remember, you know, if you people that didn't
know any better, they would stand in the door and leave the
door open while they're waiting in line.
Yes,
oh, man,
you don't do that.
Polishing door. You let me fly so. But you know, the food was
wonderful. But I will say, though, that was one of my
complaints about Nashville when I first got here in the 80s. Was
it there? The the fine dining or the really good restaurants
there? There weren't many. No,
there really
weren't. That is one of the good things that has changed.
Yes, there
are a lot of really good restaurants.
Yes, in
Nashville, it's become very cosmopolitan.
Oh, very much,
very
much so and
talking through your
team, you have to look down on people. Oh, my God, I don't want
to hang out with the commoners.
If I have to, I will.
You mean you were in radio, yeah.
Well, it's funny. You say that when I was previous marriage, my
wife then was really into, you know, being part of the upper
echelon, so we go to this party. Oh, God, it was awful. It was in
Bell Meade. Oh, it was Belle Meade money. And so there's this
banker, and he was obviously attracted to my wife, because he
was really hitting on her, and his overweight wife was dripping
with jewelry. And she said, What do you do for a living to me?
And I said, Well, I'm in radio. She said, Charlie, make.
Alexander. We had dinner with him one time, and he said only
poor people work in radio. She actually say that she did what?
Well, you know she get wrong. She's Bullseye old Nashville,
but you know that, but that surprises
a lot of people. Don't you find
that? What's that?
People that don't really know the whole world of radio, they
think you're making big money.
My ex wife thought I made big and I said, No. I mean I yeah, I
thought we were going to because I said we're going to be
syndicated. And I think that she saw dollar signs, and of course,
then that didn't happen. And she also saw dollar signs of my
father, but that didn't happen either. Went broke, so once that
all went away, that's when the marriage kind of
that's too bad,
but anyway, I actually ended up in a better marriage. You say
she said this to you, and it's like when I'm in situations like
that, okay, this person obviously is trying to go for a
dig.
Oh, yeah,
yeah, yeah.
I think I said something digging as well. Back to her. It may
have been about, you know, I said, Well, you may want to pay
attention to your husband, because he seems to be more
interested in my wife than you.
I would have been like, Oh, are you rich? You know,
Yeah. How'd you make your money? Are you
rich? Because obviously you can't buy class, yeah. So, yeah,
you may have married the money, but you,
you didn't, you didn't inherit the class, that's the thing
is, like, Bell Meade is, I mean, that's an older neighborhood.
Yes, it is.
What are they? 100 and 100 years old, maybe, or as older than, oh
gosh, civil war even THINK SO area, you know, but it's like, I
grew up around in New York. You're talking Revolutionary War
communities that go far beyond that, Westchester County,
Greenwich, you know, Stanford, pound Ridge, those areas. I
mean, that was old money. Yeah, multi generational, you know,
you're talking three, four or five generations worth of
wealth. And it's just funny, when I read that down here, I'm
like, Oh, you, you have no idea this is you're still there with
this.
Yeah,
you guys are newbies. Yeah, you really
are, well, I must say, growing up in New Orleans, there's,
there's a certain snobbery there about the old money, and it is
old. There's no giving around that and the old families. It
has changed over the years. You know, time has kind of changed
that Katrina certainly changed a lot of that. There's a lot of
people left and didn't come back.
Yeah.
You know, Charleston, South Carolina, again, an old city
with a lot of history, a lot of old money, if you've ever been
there, the area known as the battery, which is beautiful, old
mansions, these antebellum homes that are along
sun,
War era,
Oh, yeah. And before that, you know, 1840s
Yeah,
that are, you know, it's along the the well, heck, it's the
ocean, you know. But it's right there, near Fort Sumter, you
know, yeah, it's just idling things sitting out in the middle
of the bay there. But there is still a snobbery about the old
family money. And I think most of your cities have that,
oh yeah,
at least the cities of any size. But heck, even your small towns,
you know, it's like, well, you know, the Hartford heck, they've
been in this community for five generations. You know, they're
most of them were land or farmers landowners, because
that's ultimately where your wealth is. Well, the land, yeah,
and most rich, I found this to be true. Most of the rich that I
meet, the you know, the more wealth to do. People, you know,
they're not snobs. They if they earned it, they are really cool
people. Yep, the
first generation.
Yeah, the first now, if you meet a, you know, if you meet a trust
fund, baby, they may be a little different.
Perfect example was, again, when I worked for my dad doing
telephone work, we had a nursing home in Rye, New York. It was
right on the Connecticut, New York border, and it was a second
generation owned nursing home. The first generation is the
parents. The father still had an office. You think it was put in
the 70s, still came into work, still wore a full suit. The
mother didn't, you know, she worked with all the
administrative staff. She had a little desk.
Yeah?
A lot of humility there, yeah? But the kids ostentatious, oh,
yeah, this dude, Robert Wilmer, his name was, I'll never forget.
Never forget. He almost reminded me of the liar, yeah, that's it.
That's that. Oh, John, Levi, John Levitt, yeah, he had a very
like his bottom lips. I mean, it was. Are so stereotypical. Like
he had this kind of, you know, the bottom lip would stick out
like a pouty kind of, you know, and he just talked. Every time
he talked, he cringed. Mother, I don't like those. Here's the
kicker. Here I am. I know a lot of questionable people at that
point in my life, yeah, and this dude would come out while I'm on
a ladder in the actual entryway, the foyer, the reception area,
and I'm on a ladder running stuff from the ceiling, and I
just kind of looked down, and there he is, dude pulls out a
wad of cash. I mean nothing but hundreds. Just starts counting
in front of everybody. And I'm going,
Yeah, well,
like, Dude, I have access to your office. I know your home
address.
All
I have to do is tell some of these people that I hang out
with at this point in my life. Yes, this dude, at any given
time, is probably carrying three, $4,000 on them in cash.
Yeah, here's where he lives. Go with that. What you need? Yeah?
Have fun,
yeah? But, well,
you
mentioned, you know, I'm thought, and I know I keep
making these South Carolina references, but I think so many
people know about it because it was such a big deal. Was this
Alec Murdoch guy down in South Carolina, this old family money
that he certainly didn't earn, right? You know, and his kids
didn't earn. They act like fools. One of them ended up
getting a young girl killed on that boat because he was driving
it drunk and so on and so forth. But you know, during the trial
of that guy who was convicted of killing his wife and son, it
became very evident that he was just this guy that, yeah, sure,
he went to South Carolina University South Carolina got
his law degree like his father and his grandfather and so,
yeah,
but, you know, I think a lot of him getting into the school,
first of all was because of who the family was and the fact that
he was able to even graduate from there. I think people
pulled some strings to make that happen.
Oh, sure,
you know, to make sure that he got the easy route through all
that, but not not really appreciating, to me, that's just
such a lack of respect for what your family did that worked so
hard to be able to get you these opportunities
exactly
to take and really respect them and honor those opportunities by
not being an idiot. It really is upsetting to me, for like, the
kind of folks that you're talking about, Jim, that just
don't really respect what it took to get to that point, all
the hard work and such that families coming here with
literally nothing
exactly on
their backs, you know, the whole immigrant thing, and I know
that's a big topic of discussion these days, but man, folks came
here with nothing, built these empires, and you've got families
that just ruined them, like this Murdoch guy, destroyed the
legacy of the of the family.
Because I think that might be the differentiating aspect of
this, because, like, a more I'm thinking about this, there are
people that do that. There's an old adage that the first
generation works for it, the second generation squanders it,
the third generation loses it. Is typically how it plays out,
right? It's
not unlike, you know, cultural generational shifts that we've
talked about in the past on this show where you've got your World
War, two generation that fought the war, strong men create Good
times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create bad times.
Bad times create strong men. So on and so forth. That is a cycle
that happens in these families too, but I think with the
immigration aspect of it, for example, company up in
Connecticut that I worked for was an electrical company.
They're like the Lee company of Connecticut, and it's a Rizzo
companies. And the guy came here from Italy, you know, rumor has
it when his third child was being unborn in the hospital and
everything like that. And he wasn't there because he was out
on a telephone pole somewhere, just getting the job, making
money, yeah, making sure the kids could eat, you know? And he
grew that into an empire. His kids are now the second
generation owners of the business, and they are taking
care of the business like they are really running with, yeah.
And so I think the immigration might, the immigrant aspect, I
think makes a huge difference, because they came from a world
of like, oh man,
oh yeah,
I can't do this on my own here. I can only do that in America.
Yeah, you know,
in fact, that's why I love immigrants. I'm against illegal
immigration. We have to get we have to be better about
enforcing our laws. But that, I think some of the greatest
Americans I have ever met are people that are immigrants. I
come from a well of what they Well, I guess Trump called it,
you know, shit, whole country,
yeah,
and he's right. I mean, they were just they, and they came
from, you know, these, these ruthless dictators, and they
didn't have a chance to make any kind of Betterment for
themselves or their family. And they get to have it done here,
you almost like if your kids. Not appreciating the country.
Take them down to southern Miami, yes,
and have
them hang out with a bunch of Cubans that have come here to
the country. Or,
you know,
they are very conservative minded people.
Or have them, have them. Do you know, work outside of the
country through a church? Go down to
that would be phase two. Yeah.
Go down to Central America,
talking to the first witnesses. Yeah, doesn't do it. Yeah. Fine.
Go to Cuba, yeah. Good luck.
I remember very vividly I was just a kid at the time. Again,
moved to New Orleans when I was 10 years old, but there in the
early 70s, when the Vietnam War was coming to a close. 7475 all
of the Cambodians. And, you know, the the Cambodian boat
lift and a lot of the Vietnamese were moved into the New Orleans
area.
Yeah, there is two
there is a huge Vietnamese contingency in New Orleans. And,
you know, those folks came here. I mean, boy, you talk about with
nothing and But what was so interesting is that it took,
like, two or three years, and they owned their own businesses.
You know, they would bring over a family of 10 people, grandma,
grandpa, on both sides, brothers, sons, cousins, get,
you know, kids and they all lived in one, one house.
Yes,
pool their money. Work, any job. It wasn't that a job was too,
you know, they were too good for there was no such thing. And
before you knew it, they were, you know, sitting pretty after
just a few years again, coming here, hard work, pulling
together, pooling their money, honoring their family members,
especially the elders, taking care of them, not expecting them
to be on the government dole,
right?
But you know, it's just a different mindset.
Oh, definitely,
and a lot of people have today.
Well, and I love the Vietnamese. I dated a girl in Kansas City,
and she lived in a neighborhood where it was very heavily
popular, populated by Vietnamese families. And I loved because I
went into she went to work, and I was just hanging out. So I go
to this grocery store, and it was mostly Vietnamese,
Vietnamese grocery store, and I walk in, and you know how
there's all kinds of just talking, and it was like I was
with the government, because all of a sudden everything just went
silent. And I even tried to, you know, like, have a conversation
with some of them, and they wouldn't
just very distrustful,
yes, very distrustful of me. The
I will give you hope. Circling back around being, you know,
kind of wary of California's that are moving in, makes me
think of New York. You know, the
history
of New York, that they went through those cycles of, you
know, so many different iterations and where they
started. And, hey, these people are moving it now. What's that
going to mean? And I sat in 2018 at the top of One World Trade
and looked down on the city, and I said, Everything I'm looking
at started with a thought. And that's just an incredible
notion. And it's obviously working out well for them. Yeah,
so Well,
well,
hopefully you're hopeful now,
oh yeah, really am. No, you know, I actually think this
neighbor I was talking about, you know, the I call John
Dutton. I think he's probably a nice guy.
Yeah,
because he seems like, I mean, I haven't met him, but I just wish
he would have more. It just seems like
awareness, yeah,
just just have more awareness that you're having to deal with
people that have gotten used to a certain way of life then, and
we've had too many problems with dogs out there. I mean, we've
had people that have let their dogs roam, and a neighbor, his
dog got killed by a group of dogs that were just letting you
know. People were letting them run run loose.
Maybe a simple aspect of the letting them know, hey, when
these run loose, like this man, you're running the risk of
something happened to him.
Well, yeah,
you don't want nothing
happening. You don't want nothing happen to your dog. You
don't want to have your dog. Yeah, the good
thing is that you could pay me a couple of points every month and
make sure when nothing happens to your dogs.
Hey, maybe I should do that. Maybe I should go over there.
Listen, just a little down payment. We can make, make sure
your little feet, you know, your your dog,
canine friends,
your canine friends will will be safe in the neighborhood, you
know, saying,
Well, I'm thinking, you know Jim, I think Jim made a great
point. Perhaps the guy just thinks, you know, depending on
where he came from, which may have been kind of congested and
all, and now he's in a little more spread out area, and he
thinks, Well, hell, I'm out in the country. Yeah, dogs run I'm
down here a bunch of southern rednecks, their dogs run loose.
They're always perceived as dumb asses,
you know? And that is, that is a that is really because I've seen
people from the north do that, where they think somebody that
has a southern accent is stupid. Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
Whenever, in any type of environment, if you want to make
somebody come across as an idiot, usually that you give
them a southern accent, yeah? So,
but that doesn't mean they're stupid.
Hold my beer. Yeah. I was guilty of that. I will be honest. I
think everybody, I mean, if you're not from the south,
no,
I think, yeah, I think you, I think you kind of have that
image. But
the funny thing is, Nashville doesn't have many, I mean, even
when I moved here, not many people spoke had the southern
accent. Well,
literally, Mark from here. Yeah, that's all thing about, and
that's why, I guess we should be used to people coming from
different areas, because I've rarely met anybody that is a
native nashvillian
Now, anybody who comments on Facebook on a regular basis, 99%
chance they're a dumb ass. Just reading is awful. That's the one
thing that just man, you want to talk about something that grinds
my gears when I see these community pages and somebody
wants to put a complaint up about something and the way it's
written, I'm like, guys in the age of spell check and frickin
AI, yes. Why? I
mean punctuations, punctuations, proper spelling,
right?
Yeah,
I think much of that is due to the texting culture.
Yes,
that has all these shortcuts and just abbreviations for things,
and it's just totally ruined the ability to construct a coherent
sentence, not only in the written sense, but verbally as
well.
Well, I'm getting tired of now. We've moved on to another
subject, social media. But one thing that has really driven me
crazy is that everybody's now a political pundit, oh yeah. And
some
dotted opinion,
and some of them shouldn't be, you know, you know, every time I
turn around, somebody's going, well, here are my thoughts on
what's actually,
yeah, Twitter or x or whatever. I mean that that's the wild wild
west in that area,
yeah?
And it just blows my mind some of the things that people put
out there in terms of, you know, just showing their ass, yeah,
you know, well, keyboard,
a keyboard really makes somebody fearless.
Well, I love the with the Artemis thing that's been
happening, yes. How many people are going, yeah, right, sure,
yeah, there's a new nobody believes nothing anymore. Right
back to 1968 when everybody's going, Oh, they did that on a
movie studio, which they could have, right? You know,
that's, you know, there's legit, it's possible.
I'm telling you what you what you see here on circling the
drain. It's real baby, and you can check it out where Jay
Harper,
yes, you can find us real idiots on circling the we didn't need
AI to create this atrocity.
We sure did.
You can find us circling the drain.net. And of course, all of
the audio platforms, you know where they are. Apple podcasts.
I heart Spotify. And if you want to see our lovely faces, you can
do it on Facebook or, heck, YouTube, when it works, yeah.
And also Spotify the video portion. We're man, we're trying
to flood the flood, the interrupts, the yes, the digital
space, yes,
so to YouTube, and anyway, we'll be back next time on circling
the drain.