#19 Randall Carlson: Stories from my life

[Music] I never knew you were in a band. This is the Whirling Dervishes. The Whirling Dervishes. Yeah. This guy was a whirling dervish. Okay. We got some found some big heavy clubs and we're crawling through the brush where you think we're a bunch of peaceful hippies, right? Well, I came up more fights than I could count. Now, when I was 18, I got busted by a couple of corrupt cops and one of them planted a joint on me. It was my first crush ever. I've got some of the original the last of the original purple hayes. And they would come with the rattlesnakes, drop them in the gun. He's saying my uncle would say, "Now don't let those snakes out." You know, I think what's so amazing about these stories is how it seemed so how easily you lived outside. I spent the whole weekend till Monday morning stoned in that jail cell. The eastern tradition is more about the inner world and withdrawing and and going into the the monastery and all. The Western world is more actionoriented. Randall Carlson is a man who needs no introduction. He's been on the Joe Rogan Experience eight times, including one that was never even aired due to very controversial geopolitical issues. So, when we came into this conversation with him, I thought we were going to be talking about all the topics he's so wellversed in, like ancient archaeology, sacred geometry, the moon. Uh, but when we started asking him about his life, it just started unfolding like a movie. He's been at some of the major political rallies protesting the Vietnam War. He has been arrested while a cop plants a joint on him and he spends the weekend in a prison cell. He's a master mason and he's been working with wood and stone since he was 15 years old. And he's mostly been in construction before he became famous. So he he was in a band that played Middle Eastern music and you're going to hear him play the drums. uh he's experimented with being a whirling dervish, which is where you put your hands out to the side and you spin in a circle for hours on end and it induces this altered state of consciousness. I mean, his stories just continue and continue. In fact, he has an idetic memory. What that means is that his ability for recall in names, places, dates, all of those kinds of things is nearly perfect to where he'll tell these stories from when he was a teenager in his 20s as if it was yesterday. So, we talked to him for about three and a half hours and we cut it off at 1:00 a.m. But the truth is is we continued to talk to him until 7 in the morning. He continued to regail us with more stories and more photos. And you're going to see a lot of these photos. In fact, we had to cut it off at 7:00 a.m. because we had a 9:00 a.m. flight that we had to go catch and we just had to get out of there so we wouldn't miss our flight. So, I'm so grateful that we got to have this conversation with him and I'm grateful that we get to share this with the world. He does have a YouTube channel with about half a million subs and he gets millions of of of views every month and you can go there to see what he's an expert in. But this I've never heard these stories from Randall and I'm so grateful that we got to have him. Please, if you do like what you're seeing, please like and subscribe. We're still under a year old and all of these subscribes really help us with the algorithm and I really appreciate it. We enjoy having these conversations and we enjoy speaking with people that are seeking truth and are curious about the world and want to have these types of conversations. So, I really hope you enjoy it. Welcome to the Austin and Matt podcast. I never knew you were in a band. Yeah. Well, there's there's the proof. After we get done with this, I'll just play you like a 15 or 20 minute video recording. Yes. Oh, if we could overlay just 30 seconds of that, that would be cool. Okay. Proof proof receipts that you were actually in a band, you know, so people believe it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know when you listen to it, you'll hear crowd going wild. Yeah. Oh yeah. We used to get women taking their clothes off and Yeah. I mean it was very erotic when you see these girls dancing and stuff. Yeah. It was very erotic. Yeah. Oh yeah. We used to couple years in a row we went down here to Savannah and there's the the naval uh camp down there and and we'd go there. It was kind of traditional. We go down there. I just go with some of my, you know, I told you I started a drum circle. So, I'd take some of my three or four drummers and we'd go down there and we'd set up out on the on the the sea uh front there on the seawalk, whatever you call it there. And the it would be um uh March the um St. Patrick's Day and the soldiers would all come out that the Navy guys would all come out and we'd start drumming and uh pretty soon we'd have 200 300 people around us you know and I mean and we were we were good I mean we had worked out these like intricate routing it was I mean we had you know and these were like dervish trance rhythms and stuff and we'd get girls out there in the middle and they'd be dancing and I remember the one year one guy they're out there and one guy's Navy guys sitting going, "Show your tits." Pretty soon you had 300 Navy guys all going, "Show your tits." And it's it's in it's in sync with our rhythms, you know, show your tits. Show there was like I don't remember if three or four of them out there, but sure enough, they all showed their tits. That is What year is this? That would have been about 1980 81, something like that. Okay. 82. When did you start in the band? Well, I think we started in the band 79. Okay. How did you come about starting a band? Well, so I got hired at this there used to be a festival called in Atlanta called the Piedmont Park Arts Festival. It was a big deal and they had always Piedmont Park is a huge park and they would cordon off a section of it that they would then kind of segregate from the rest of the park and you'd have artists and performers and stuff like that that would come in there. And uh so one year I was I I don't know how I got drafted into this but I had done some presentations on geometry or whatever and and this guy who was uh this tall tall building out in Buckhead and he had the upper floor of it and he had some kind of a oh a clinic. he was a like a this highly respected psychologist or whatever, but he was also involved in these organizing these public events. And he said he came I was in there and I don't know what how it came about. I've kind of gotten vague on that, but he said, "You've got these carpentry building skills, right?" And I said, "Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I do for a living. I've been a carpenter." and he says, "Well, we need an we want to make a really spectacular entrance for people to go through when they're going into this sequestered area for the arts festival." He says, "Could you come up with some ideas?" Oh, sure. So, I made some sketches and I made this like 40 foot tall Gothic arches, right? And I showed it to him and he says, "Oh, yeah. Can can you build this?" And I said, "Yeah, I can build it." you know, figuring out how how am I going to build this thing. Uh, but yeah, I can build it. So, anyways, I get the gig and what I ended up doing was I had the geometry of them all figured out because I knew and it was based on a pentagram. Um, and I can actually show you the the geometry. It was based on a pentagram, but it was a Gothic arch. So, what I did is I made these 40ome foot long arched beams. And so what I did was I laid it out on the ground and I drove stakes into the ground to get this arch. And then I got I think it was 1x six lumber, a bunch of it, and curved one side. I don't know if you know what curfing is. No. Okay. Curfing is like, let's say you've got a piece of lumber and I take a saw and I make a saw cut 3/4 of the way through, right? And I do a bunch of those. Well, now it becomes very flexible. So, I would take each of these 1x sixs and I would curve them and then I would bend them. I had these stakes in the ground. I would bend them around the stakes. Then I would get another one, bend it, and that and then I had a saworse set up and I had a paint roller and I had this high performance glue. I would roll that on and then the next one would go on and then I' I had a drill with screws. I'd put it in. So, I would build this thing up until it was like this thick. And I made four of these things, right? Then we set up scaffolding up like four stories up into the air. And I got a comealong and one at a time raised them up, raised the next one up, bolted them together, and then raised one up this way and then one this way. So, they made the four corners of the square. I oriented it so it was north, south, east, and west. All bolted together at top. Then we painted it and then they came in afterwards and they hung like all these streamers and stuff from it and this was the entrance into this into the arts festival and they would the people coming in would walk under this thing, right? So you could see it from you know across the park this big fourstory arch, right? So, at the end of the day when I uh was through with working and sun's getting kind of low in the western sky and I would pull out my drum, my dumbbeck and I would play for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, kind of sundown, you know, I just I'd play, right? One day I'm playing and I play this rhythm, probably a very famous rhythm. In fact, if I had my drum handy, I would show you exactly what it was. Oh, is it the the clear one? Yeah, that would work right here. Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Oh, okay. Let's see. Okay. So, I this was not the drum I had, but um Yeah. So, yeah. So, I had the drum and I'd play something like this. [Music] Well, so I'm playing this rhythm and I stop from somewhere on the far side of the park. I hear okay. Then I get an answer. Oh, wow. Okay, cool. So, I think let me do something else from the other side of the park. I hear Okay. So, I start going through all of these different rhythms I know and they're all Middle Eastern rhythms, you know. Um, and so I would play and I go, "Okay, I got to find out who this is." So, I start walking and I play and then I hear the response and then I walk more and I play some more and then I hear, you know, it's getting closer and closer and we're walking and I'm walking and then I see this guy and it's it's James who was in the band. And uh so that's how we met. And he had his drum. He was in there and he was like the only person I knew in the whole town now that also played a dumbbeck, which is what this is, and knew these Middle Eastern rhythms. So I mean, I went through a whole slew of these Middle Eastern rhythms, and he knew them all. See? So we said, "Wow, man." So we started getting together and drum. We're best friends. Yeah. And then I said, "James, you know, I got this guy Martin who is uh from Hamburgg that works for me. He's a violinist. Why don't we get him to sit in with us and maybe he can learn some of the melodies. He comes in. So then it was me and James and Martin. And then um at this time Julie's studying Middle Eastern dance, so she has these You already know Julie? Yeah, I know Julie at this point. And so we started doing some things because back then there was nobody who actually played Middle Eastern music. So the the the dancers would all um use recorded music. So Julie had a whole collection of Middle Eastern records. So cuz she's a dancer. She was a dancer in the band too or she was the dancer before the band. Got it. Right. So uh anyways we started you know doing these gig like a girl would need she's going to do a gig somewhere and she would say well would you guys come and play you know which was preferable to her coming in with a tape recorder. So we started that and then so then we started practicing organizing together uh rehearsing and learning all these different Middle Eastern songs. James was actually a keyboardist whose background was jazz keyboard, but for some reason along the way he had picked up the oud. So he comes in now with the oud. I had a fella named Jerry who was one of my drumming students. So I brought him in. He played the tar, the big thing there. And so it was and and what's good about that is it has a real deep resonance, right? So he was like the bass player. So, we had the two percussionists, we had Martin the violinist, and we had uh James. Now, Martin's background is bluegrass. So, he's learning and adapting all of this to um you know, to to Middle Eastern classical music, right? Then a year goes by and the next year, the same arts festival, we got hired to perform. See, and I told you that story a little earlier. um that Allan Sloan was in the audience when we performed a this is a year has gone by now, right? So now he's we we've you know gotten fairly good and we've got worked out these choreographed routines with the dancers and stuff. Allan is in the band and he comes up afterwards you know and he heard Martin playing fiddle and as you saw we played that little bit of Right. So he's a because Allen's in which band at the time? Dixie Drags. The Dixie Drags. This is after they had broken up. Okay. So, he's he's at the festival. He's at the festival. And he just hears you guys playing. He just hears us playing. So, he comes up and talks to us and could I sit in with you guys, jam with you guys? Oh, yeah, man. Well, then he comes and then of course he's just a virtuoso violin as you can hear when we play some of the tapes. Um, and yeah, so he joined the band and for a while we had two violin players which was really dynamic. But then Martin had to go back to Germany for some reason. So then it just turned into a basic trio which was myself, James the player, and Allan the violin player. And then for gigs and stuff, I would bring in Jerry and he would play guitar. And then um we knew some this girl Kim who was a really good clarinet player and Stephanie who was a very good floutist. She was a professional musician, well known around town. And uh they would come in for special gigs. And so then that's when we started. And the band really went for like maybe two years. And then there's just a long weird story about what happened. But we were on the threshold of I mean we were like getting approached by record companies because what we ended up with is we came in with a sort of a hybrid of uh jazz rock and middle eastern trans music. So, it was unique. Nobody else was doing anything like it. And we were getting writeups, you know, and starting to make some really good money, you know, like I said saying earlier, like we we might, you know, do one gig where we're one night we're at the High Museum, which is, you know, really poy. you know, the mayor of Atlanta is in the front row seat with these dignitaries all in black coats and ties and we're performing and then the next night, you know, we're performing at some sleazy punk rock club, right? So, it ran the gamut and everything in between. Um, but then yeah, as things go, it's a it's a long weird, wild, bizarre story in itself, and I probably don't want to go into that right now. Um, but but it it fell apart. Um, let me ask, how did you get into Middle Eastern music? Well, I got into Middle Eastern music because I was studying Sufism. And when did you start studying Sufism? Oh, in the early 70s. Okay. See, I had already gone through this where I'd been I'd studied with the Brahman priest. I'd studied with the with the swami and that was up in Minnesota. And then I was in Georgia and I was looking and I and by this time I'd read books by Idria Sha on Sufism and its connection to Kabala and Freemasonry and other spiritual traditions. And I thought, "Oh man, this is interesting." You know, because Sufism is sort of like the the mystical heart of Islam. Yeah. Roomie, right? Yeah. Room. Yeah. And just like Cababala is sort of like the mystical heart of Judaism and Gnosticism is the mystical heart of Christianity. That kind of thing. So then I don't know. I don't remember how I Okay. So I was going to this center in town that was kind of a spiritual center. It was down in Atlanta near near the park um in an old building, an old mansion. And I would go to events there. And then one day I go in there and they're sponsoring this dervish Sufi master from Baghdad to come there and I said, "Okay, I got What is a dervish Sufi master?" Well, so the dervishes, I guess you could say it's like a subset of Sufism. This is the whirling dervishes. The whirling dervishes. Yeah. This guy was a whirling dervish. Okay. And these they're really well known for they get into kind of a trance and spin or something or like I don't know much about it. I'm actually Okay. So they they would Okay. So when he would do classes and workshops you do like a whole weekend, right? And what you do is he would come in there and he would teach us the whirling and he would play the drum and the drum set the tempo of the whirling. So if he's just we, you know, it's slower, but then if it's, you know, we're uh, you know, spinning faster. Are you guys like meditating or are you What is the crowd? What is the class? What are the people doing while he's doing that? What are you supposed to We're spinning. You're spinning. We're spinning. Everyone's spinning. Everybody, you have 30 people in You have 30 people in a room spinning. If you go at a high at a high Rotary velocity. Yes. High RPM. How many minutes? Yes. High RPMs. How many minutes are you spinning for? Oh, a couple of hours straight. You don't stop. No. Unless Unless you switch switch directions. No. No. You Well, not in one episode. Maybe, but you usually Yeah, I think mostly it was counterclockwise. I don't remember going clockw I only remember going counterclockwise. You have one hand up and one hand like this. It depends. One hand up, one hand down. Yeah. And you almost like the the the the the air foils on a airplane or something. You can do this. But um and yeah, you'd have 30 people in there and we'd go and go and go and go and I mean, yeah, you after a while you're just you're in another realm altogether. And then what does it feel like? What does it feel? What do you when you're spinning for 30 minutes or an hour? Where are you at this point in what's happening while you're while you're doing that? Well, what's happening is you're it's very difficult to explain, but you definitely go into an altered state of conscious um without the assistance of any any medicine. You just No. And I wasn't doing anything at the time. Yeah. Just the spinning itself is doing it. Just the spinning itself with with the drumming. It was eyes open or closed or whatever. Either one. Yeah. Okay. But on several occasions, you know, you're going and you're just spinning and spinning and then I can remember a couple of times where you kind of like maybe lose your step just a little bit and you're in this equilibrium mode and you can feel you're in this total balance. I mean, my sensation was I felt like I was a planet spinning on its axis, you know? That was kind of the sensation I had. Because you're not really out of balance. You don't are you you find an equilibrium in the spin and somehow you just stay there and you're it's like you're on an axis and it's not it's not challenging to stay up. Not after not after I mean the first probably the first weekend I did it was challenging but as you got better at it, you know, you go longer. You could go from 20 or 30 minutes up to an hour and then from an hour to an hour and a half. And so, you know, I did this with him for two years, year and a half. anyway, like maybe once a month. Um, and then he was holding a school down in Florida, so I would go down there regularly to participate. And uh, but then on several occasions, you know, you do you do sometimes lose it. And then what'll happen is you got like a room there, carpeted floor, uh, and you got 30 people in there and they're all spinning and somebody gets a little bit off their and they and they bump you and then you're like, "Okay." And then it's like the next 10 minutes you're trying to recover and you're feeling yourself like trying to tip over and there were several occasions where it would be like a chain reaction like somebody would spin into disequilibrium, hit the person next to them, they would lose it, and pretty soon the whole 30 people come crashing to the floor. Um, which was pretty wild. Sounds wild. Anyways, yeah, Odnan. And I just he just passed away like a few months ago. Um, and what was his title? Dervish of Well, let's see. What were the master dervish? Yeah, he was order the Nakshabandi dervishes, the Mevy Dervishes, and two more that he was initiated. And uh and that's where I I picked I got my first drum and my first lessons in Middle Eastern percussion. And they were they were from Iraq or Yeah. Baghdad. Baghdad. Okay. How did you get even backing up further? How did you get you said you studied with a Brahman and with a Swami? Yes. What got you into that? Well, okay. So, I had How old were you? Uh let's see. So it was 1971 when I started studying with the Brahman priest and it had just been I had been out on the road for several months just kind of wandering. I had we had set out okay so a group of us had set out we had heard that the Vietnam veterans against the war were going to stage a demonstration anti-war demonstration in Washington DC and I thought you know I'm I'm going to go to that and uh now this this is 71 so I'm 20 years old now when I was 18 I got busted by a couple of corrupt cops uh and one of them planted a joint on me and then his partner busted me and I got sucked into the legal system. And I was in the legal system when I got called up for the draft. Now, this was back in the days when they had the the lottery. And this is where that was a weird thing because what was your number? It was it was less than 125. Whoa. Which meant that I was going to go to Vietnam. Yeah. That was that was hardcore. But I tell you, it's weird. You're sitting there, you're watching the television and they're broadcasting it on TV and they've got it's like a game show almost and they've got this big thing and like these as I'm remembering almost like a pingpong ball would pop up and they'd get it. Ah yes, you know, uh August 13th. So if you're born on August 13th, right? So it's going and it gets over 120 and my birth date hasn't come up yet and I'm thinking, okay. And then boom, mine comes up like I don't remember the number 122 or something. And if you if you were less than 125, I believe it was, you're you're bound. You knew you were getting drafted. Yeah. You knew you were getting drafted. Yeah. So I knew I was getting drafted. And then shortly after that, I'm this would have been fall of 69. I turned 18 in in March of 69. And one of the things I used to do to to make money was I would hawk newspapers on street corner. And you'd go in and what I would do is you could plunk down 10 bucks and you'd get a hundred newspaper 10 cents each and you'd go out on the street and sell them for 25 cents. And that's on newsies growing up. And that's that's what the whole thing's about. You know, you know, you sell a hundred of them, you'd make 15 bucks. And I think I'd sold I I think I'd sold 200 that day. And you know, for an 18-year-old kid in 1969, making 15 bucks would be like making a hundred bucks now, probably somewhere like that, if not more. And I was dead tired. And I'm standing at a at a bus stop, hoping that I hadn't missed the last bus, but thinking, well, that's cool if any cars come by, cuz this is back in the day when hitchhiking was totally a normal thing, you know. Um, and I'm waiting there and this unmarked cop car cruises by and I could see the guys looking at me and I could, okay, I'm going to get harassed because, you know, I that was a regular thing get harassed after particularly after Nixon became president. Uh, what city were you in at the time? Minneapolis. Okay. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Anyways, they drive down. I see him take a right to first corner. I go, "Okay, they're going to circle around the block. come back and I'm kind of watching out of the corner of my eye and I see some headlights coming out. It's one o'clock in the morning. So, it's streets are pretty empty. I see headlights coming up. Okay, that's them. So, I'm just standing there. Okay, they're going to harass me. But that's okay cuz I don't have anything on me. So, no worries. So then they both come walking around the corner and they split up and one guy comes walking towards my front, gets my my makes eye contact, starts talking to me like, "Hey, what are you doing out here?" You know, this whatever, whatever. While his buddy comes up behind me, puts his hand in my coat pocket, pulls out a joint, which I knew wasn't there. And the reason I knew it was there was because I remember sitting there think but that not that way. Right. Not that one either. Not that one. Yeah. So next thing I know I'm being handcuffed. I'm being put in in the backseat of the car, cop car. And we're driving downtown and you know I'm go I know I'm going to jail and one of the guys on the passenger he turns around he says, "We don't like guys like you. We're the all-American type." I remember that. the all-American type. Yeah, we're the all-American type. We don't like guys like you, right? Yeah. Get down there. They throw me in the drunk tank um with a bunch of drunks and there's this big old I remember there was this big old Indian. He was big. He was like the guy the Indian in one flew over the cuckoo's nest and he went on this rampage about something and they, you know, I'm sitting there in this little cell and he's like out in the main area right here. There's like six cells on each side and he's out there rampaging and five or six cops all come in there and jump him and so it's this big brawl with this guy, you know, like 10 ft in front of me and uh I was like, "Oh god." And then they finally get him and they break his arm and I could hear the crunch of the bone. I remember from like, "Oh god." So then in the next morning they take me out of the drunk tank and they take me down to the big jail cell in in downtown Minneapolis where it's like in a big factory, a warehouse that's like 40 ft to the ceiling and there's two tiers of cells and you know they take me down. and I'm in handcuffs and they bring me up to the second tier all the way down to the second to the last cell and take my handcuffs off, put me in the cell and there's this little guy in there. He probably couldn't have been over 53 54 and okay, this is my cellmate. Well, at least he's not some 65 guy who's going to like, you know, whatever. Um, make me as a [ __ ] or something. Yeah. Yeah. So, then Fair point. Yeah. Yeah. The cop goes down and I don't know. He's walking off and the the little guy in the cell gets this gleam in his eye and he goes, "Okay, I'll try to sit still." He goes, "Look what I've got." And he goes reaches his hand down the front of his pants and I'm going, "Oh shit." And then he comes out and he's got a bag of reefer and he goes, "Aulco gold." I'm like, "Dude, put put that away." you know, keep it in your pants, bro. Yeah, keep it in your pants, bro. So, so we quickly figured out the routine. I mean, we're in this big building. We're way down at the end. We're up on this and the the ceiling of our sale is bars, which I like cuz you know, I I got claustrophobic. So, and then it was probably another 15 or 20 feet up to the ceiling of the of the warehouse. So, and I don't He had papers and everything. So, we were set, man. Um the cop would come down below. We'd hear his feet coming up. He'd have a key and he'd turn it into the thing there that would, you know, show that he'd made his rounds. We'd hear his footsteps go walking off and we'd there blowing it up the ceiling. I spent the whole weekend till Monday morning stoned in that jail cell. Um, so the next morning, Monday morning, it's about lunchtime and they they let me out um on my own reconnaissance cuz I'd been a good boy. I hadn't gotten in any trouble. And uh so they give me a copy of the arrest report. Now, I can still remember exactly where I was. I was standing at a bus stop on Broadway Avenue, right? The next intersection down was Washington Street. And I actually went when last time I was in Minneapolis about 5 years ago. I thought, you know what? I'm going to go find that spot where I was, but it wasn't there anymore because they put an interstate through and the clover leaf was right there where that corner was. So, I was going to go stand at that corner and remember, but so I get the copy of the arrest report and it says that officer so and so and so and so were driving down Washington Avenue and they saw the suspect staggering down the middle of the street. Complete [ __ ] Just made up lie. And I remember reading that and I'm thinking, "Yeah, okay. You're the all-American type. Yeah, so you're the all-American type, but you just make up this [ __ ] you just lie. Right? So anyways, that's kind of the the the preface to this. So this is fall of 69. Now we go to May of 1970, right? And I've been against the war now at this point because by this time I've known two two people that I had known. They weren't friends, but I had known them. They were like n neighboring farms. We rode the bus to school together from first grade up that had been killed over there. Right. Everybody knew somebody that had been killed over there or severely damaged either physically or mentally or emotionally. Two people that I knew that committed suicide because they couldn't deal with the PTSD because nobody was addressing PTSD back in those during the Vietnam War. And of course, what you had was you had a lot of drafties. And one of the reasons we shifted away from drafties is because the drafties didn't really want to be there. So they had no loyalty to the narrative and they came back and said, "Hey, it's all [ __ ] It's all lie." In fact, even a lot some of the guys I knew from high school who were total jocks and total rah rah rah. We got to go over there and kick the communist ass came back and said the same thing. It's all [ __ ] It's all lies and [ __ ] But anyway, so I hear fast forward to like probably April of oops 1970 and uh I hear that the Vietnam vets are going to have uh have organized an anti-war demonstration. And this is the same if you ever watch the movie Born on the 4th of July with Tom Cruz, which is a true story about I don't remember his name right off hand. You might look it up on your phone. Born on the 4th of July, he he came back. He was a disabled veteran and he became a leader of the anti-war movement. Okay. And um and in this movie, which is a really good movie, it's an Oliver Stone movie. Um uh Tom Cruz plays the the the uh the vet. Um Ron Kovich. Ron Kovic. Yeah. Ron Kovic was his name. So I was talking with, you know, some friends uh that, you know, felt same way I did and we thought, you know what, we need to be there. Um, so I met this guy who was planning to go. There was like this planning meeting if anybody leaving from Minneapolis. I met this guy who had a pickup truck. So what we did was there was going to be eight of us that rode in his pickup truck. So, we went out and we scavenged lumber and we brought it back and we built a like a makeshift camper on the back and uh a couple of guys up front. We had two ladies with us and uh so we we start out for Washington. I think our first night was just south or outside of Cana Key, Illinois. And uh we pull off the road and we're down in this wooded area. And uh we're going to get ready to go to bed. We built a little campfire there. And we're sitting there and I see some lights coming through the trees like maybe from 50 or 100 yards away and looks like headlights and what that who that what that is. Well, we're all sitting there ready to turn in and and you know we've got our sleeping bags or sleep on the ground or whatever and I start hearing this like this something pinging through the leaves. And uh what it was was we found out was late afterwards we found out that they were it was just a group of the locals as you'd say rednecks. I think they were half drunk. They came out and they were shooting at us with plet guns. So me and one of the guys that I was with. We got some found some big heavy clubs and we're crawling through the brush. We're going to go there and Okay. You think we're a bunch of peaceful hippies, right? Well, I'll show you that cuz I was a scrapper back in those. Yeah, you can. Yeah. God, I came up at more fights than I could count, right? Well, then, but before we could get there, lights come from the other way. These big headlight spotlights, and there was like a whole like five or six cop cars all coming down there, right? So, these guys over here, they fled. the the locals, they fled and they get their guns out. They've got us at gunpoint. They march us up, you know, the cops. The cops have you at gunpoint. They have us at gunpoint. Yeah. Whoa. And I was thinking, uhoh, this is it. Because I knew we had a bag of weed with us. Actually this time. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh yeah, actually this time we did. Um so, uh one of the cops, he looked like he might have been a rookie. The older cop sends him down. So, let's go down there and search the truck. So, he's down there and we're up maybe half an hour waiting and I'm just kind of sweating. Ah, gonna go back to get to go to the the the anti-war demonstration. And he comes back up and he got a book. Somebody had brought this book called the anarchist cookbook. I don't if you've ever heard of that, but that would be a book that you could get arrested for now. Oh, you're a terrorist. Somebody had brought that book. And he says, "Oh, look what I found." He shows it to the older cop there. And the older cop is looking at it and you know, he says, "Well, he said something about, well, yeah, this is just a book. You know, this is first amendment, right?" Right. And I'm thinking, well, he didn't say the weed, right? Well, so we didn't say anything. The guy who owned the pickup truck, he was a avid fisherman. It turned out that the head cop was also an avid fisherman. So they start talking fishing, you know. So everything kind of just chilled, relaxed a little bit, deescalated. Deescalated. Yeah. And when this young cop comes back, he didn't find anything. Oh, no. Oh, okay. So they let us, you know, they left. And uh turned out that one of the girls when she saw the cops coming, we had a bag of brown rice and she buried the weed down in the bottom of the brown rice bag and he didn't look in there. Oh damn. So, we got we got away and went on our way the next morning and um we got as far as we were in rural Pennsylvania and we threw a rod in the truck and it just tore the engine up and so What do you mean you threw a rod in the truck? Oh. Oh. Oh, a rod in the engine. I got you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And so it just tore up the engine and and so that was it. And all that work we' done to build that camper and everything. So what we did was we there was eight of us. We split into twos and all went out by the highway and hitchhiked the rest of the way to Washington. You just left the truck. Well, it wasn't Yeah, it was just I don't remember the guy's name who owned the truck. He said, "Yeah, [ __ ] it." I mean, it would have cost I mean, the engine had to be replaced. Yeah. And it was totaled. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. So, leave it. So, we left. I can still remember buddy of mine named Joe Rushnako. I have no idea if he's still with us or if he'd ever even hear this, but yeah. So, me and Joe Rushnako, we paired up. We hitchhiked together and then we split up and didn't see anybody else. Uh, you know, for I was out and then on the road for a couple of months before I finally thumbmed my way back to Minnesota. But, you know, we were in Washington. I remember coming into Washington. We just come over the this hill and I'm looking down and there's Washington spread out and an Elton John song came on the radio that in the car that we were riding in and I'd never heard of Elton John. And so it's I just have this memory of this Elton John song. The first time I'm seeing Washington DC. We get down, he lets us out and it was like a war zone, you know. You walk around in the streets and it's just like tear gas canisters everywhere, you know, and where there had been these battles and all this between the cops and the protesters. And so I uh where do what did we end up doing? I think I maybe just me and my Joe Rashnako. Oh, maybe he had a friend. Yeah, he had a friend that that had gone to my high school who who was now I think got drafted and he was in I think he was in the Air Force and he had a part in Alexandria. So he he put us up and then we would go into uh into Washington to protest the war and um that was a wild week. Let me tell you was a wild that is such a hot protest. I mean, it's amazing to think now that just protesting it was it was it would have been peaceful it sounds like if the cops hadn't have or was it vi were they just were you guys just protesting you stand there with signs and cops just come and start throwing tear gas at you. That was mo I mean most of the uh aggression was the cop for sure. Um at least everything that I saw. So there was like one day in front of the justice department um was Pennsylvania Avenue which is this big wide street. You got the big imposing brutalistic looking buildings there and it's six, seven, eight blocks completely packed. Must have been 20,000. And John Mitchell, who was uh what was he? He was attorney general at the time. And we were right there where I was at. I there was a statue and some one of these days I'm going to go back across from the Justice Department. There's a statue there. And I climbed up on top of the statue so I could get a good view of it. So I could see, you know, four or five blocks in either direction, people as far as the eye could see. John Mitchell steps out on the this balcony of the Justice Department, 20,000 people going, "Oh, you know," and it was echoing. And I'm think I remember thinking, "What does he feel right now?" You know, this is weird. Well, after he went back in, I look up to the right. I look up to the left and I see these armored buses pulling across the intersection lining up nose totail completely blocking the intersections. And then what they would they started on both ends and they would drag people in, throw them on the buses and when one bus got packed full they would pull it off. The other buses would pull up and this went on pretty much from morning until afternoon. And I don't know why I didn't get busted. I mean, maybe they didn't see me up. I was I stayed up on top of this statue while they're clearing out the whole street and then pretty soon the last buses are gone and I climb down and go on my way wherever I went. Um, and I think that was one day and then the next day everybody gathered on this island in the Ptoac River and uh the Beach Boys. You ever heard of the Beach Boys? Yeah. So, the Beach Ryan Wilson just passed, I think. Yeah, he just passed. Yeah. Yeah. So, the Beach Boys were playing, right? And the island is packed and I met this lady, very attractive young lady, and she and I hit it off and she had a lean to her attempt or something. I'm in there with her and and she's telling me, "Yeah, after, you know, tomorrow you can come over to my place and stay with me." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm I'm game. I'm good. I'm I'm down for that." And uh so we go to sleep and then oh, must been like 5:00 a.m. or something. And I hear this and I look out and there's coming helicopters coming in and there's this thick fog mist over the river and over the island, right? And the girl, I don't remember her name at all. She got up, said, "I got to go you use the bathroom." So she she goes off and I'm there with all the stuff waiting for her to get back. And then I hear this. I look out, it's the helicopters. And then they've got these big spotlights and they're swooping down. I mean, like 40 feet over our heads. Big announcements. Come on. You know, um, clear the island. Anybody, you know, we you will be arrested, blah, blah. You know, like, and it sort of it was so weird with the with the the heavy mist hanging over. And then I get out and I go, "Oh shit." And I start packing up. I guess I don't want to get arrested again, so I'm going to hightail it out of here. The fog starts lifting and both sides of the river. As far as the I could see in both directions were cops in full riot, ready for the green light. when that when you could start seeing these guys through the through the fog, everybody re everybody just scattered like, you know, cockroaches turned a light on and everybody's going and um so I me too went with them. Uh got out of there. I didn't get arrested. Never I got separated. I you know I had my destiny was all worked out. I was going to go stay with this attractive lady that obviously liked me. And uh that didn't happen. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. So now I'm just wandering the streets, you know. Um find out later that uh both Rowan and Rocky, you haven't met Rocky. He's been missing in action for over 30 years. Haven't seen him. These are brothers. Yeah. He's halfway between me and Rowan and aid. Okay. So they both get arrested. Rowan. They took him. He Rowan was only 16 at the time. They take Rowan and he'll he can tell you this story, but the Washington downtown Washington DC jail cells that was like three or four stories underground. They take him down and they've got this little I don't know whatever 6 by8 or 6 by8 cell and they just pack like 15 guys in there, lock them in there and then after they get them in there, they start pumping tear gas through the through the ventilating system. And so now, you know, you got everybody crying. You've got people, you know, like choking. You've got one guy started going into like an epileptic fit and and then one of the guys realized Rowan was a juvenile. And so he's yelling, "Guard, guard, guard." So the guard comes, says, "This guy's just a juvenile." So they Rowan would have to tell you what happened next, but they let him out of of that cell. Um, meanwhile, our other brother Rocky got busted, got arrested, and they had filled up every jail cell in Washington DC and they still had like 20,000 more people arrested. It was the largest mass arrest in American history, right? So, what they did was they I don't know the baseball stadium, but they had a baseball stadium and they wrapped it in barbed wire and they put 20,000 people in this baseball in this sports field wrapped in barbed wire. And Rocky told us how, you know, they started oming, you know, like 20,000 people all oming and then I believe it was the next chanting. Chanting. Yes. Chanting. Yes. Yes. Chanting. Right. And I think it was the next day and I don't remember how many people showed up. 20,000 more, 50,000. There was over a million people in Washington DC that showed up that week, first week in May 1970 with one intention. We are going to shut down the federal government until this war stops. And 20,000 maybe, I don't know, 25,000 of those people went out. has happened locked arms and completely surrounded the Pentagon. Every bridge, every road coming in and going out of Washington DC was shut down. What they did was they got these old cars and drove them out onto the bridges and the interstates, got out and took out the distributor caps or whatever they did. So, Washington DC was literally shut down for a whole. And it was right after that, if you look at the history of the Vietnam War, you begin to see that's when it really began to turn. and the troops started coming home and it took a long took three years to bring all the troops home after four years really pretty much they were all for the most part home by 7374 um and then there's the famous final withdrawal from Vietnam where the helicopters are taking off from Saigon and everybody's hanging on you know just like what we saw the evacuation of Afghanistan was like almost like a reap and uh so I was with this my friend Joe Rushnaka and we met this lady and she was from Massachusetts and I'd never seen New England so we all rode together up and toured New England and then rode back down to Washington DC and you know I just was hanging out there on the streets living on hand tomouth in Georgetown. Um this is like maybe six or eight weeks in and uh I thought well I'm going to I guess I'm going to make start making way my way back home to Minnesota. So, I started hitchhiking. I hitch I I'd never seen New York City, so I got to see New York City. So, I hitchhiked up and got into New York City. Of course, by the time I got there, I had no money. So, there was nothing I could do except walk around and look at [ __ ] you know. Um, and then this friendly guy picked me up. You know, back in those days, you had what are called crash pads. You ever heard that term? A crash pad? like somebody would have an apartment and it was known around that hey if you're out and you need a place to sleep there's a crash pad up on whatever. So I went and couple of days stayed at this crash pad and ah it's time for me to go. The guy whose place it was said how far you got to go. I said I'm going back to Minnesota. He gave me like 20 bucks or something and uh that was plenty to get me back home. So I hitchhike over the next three days from New York City back to Minneapolis. And you know there's a few times there I don't know where I'm up in middle of nowhere Michigan standing out at 2:00 a.m. nothing you know nothing. So I go over and you know kind of find some bushes and snooze in the bushes. Well I eventually get back home. Okay. So now all of this has been kind of making a loop and I get back to like I've been out seeing all this stuff. I'll try to sit still. Okay. Um, I got oil that up. I could change chairs if we need to. Um, but I get back home and I'm just kind of like, you know, I've I've quit doing psychedelics. I've been pretty clean for a while other than the little reefer. Um, I get back and find out that we had been living in a small house in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, which had belonged to my grandparents. And it was like my second home away from home growing up. And in the summer of ' 67, uh I got completely estranged from my dad who when I was a little kid, he was the best dad in the world. You know, I remember uh first day of kindergarten, uh my kindergarten teacher has us go around have the kids go, "What do you want to uh Jimmy? What do you want to be when you grow up?" Yeah. Well, I want to be a fireman. Okay, Mike. Mikey, what do you want to be wearing when I'm gonna be a cowboy? You know what's going around. Then then they get to me and they go, "Well, Randy, what do you want to be?" And I said, "Oh, I'm just going to be a regular guy like my dad. I'm just going to be a regular guy." It's like like my dad. But by the time I got to be 16, we couldn't even talk to each other. You know, all this stuff is going on out, you know, in the world. Um, you know, I'm listening to rock music. I'm trying to grow my hair long. And, you know, my dad was pretty much of a jock when he, you know, he was a carpenter house builder, but then in his spare time, he was a professional canoe racer. And he would design and build racing canoes. And he had his buddies. They were all, you know, I mean, these guys were incredible. Uh, I maybe later I can show you some pictures from that era. Um, cool. the the Midwest, you know, back around the whole Great Lakes region, post World War II, for a couple of decades, canoeing was like the ultimate sport. And you would have these marathons where, like one that my dad participated in. It was like a a canoe race. It was like 540 miles, you know, and you'd paddle your ass off and then you'd get to somewhere and you had to jump out of the river, throw your canoe on your shoulder and run for a half a mile or a mile and then put back in and continue on. And he was probably one of the top, say half dozen in the world. He was really good at it. Wow. Uh so I mean he was my big hero, but by the time we got to be 16, I just could I mean we couldn't even talk anymore. had gotten we'd gotten so estranged. Um, and then, uh, my parents were divorced, dad's in Minnesota, mom was in Louisiana, and she was from Louisiana, and she had eloped with uh, an Air Force veteran right after World War II. Uh, she had very strict grandparents, parents who were my grandparents. Um, and they didn't want her dating or anything like that. She felt very restricted. She was the younger of three sisters and they were like kind of like the princesses of of their little town. It was a lumber mill town and my grandfather her dad was like one of the one of the uh you know uh now he wasn't CEO but he was one of the executives in the so they had their executive row in the town right anyways she just wanted to get away she elopes with this guy they moved to Minnesota and uh he apparently was suffering from PST PTSD and he would start drinking and he was a good guy except when he started drinking he got abusive. So my mother had a little had a baby. Freddy was my older brother um half brother, right? Um but then she divorced her husband and she's living in a little house just outside of Minneapolis right on the edge of little old suburbia and farmland. And my dad, my grandpa, my dad had gotten back from the war. he had been in the war or he was being trained as a PT boat pilot um when the war ended. So he never saw action but so the war was over. He got back and she had been living there now after this divorce. This is 1950. Mhm. This has been the summer of 1950. So my dad, my grandpa building a house right next door to where my mom lives. And my dad, you know, he's young and, you know, eager to to try new stuff. My grandfather, he was set in his ways. Now, my grandfather had been a immigrant from Sweden at the 15 or 16. He he uh came over on a cattle boat literally with the cattle. Um came to America, couldn't speak a word of English. You know, this would have been 19 about 1910. and he uh got a series of jobs. And then he was working at a sash and door company where you build they would build doors and window sashes. And he would work there 10 hours a day, six days a week. And he bought a piece two lots next door to each other. And he would get off of work. He would go to the property and work until dark building a house and moved my grandmother in there. They got married. She was he was a Carlson and she was a Carlson. He was from a immigrant farm family that had settled up near Fargo, North Dakota. And uh so he moved her in there and then immediately started building another house right next door. And so by the and and these houses had basements and the only way I mean full basement and those basements had to be dug by hand. So he comes home from 10 hours and then digs these basements by hand, builds two houses and that's kind of what launched his carpentry career. By the time he got done with the second house, he knew how to build houses. So, you figure but and then all the tools he's using, of course, are they're not power tools. They're all hand tools. Yep. You know, an oldfashioned bit and brace, you know, crosscut saw, rip saw, all by hand, right? And I remember as a little kid, you know, he used to entertain me and my brothers because he had these muscles in his arms and he could make his bicep dance and we'd always we called him pompa cuz my older brother Fred, he couldn't pronounce grandpa pro properly and it came out pompa. So he became pompa for the rest of his life, right? He was pompa. Pumpa, I want to see your muscle dance. And he would do this with his bicep. And oh boy, that was entertaining. Anyways, so my dad comes home, they start Carlson and son, uh, house builders, right? So now, fast forward to 1950, they're building this house next door to where my mother's living. My dad's trying to talk my grandfather into switching over to power tools. My my uh dad says, "Well, well, my grandpa's one of his main objections was, well, now you got to have a place to plug it in. You got to have a source of electricity, right?" He says, "I don't need that. I've got, you know, I don't need that. My dad says, "Well, that's okay. We'll we'll find a place. We got this house right next door." So, my dad goes over there, introduces himself. Turns out, you know, he's 23 and my mom was 23 and very good-looking. And it turns out as the summer progresses, I remember my grandpa telling me, you know, your dad, he was always, you know, we'd get done for the day and he was always, he had a convertible with leopard stinking interior and he was always ready to jump in that convertible and take off and go wherever. Well, after we started doing this job, he would always volunteer to stay after and clean up. And so we figured out later that, you know, when he was going over there to to plug in the extension cord, that wasn't the only thing he was plugging in. Um, so this is the summer of 1950. They got married in October, I believe it was, of 50 and I came along in March of 51. Yeah. So I've got this picture and I could show it to you guys where on their wedding day. And I say that's the first picture of me, although you can't see me because I'm inside there, you know. your plug. I'm still in the oven, you know. Uh so anyways, yeah, then my dad built uh he built a house um and we move in there. That's I was brought home from the hospital to this house and he immediately started building another house a few doors up and we moved into that house and that was the first house I remember living in and it would have been n probably I know we had moved out of that house by fall of 1954 but I still have memories of that house so I was still three years old and I can remember it's vague now and it's fading but I can still remember my dad bringing home first ever television set coming in and unboxing this. He was every, you know, was excited. My older brother Freddy, he was, you know, he was old enough to, he was probably 8, nine years old. So, he was, you know, oh, we're going to get a TV. We're going to get a TV. He comes in, they unbox it. That was our first television. Wow. 1954, right? So, I have this memory of the first ever television, right? So I, you know, I often think about how much it's changed and how far we've progressed technologically since, you know, we had no zero presence in space in 1950. People just what you have you listen to the radio. When my grandfather came from Sweden, you didn't even have radios to listen to. Farmers are still plowing with with with mule driven plows for the most part. Although it's shifting now, early 20th century started shifting into, you know, tractors, you know, uh, and that was a big part of the government's push was to help like, uh, what was it? Um, not Caterpillar, uh, deer John Deere tractors. Yeah. Going out and talking all the Midwestern farmers into mortgaging their farms to to be able to buy to buy the buy the gear. Buy the gear. Yeah. And then of course that came on the tail end of a of a long decades long rainy spell and then that gave way to the big drought in the early 30s and uh all these farmers went under and uh you probably if you ever seen the movie The Grapes of Wrath or read the book. Yeah. I mean that's kind of what happened. Y um it's a long story and I'm going to do a podcast just talking about the details of that. That's cool. Um yeah and it was a pro part of it was a big legacy of World War I because um one of the things that happened was there was food severe shortage food in Europe and so the government started subsidizing wheat growing in America and guaranteeing a a I don't remember what it was but price per bushel. So all these farmers were plowing up the land to to plant wheat, to grow wheat. And then when the drought came, it all dried up and uh billions of tons of top soil blew away and we're still basically recovering, you know. Um but so you know that comes along. I'm mid I was born in 51. So that's mid 20th century. Um dad was born in 27. Um grandfather born in his dad was born in 1895. So you know so and then his grandfather would have been born around the Civil War. Yep. So just a what four generations back we're in the Civil War. Um, but then I think what happened was my dad, we eventually he built, we bought some property next door to a lake, Schmidt Lake on Schmidt's Crossroad, a two-lane gravel road. And uh, nearest neighbor to the north was Carl Schmidt, the farmer we bought the land from. And nearest neighbor to the south was his brother, Somebody Schmidt. So we had Schmidt Lake, Schmidt's crossroad, and the two Schmidt farms on both sides. Yeah, the Schmidts. And then up at the end of the gravel road where it turned into Rockford Road it was called was Schmidz Tavern. Right. So it was totally the Schmidz. And then one of our nearest neighbor farms was the Rhymer Farm. And Rhymer Farm was a like I think third or third generation immigrants. I know they had been there since the 1800s. And they had 10 kids and the youngest boy was my age. So, we became best friends and grew up together and did all kinds of stuff. And I I'll show his name was Henry, but we we all knew him as Hank, right? And then his older brother was a year older and his name was Dave. And then the year older than him was Dick. So Dick and Freddy, my older brother, were the same age. Me and Hank were the same age. And then Dave was like a year older than. So we pled around. We were all, you know, looked up to our older brothers and stuff. And then later, I guess Dave was 15. He was out with driving. I don't know if they had been drinking or not, but they ran off the road in the middle of the winter and they crashed and Dave got thrown out and he was injured, but not that bad, but it was like 0 degrees out and he laid there and froze to death. And I remember that was that was traumatic for everybody. And I was the first he was the first kid I'd known and been close to that his death was and his younger brother was really really affected deeply by that. Um and I know his mother was too. Um but that was a sad thing. But so we we lived in this um we lived in this property. It was like paradise. We had everything we needed within one mile. And I have memories of seven, eight years old sitting down by the lakeside with my cane pole fishing pole catching fish, sunnies and bass and bullheads which were the northern version of catfish. And my older brother Freddy, he'd build a fire there and he would clean up the fish and he'd have salt and pepper and we'd have a fish fry in the backyard. My mother had this huge garden. She would bake bread. She was way ahead of her time because she was reading people like Adele Davis and Lord Cordell who were the like the big proponents of health healthy living and all of that. And so we would go into drive into downtown Minneapolis from where we lived because it was the only place then where you could like buy whole grain flour. So she would buy rye flour and wheat flour and come back and then she would like bake this rye. And I remember being like outside playing and I would smell that rye bread baking in the oven coming out. And uh it was just it was like she'd cut it up, slather some butter on it, it was like it was like dessert. And she would make yogurt and then she would we would get fresh fruit. She would make us these yogurt drinks. She was constantly canning and pickling. And I if I now smell dill like if I shut my eyes, it's like it's almost like a time machine. You ever notice that your something about your memory function and your alactory nerve? And I don't know what that exactly is, but it's the strongest tie to memory of the senses. And what is it? It's the strongest tie to memory. I'm sure it is. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it is weird to me. But yeah, that's one. And then the Rhyrs when you went up the gravel road lining the road between their farmhouse and the road with these lilac bushes and I guess it was in the spring or early summer it would just like be perfume in the air. And I remember going up there, you know, and and smelling that. And same thing if I ever get a where was I somewhere when I I guess last time I went to Minnesota five or six years ago, I was somewhere and I got a whiff of those lilac bushes back. Yeah. It was just like boom. time machine. But um it was paradise. It was I mean and then there was forers meat just on the other side of the pasture from where we lived. We could get all of our meat. You know it was all grass-fed cuz you'd see the cows out there and uh you know chickens from the Rhyr's farm, eggs from the Rhymer's farm. It's incredible. It was incredible. And and to me it was just this is normal. This is oh this is what I took it for granted. I look back now and I go, "Oh my god, how How lucky was I, you know, and you know, just all kinds of things to do in the summer. I learned to swim, you know, in the lake. My dad built me and my brother's a kayak, so, you know, I'd be out there in that kayak and um it was awesome for for uh 5 years. We had Christmas of 1954 there and we left in the summer of 1960 because my dad and my mother got divorced and my mother took me and my brothers moved us all back to her parents' house outside of Pineville, Louisiana. So that was a very big culture shock in a way because rural Minnesota, Norwegian, scan uh you know Swedes, Germans, farms. Now I'm in outside Louisiana. It's Cinjun and you know everybody that I'm going to school with are the goches and the budros and different culture. Different culture totally different weather. Yeah. Um but the thing for me was that I had learned to ride a bicycle the year before now because back then I don't even think they made bicycles with a smaller than 24 in wheel size. So, you know, you couldn't learn to ride a bicycle when you're five or six years old. You're too little. So, I learned to ride a bike when I was maybe eight or nine. And then winter comes on. But what I can really stands out in my mind is that summer of 1960 when we moved to to Pineville, my older brother Freddy now, he'd gotten a moped. I don't if you remember what a mop Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You guys are I've had one. Yeah. Oh, you awesome. So he'd gotten he got a moped and I inherited his three three-speed 26inch wheel Schwin and boy that was great. So like my world went from this to this cuz I had a bike. You're like 30 mile range all that. Oh yeah, that was awesome. And the kid next door he Tommy Hunt was his name a year older than me. First day he comes down, introduces himself, real friendly, outgoing kid, and we're hanging out and this I think this was the first day and he says, "Hey, I got to show you something, man." And oh, okay. So, I'm, you know, I'm 9 years old. He's 10, right? So, he's he's an older kid. Okay, whatever. Yeah, I'll come see. I was always curious, ready for an adventure, right? So, we go over and we walk across the road and there's this place called Sandy Canyon. and Sandy Canyon. You know what Bryce Canyon looks like? Yep. Yeah. It looked like a miniature version of of that. And it was all of this hard different colors of clay. And it was what I know now is, of course, I didn't know then, but it was all backwash when the when the Red River flooded at the end of the last ice age. So, you had this backwash into these tributary basins and stuff. And so this had laid this like 30 40 foot thick layer of this stuff that had then eroded out into all of these gro and hoodos. Man, it was an awesome place to play. But anyway, so we go there and he says, "Man, I got to show you Sandy Canyon." So we went over there and playing. He says, "Hey, got to show you something else." So there's a railroad track there and there's a highway bridge going over the railroad track. So he takes me up there and big I beams and stuff and he says, "Come on, you got to see this." We go up under there and on the sides of the eye beams was like the Kama Sutra. There had been a very talented artist depicting every conceivable thing. And I'm looking at that and I remember turning to Tommy and I go, "People don't do that. Why would they do that? Why would they do that?" Yeah. So, um, I was I think back to that sometimes when I think about, you know, parents worry about their kids getting on the internet. I say, "Well, yeah, those I-beams on the on the highway bridge, that was like our internet back in the day, you know." Um, that warped me for all time, though. No, it actually didn't have a big effect on me. I was 9 years old and I wasn't Yeah, right. Yeah. You weren't You weren't there. You do have a pretty incredible memory, though. Your attention to detail, your recollection of detail is unbelievable. Yeah. Somebody once said some psychiatrist or something that I knew said I had an idea remember. I believe it. They were wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember. I remember what happened 40 years ago better than what happened yesterday. It's weird. I want to go back to something you said. You mentioned psychedelics. I want to know how you I'd love to know how you got into those. Well, okay. So Okay. So, we moved to Pineville. I'm 9 years old. We lived there for two and a half years. Right. And during this time I uh you know I I this is 6061 and Christmas of 62. Now during this time what I got out of that was I remember this is still segregation Jim Crow. You know I have very good memories of you know going to the gas station. You'd have three bathrooms. You'd have male female colored. uh two drinking fountains, white and colored. Uh two movie theaters, you know, and I remember the two big theaters on the town of Alexandria across the river were the Dawn and the Paramount and it cost 25 cents for a movie ticket. All right. And then one day I was looking in the newspaper or something and I saw the Rex Theater only charged 15% for tickets. 15 cents. 15 cents for a ticket. I said, "Hey, let's go to there cuz it's only 15 cents." And I don't know if it was my mother or somebody then said, "Oh, you know, we don't go there." That's that's where the colored people go. That's the colored people's movie theater. And you're you're in Louisiana at this point. I'm in Louisiana. Yeah. Cuz in later in Minnesota when I eventually came back and I'm in high school, I think, you know, it was pretty much white bread, but we had two black kids. The the guy was one of the most popular. He was in the student council. He was a star athlete. Very popular. It was there was no issue at all that I I mean I'd see him hanging out with the cool guys. Yeah. You know, I was more or less a nerd until I got picked on and then I fought back and they realized maybe I wasn't as nerdy as I appeared to be. Sure. But um so two and a half years in in Louisiana and it was um was very different. And then we get to uh we get to Christmas of 62 and my uh we're going to go visit my dad and have Christmas with my dad and his parents in this little town little suburb called Robbinsdale outside of Minneapolis. And we go up there, we have Christmas, and then my dad comes and says, "Uh oh, I've been talking to your mom and you're going to stay here and finish out the school year here." Oh, okay. Now, we had, you know, I had just finally gotten used to living there, and I really liked living there, and we had this little cottage out in the woods, and and uh when we first moved in with my grandparents, I told they had this three acres that my grandmother was turning into a garden. And uh my uncle uh who my mother's older sister was married to was a herpatologist, uh reptile expert, snake collector. Right. Right. So that summer of 1960, I went with him, older brother Freddy, and our my cousin Mark Lindsay, and we went out on a rattlesnake hunt in West Texas and with my uncle, and I remember the setup. They had like a big ring of covered wagons, and we went out and uh catching all these rattlesnakes and I was in charge of the gunny sack and they would come with the rattlesnakes, drop them in the gunny sack. uncle would say, "Now, don't let those snakes out. You know, keep they won't get you if you you know, you don't." So, they they didn't bite me. So, I survived that. We went back and, you know, cooked up the rattlesnakes and it was very cool. Very cool times. Yeah. Um, then school starts. Uh, Pineville Grammar. I went to Pineville Grammar for the next two and a half years until we go back up to to spend Christmas with my dad. And then I find out we're not going back to Pineville. So I get enrolled in this nearby within maybe three blocks of where they lived, the Dare School it was called. And so I start I'm like that's the first time I've ever been like the new kid in the middle of the year. and uh and uh I come in and of course now I've got by this time I've got a strong southern accent and immediately I start kind of getting razed, you know, cuz I've got this southern accent and and um but it was different because in this school the parents of these kids are like you know white collar. Wait, where is this at? Where you at? This is Robbinsdale, Minnesota, just outside back to Minnesota. Yeah. Back to Minnesota to visit our dad for Christmas. Then find out we're not going back to Pineville for whatever reason. In Minnesota. Now, see, my mother had gotten a job at at uh the local radio local rock and roll radio station, K Dixie BS. And one of my fond memories of living in Pineville was going to work with her and hanging out at the at the uh rock and roll station and, you know, hanging out with the DJs and stuff while they were on break. And so that two and a half years I'm just surrounded by the music of of that era, you know, the the dooop and and the the folk revival, all of that stuff, you know, and I I hear that now and it's like again, time machine back to Pineville, right? Um, but then so we go back up there now. This whole time I'm down there uh going to school with these kids, you know, like I kind of uh you know, I like say like their like in in Robinsdale where when they moved back to Minnesota, their dads are probably like insurance agents and accountants and things like Well, down in Pineville, they're all like their dads are like professional rally alligator wrestlers, you know, totally different breed of kids. And it was a rough and tumble school. Two and a half years of that I learned to handle myself on my own from getting whooped up on in fourth grade to where in sixth grade I was, you know. So I go back, I go to this school, a dare school and uh this old she's probably ready to retire old Mrs. Bennett. And I've been learning French in Louisiana. It's French. So I'd had two years of f two and a half years of French. By this time I'm I'm learning to speak French. We get back up now and it's German, right? So every afternoon um old Mrs. minute would wheel in the TV on the on the on the cart and turn the TV on and it was Fra Opish Gut and Togg hair to hair hair kinder v Gates whatever you know and within about 5 minutes I'm you know the lights would go off and I'm I'm snoozing away um but anyway so like oh I don't know a week or two in and I'm I had had my first crush on a girl in Pineville and that was one of the reasons I didn't want to go. Uh because I had this crush on this girl. So, I was planning and plotting how I was going to try to, you know, what I was going to do when I got back from Christmas vacation. Then I find out you're not going back. So, it's like I was kind of crestfalling. It was my first crush ever. Then we get to Mrs. Bennett's class and there's this girl in there named Vicki. cute little blonde. And so I immediately like, "Forget this one. I'm more interested in this girl." So we are on our way to the midm morning bathroom break and we're all in single file and I managed to kind of get my way in next to Vicki, right? I'm like, you know, and try to talk to her. And then this kid comes and pushes his way. His name was Tim. him pushes his way in between me and her and I get this is an affront, you know, I can't tolerate this. So, I push him out of the line. He turns around and slugs me in the arm really hard and immediately I raised this frog about the size of a pingpong ball, you know, and it hurt like hell. But, of course, I couldn't let on. I had to be So, I'm like, and then old Miss Mrs. Bennett hurries over. She heard some commotion, but by this time, you know, she comes over and you boys settle down over here, you know. So Tim goes to me, says, "We're going to finish this after school." Yeah. So then lunch comes and there was several kids around us who heard this exchange. So lunchtime comes. There's a fight coming up. Well, it spread to the whole school. Totally. New kids going to fight Tim. Well, it turns out these kids are coming up and going, "You're gonna fight Tim?" I'm gonna say his last name just in case he listens. Yeah, that's right. I don't want to embarrass him, but they're going, "He's the toughest kid in the school." And by the end of the day, comes to 3:00, I'm just dreading the 3:00 bell. I'm going, "Sh, I'm going to get I'm going to get my clock cleaned by this guy. It'll be humiliating." And and I have this I have this alternate plan in mind. Um, it's a long school, right? And there's the main doors on the front, but on the far north end of the school. There's there's a side exit. So, I go I'm thinking, okay, the bell ring. I'll just make my way surreptitiously down. So, the side exit. Yeah. Go out the side exit, right? And then I'll just walk on home. My grandmother will be there. She'll have a Hostess Twinkie for me after school snack and I can watch Leave it to Beaver. That was my plan. That's a great plan. That was a good plan. Yeah. Yeah. A plan. Someday I might want to relive. But um they still make hostess Twinkies. I don't know. Oh, they declared bankruptcy, didn't they? Oh, did they go bankrupt? Working on bank and then maybe they got bought by a private equity company. Something like that after my grandmother quit. Not the same. Yeah. So, I had to plan all worked out in my head. Bell rings. I get out in the hallway and immediately there's like 50 kids all surrounding me. Weird had gotten around, right? So, we go out the front door and then Tim is on the other side of the street walking with another 50, 60, I don't know, huge numbers of kids. Everyone's waiting for the fight. Everybody's waiting for the fight and it's winter. It's just after, you know, Christmas vacation. So, I go there and he goes, "You ready?" Something like that. I go, "Yeah." So, we go at it. The most startling, unexpected thing for me was how easily I whooped his ass. I had poor Tim down in the I was on top of him making them eat snow. I was holding him down and you know literally making them eat snow and next thing I know I'm getting dra and the kids are screaming at the top of their lung. I get dragged. I'm getting dragged off of him and it's a cop who would happened to be driving nearby and heard the screaming, came up, broke up the fight, made us both stand up and made us shake hands, you know, resolve. That was Yeah. Resolved. Yeah. Deescalating. Yeah. Now it would be Yeah. Now it's off to juvenile detention hall or whatever. Right. Right. But it was fine, you know. Now the best thing about that is for the rest of that year I was king of that school. I was big man on campus and that was very cool. You dethroned Tim. I dethroned Tim. Yeah. And summer vacation came. It was great until my first day of middle school. I got quickly cut down to size. Didn't take long. In fact, I think it was by day one, I was rapidly cut down to size. And then for the next year, all through seventh grade, just unrelenting bullying, particularly from a couple of these guys. One of them was named Greg. I won't say his last name, but he was, you know, bullying back in those days was always the older boys who had been held back, you know, so they're, you know, you're in middle school, one or two years makes a big difference. Huge. Yeah. And they've got already they've got this problem, inferiority, and so it just it's almost like, hey, let's create a circumstance that just produces bullying, right? So this kid was in my PE class and every two weeks we would get a a lunch ticket with 10 punches on it for $3. We'd get three $3 from our parents would go there. We'd get our lunch ticket. So his main thing was to get me and forcibly take my lunch ticket from you know and this went on for a couple of months. Um and then I started bringing my own lunches. That was my response to that. Right. Well, this went on for the whole year. Summer vacation came and it was such a relief. And that summer I spent all summer working up on the Rhymer farm. And one of the things that we would do was they had maybe 100 acres of alalfa. And Harold, the father, he would be out there with his tractor. He would mow the alalfa and then he would come in with the rake and rake it into these long rows. Then he would come in with the hay balor. And this was when you had these smaller bales and there'd maybe be 200, 300 bales out in the field, maybe more. And I can remember my first time out there, you know, getting you got you had a wagon and uh you know, you had to put the bales on the wagon and you couldn't just throw them up there willy-nilly. You had to stack them in an interlocking way. Otherwise, they'd tumble off. You're driving back to the barn and you hit a little bump, they're all going to tumble off. Well, by the end of the summer now, I've also started going through puberty. Right. Right. So, by the end of the summer, I'd got to where you're getting pretty strong. Yeah. I was Yeah. And I could get those bales up, you know, like like I was like working out, you know, all summer. So, then fall comes school starts up and guess who's in my PE class? Greg. Greg H was his started. Well, immediately he starts in on Greg Helen. Yeah. Greg Greg Haley. Me not realizing that I'm not the kid I was couple months ago before. Yeah. And him not realizing that either. Yeah. So, I don't know how long, maybe a month or two in and he's harassing me. And one day we're coming out of PE class. I think I just pulled my my boxer shorts on or whatever I was wearing, my briefs probably, and he comes out and starts whipping me with a wet towel and I just lost it. And he was on, you know how in the locker room you got the bench running down the middle. He's on one side, I'm on the other. I just wheel around, I grab him, pull him, he falls over the bench, and next thing you know, I'm down on top. he's on the concrete floor and I'm pummeling him and uh whooped his ass and uh that was kind of the end of his bullying career. Um he was really humiliated after that and for about a week I was kind of like encouraged to come hang out with at lunchtime with the cool guys. But you know after a week or two it was like I kind of you know I kind of migrated back to my nerd friends. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I stuck to your roots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But okay, so come to fast forward to ' 67 and ' 67, you know, was the so-called summer of love. And I'm only 16, so I kind of wasn't old enough for all of that. And and but I was certainly aware of it by this time. I, you know, had heard of Psychedel. Didn't know anything about it really, um, except what I was hearing from the mainstream media. And then like I got to strange for my dad and my grandmother who I was very close to. I was actually closer to my dad's mother than really in some ways to my own mother. Um and you know she encouraged me very early on to read and we would read books together from seven 8 n years old and then I would go to the library and get books and I would read a book and then I would give it to her and she would read it and it was great. She was a wonderful, wonderful lady. And uh she was getting sick that spring. And we went off to my at this point my mother now had had um um what would you say? She had gone up in the industry. She was now working for a television station WBRZ in Baton Rouge. And one of her jobs was whenever bands or uh celebrities or whatever would come to town, I don't what's the name of this job? She would be the one who would arrange the limousines, the press parties, the hotels. There's a name for that. I don't that was her job. Yeah. But you're you're back in Louisiana. Yeah. We've gone to visit her in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She's moved from from Pineville to Baton Rouge. It's summer of love 67. Summer of love 67. You've gone back. Gone back to Louisiana. You still probably have some friends there, I would guess. No, not in Baton Rouge. Oh, not in Baton Rouge at all. Oh, she's left all my friends in left behind. So, I'm in Baton Rouge now. And and um so, uh that summer she has one of her best friends. They rent a a beach house down in Pensacola and we're down there and, you know, it's great hanging out on the beach. Totally cool. You know, this is like the first time in my life where I'm like going out and things and, you know, hanging out with older kids and stuff. And that was the first time I ever was around anybody smoking pot. I did not indulge, but I was there and, you know, I was like, "Oh, smoking pot." What, you know? Well, then we decide, oh, and then she's uh we go at this press party and we go to it. So, I'm partying. You probably don't remember Herman's Hermits. Very famous pop band back in the 60s. Blues Mcoos, first band that ever had the title Psychedelic in their in their album. Um, so we partied with Herman's Hermits, Blues Mcoos, you know, certainly know the Who. Yeah. So yeah, we partied with the Who on their first national tour down there. They were in Baton Rouge. So we're at this press party and I thought, man, this is this is cool. This is way cooler than living out there in rural Minnesota with my dad. And uh so we decided to stay. And then school starts. I'm now in my junior year. First day of school, I get kicked out because my hair was they had strict rules. two fingers above your eyebrows, couldn't touch the top of your ears, and couldn't hang over your collar. So, I got my my home room teacher, Coach Cannon. He sends me down to the office so that the principles and admin pre assistant principles can check me out. Failed on all accounts. I failed on all accounts. But there was another kid named Brian that was also in my home school, my my home room. So, the two of us got sent down, right? I had just moved there from Minnesota and he had just moved there from LA. Now, he had been part of this whole scene in LA. So, we hit it off and became inseparable best buddies. And he's telling me, man, oh man, the coolest stuff, you know, he's telling me all about acid and all of this. And, you know, I'm thinking, this is pretty incredible, right? We become best friends, but then we both get in a lot of trouble. I get in trouble. Rowan, we all, me and my brothers, except for my older brother Freddy, who's now in the Air Force. We all get in trouble. Um, and I hated the school that I was at. I just hated it. Um, I remember things like walking into like my English class and English teacher was, "Why don't you get off your Yankee High horse?" And um I mean it was that kind of attitude, you know, and I talked funny because I now had a northern accent rather than a southern accent, right? Uh first day of school after I got back, you know, I guess it got out, you know, that this kid got sent to the office or whatever. So I get surrounded by four or five jocks just like, you know, we don't like guys like you around here, you know, like that was my welcome to Broadmore High School. So anyways, Brian and I were both outcasts and we became best buddies and all of our group of friends were all the outcasts, right? Um and so by about maybe I don't know it was after Christmas vacation I just couldn't stand it anymore and I would go to lunch and then not come back. And then finally maybe about March or April I would pretend like I was going to school in the morning. My mother was thinking I was going to school. I was going and just hanging out in the woods, you know, because I hated the school. I hate it. Playing hookie. I was playing hookie. And then Rowan and Rocky got in all kinds of trouble. Um Rocky got sent up to reform school, got caught for breaking and entering. Um you know, stole a coin collection worth thousands of dollars. I remember one day I come come in from school or come in from wherever I'd been and Rocky and Rowan and this other kid I still remember his name was Charlie. Rowan and Rocky and Charlie are sitting at the kitchen table. My mother's at work. There's a big pile of money on the table. I'm going what is what is this? You know, so they had gone and it was a rainy night and they had oh the people weren't home. They busted in. They climbed in with muddy boots and right in the master bedroom with their muddy boots all over the bed and um were looking in the closet and found this suitcase full of this guy's money collection. So they off they left with it. Well, needless to say, they got caught. Well, there was four of them. Rocky, Rowan, Charlie, and Bobby. There was four of them. But the cops came in and they were going to do all their detective work. They were only able to determine three sets of footprints. So Rowan, he nobody squealled. He got off. Rocky got sent up. Well, when his court date came around, the judge said, "Hey, you've got a choice. You can either go back and live with your father or we're going to send you up for 6 months or whatever it was." So, we all go back to Minnesota. Now in the in the me this is this is at the beginning of ' 68. Meanwhile in ' 67 while we're down to having a great time my my grandmother dies. So I was it was like you know like losing your mother if you're 16 years old and and but what I did was I I internalized it and I look back on that year and my whole state of mind was like you know kind of feeling sorry for myself in a way but like you know it was just I can see now that I was in this kind of bitter state and resentful um you know because she had she had died she had passed away and I wasn't even there the last time I'd seen her. My dad took her to see her. She's in the hospital and she's laying on the bed with tubes and everything. And that was the last time I saw her. And you're This is how you're processing it. Basically, this is how I'm processing. That's exactly how I You didn't have a chance to say goodbye. No, I didn't have a chance to say goodbye. Nobody gave a [ __ ] No, nobody cared about any of the backstory, any of that, you know. Um, and you know, it was only later that I look back that I realized that, yeah, I was processing this and that was a big part of my behavior. But the but I made best friends with this Brian and he came back with me to Minnesota, right? And I reconnected with some of my old friends and I came back and I had all the cool music. I had Jimmyi Hendris and the Doors and Mothers of Invention and all of these cool bands and I came back with my record colle. So I'm turning on all my old friends to this cool music, you know, and like I was pretty cool and you know because I quit going to school, you know, I'd got my hair was about like yours that long, but you know, everybody else was, you know, like him and I looked like you. Okay, kind of. Fair enough. for the visual. Yeah. Uh they were balding is what he means to say. Yeah. At 18. So yeah, I came back and I, you know, I can show you a picture of that summer of 68. I'm 17 years old. I am a badass. Um you're into the cool music. I'm into the cool music. Then fall time comes, you know, and it's like I now Brian has come. He's been there a couple of weeks and then he he left and went to Texas to try to track down his day. And the school year starts at September and they released the movie 2001, a space odyssey, space odyssey. And they had a synorama where they had the full surround, you know, with the 180 degree screen, whatever it was. And I remember just going and getting immersed in that and thinking, "God, this must be an acid drip is like. And it was seeing that movie cuz Brian had been telling me about it. He'd said he'd said something like he'd done like 20 trips or something, you know, but I I didn't do it. That spring of ' 68, he finally got some weed and we went out in the in the some vacant land behind my house and tried smoking. Didn't do [ __ ] for me. And he's like, "Oh man, I'm I'm buzzing. What about you?" Tried tried tried. Nothing happened. I said, "I guess I'm immune." you know, but then fall comes. I see that movie 2001 AD and I go, I wonder if this is what an acid dripper. Well, I think I'm going to I'm going to try. So, there's a place in Minneapolis called the West Bank. It's on the West Bank of the Minnesota River. On the opposite side, on the east bank is the University of Minnesota campus. The West Bank was kind of the Bohemian. It was the hate ashberry of the Midwest. Okay. Okay. Right. Yep. Greenwich Village of New York, whatever. You know, every big town had its in Atlanta here it was the strip during that same period of time. So I was with some buddies and I we thought we all wanted to try acid, right? So I went down there and I found this guy that I'd seen around and I thought I think he's trustworthy. And when you walk down the street from 67 to 69, it was like an open air market. you could go down and what whatever you wanted basically. But so I went to this guy and I said and and yeah, I've got some of the original the last of the original Purple Haze. Okay. Can I get some? He said, "I only got two hits left, man. I'll sell it to you, though." Great. So I bought the two hits, went back and there was four of us. So, um, I was definitely going to be one of the So, we one of the other three guys picked. Well, I'll I'll do the other hit. So, we go to this place called the Purple Cigar, right? It was like a disco type thing and, you know, play uh, you know, with um, recorded music with lights and all of that. And I'm thinking, yeah, I think I'll drop some ass and go pick up chick. I had this plan worked out, right? We go there. my friend Gary who was the other guy who did it was myself, Gary, Eric, and Chuck. I think if I can remember all their names, right? We all go there together. I on the way there I drop it and we're there and somewhere about an hour I I start coming on and I'm completely blown away. Completely like and then I remember my buddies who weren't doing it, they would come up to me and go, "Well, what's happening? What's it like?" And the only thing I could say was, "It's not what I expected. It's not what I expected." That was all I could say. It's not what I expected. And this is when I just saw everybody's mask falling off. And after it was over, like, what do you mean by that? Their mask falling off. Well, I saw, you know, everybody's everybody's identifying with their ego. You've created this, you've constructed this personality and this is who you're presenting to the world, but it's not really you. It's not your essence of who you are, right? And I saw that. I I didn't understand that. I, you know, I saw through it was literally the the kid that went back to school Monday morning was not the kid that left school Friday afternoon. I was completely changed by what I had experienced. And I went back and none of the things that it seemed like were important seemed important to me anymore. I had one I had to get to the bottom of what I had just experienced. Um, and so I went back. I had some good connections down there with this guy and he had this was this was LSD that was coming directly from Stanley who was the chemist and when you if you read the book electric Kool-Aid acid test you'll read about him and he was the sound man for the Grateful Dead. Um and so this kid, this guy, he was an older guy, probably older guy for me at that age is, you know, college, right? Um but uh until got busted, which he got busted shortly thereafter and so there was no acid, but I think if you look him up and read about him, I think I think he was known of made millions of hits. So he was a big part of psychedelicizing America, right? Um, but then my best friend from high school, his older brother was in the chemistry department of the University of Minnesota and his chemistry professor had turned on and he had direct access to this the most pure form of LSD directly from Sandos Laboratories in Switzerland, which is where Albert Hoffman, the the original. Yeah. The original. Yeah. So, wow. I was able to have No way. Yeah. So, like 40 trips, 50 trips. uh something like that over the next year like once a week, year maybe year and a half. Um, so winter came, mostly my thing was going I mean I went I saw who did I I mean you know I saw the who I saw um Deep Purple tripping out man and it was just you know that was my thing right and then spring comes and you know I spent so much time out growing up in the country and nature and camping out. We decided we're going to go on a camping trip with my buddy Pete, his older brother Dave, uh Rocky and Rowan, and Dave's girlfriend. And we all headed for Pipstone, Minnesota. And I told you about that. And we we all dropped. We got this gray acid and out in nature. Yeah. Out in nature. And that was at once I did that, that's the only way I've ever wanted to do it since. cuz it was just it it was like taking for me it was like spending five six hours in heaven and it was like seeing what a divine world this place really was. It was like this work of living art. I mean I literally like as we're going out there you're looking to the west and this is on the edge of the rolling prairie. It goes all the way you know it's a prairie all the way to the Rocky Mountain front right. So, as far as the I can see, you've got this rolling. And of course, what I know now is that this was the outwash plane of the great glaciers. So, I had this impression of it was like a frozen green rolling sea, right? And you would look out as far so far in the distance to the west, it was even hard to discern where ground ended and sky began. And you'd see these farms and and these these groves of trees that would you could get this amazing depth perception. And then but the best thing was these arrays of clouds and the weather moving in. And you'd see the weather coming in and the clouds would part and these sun rays would just come down like just splendid o over the landscape. And then you'd see the shadows coming rolling over the green fields, you know, and the wind would be blowing and you'd see these waves in the in and it was just I mean words, euphoria, ecstatic. I mean, don't even do it justice. And then what was interesting was because there was this huge weather front coming. So we got there, we set up our tent and I walked out. I wanted to just take it all in and look at this sky with these clouds and now we've got this big weather front rolling in and I start seeing the lightning bolts and I'm sitting there watching these lightning bolts and within about 20 or 30 minutes there was like simultaneously multiple lightning strikes. you'd see them. And so I started getting this sense of this the power of nature. And while I'm sitting there, I'm like I coming up over the null, I see these these brown shapes moving, you know, they're they're they're coming in my direction. And I'm like, what is what am I seeing? I couldn't figure out what I was seeing. These big hulking brown shapes. And then pretty soon I'm immersed in these brown shapes and I realize it's a herd of bison. and what they're doing. I mean, literally, I'm just sitting there and they're headed for shelter. They're going down by the Pipstone River Valley to get under the trees and take shelter. And but the most bizarre thing was it was like in each of these bison, it was like, sorry. Okay. It was like the uh it was like these Native Americans embodied in these bison. I don't know how to explain it, but it was really You saw it, you felt it, you I I saw it really more than anything, but yeah, I mean, I'm still in this state. Um, and then before I know it, you know, they pass and then it just nature unleashes and it's just furious and it's the wind is blowing 50, 60 miles an hour. um hailstones the size from golf balls to softball I mean to to league ball sizes coming down and I'm thinking you know what I better get the hell out of here. I was like even though I was one with it all. Um so I'm going to go running back to camp and I just get arriving in camp at time to see a gust of wind come in. They've got the tent all set up. Gust of wind comes in, rips the tent out of the ground, and I just watch it sail away into the heavens. You getting pelted by hail at this point. I was, and that didn't seem to bother me, I guess. I don't know why. Maybe it was cushioned by the atmosphere or something, but we all take shelter in the in the panel truck and ride out the storm. And then by the time the sun comes up, I'm, you know, pretty much down. I'm in that, you know, in that state sort of post. you know, I'm kind of back, but everything has still got this kind of glow around it. And it's calm. The storm has passed. And I go down. I walk down by the river, and there's a little ledge of this red clay stone, maybe 3 ft above the water of the river, and there's a heavy mist hanging over the river. And I'm sitting there and I see this shape moving through the mist kind of going back and forth and I'm straining. What in the world is that? Should I be should I be scared? No, there's nothing to be scared of. No, I was in this and it back and forth and then as I'm sitting there and then I could hear, you know, this little tinkle in the water and I'm straining to look and then I realize it's zigzagging and it's working its way towards me and then it comes up out of the out of this heavy mist right up right below me and it's a huge pelican and we just sit there. The pelican is looking at me for like minutes and we're just looking at each other and then he go turns and goes back off into the mist and I thought like, oh, welcome back to this world or something. This was like the pelican is like delivering the message. Okay, you've just had this experience. Now you're you're back. So, welcome back. And then off off it went through the mist. And uh I walk back up and just then this park ranger or something. He's in official truck. He comes driving down the the road and he goes, "Oh, I didn't expect to see anybody here." And I said, "Yeah, we we rode it out in the truck you see up there, you know." He goes, "Oh, really? That's surprises." He says, "This was the most intense storm of the decade." Oh my gosh. 60 most intense storm of the decade. And I'm peing through this whole thing. Wow. And to this day, that is one of two experiences that I would say, "Yeah, that was a peak experience." Yeah. And and and I've never gotten over it. I've never I cannot look at the sky and see a sunset and see the, you know, without having almost like a flashback in a way, but a good flashback. Yeah. And I, you know, I get to places like where I farmers market over here, you know, and I get out. We typically go there in the early evening, sun's going down. Often times it's just a beautiful array of clouds and weather fronts and sun. And I get out and I could just stand there and just lose myself in it. And then I look around and people are walking in and out and just nobody. I'm going, "Look, look, people look. How How do you just not I I don't get it. I don't get it. Yeah. But they're just like tuned out. Nobody's paying attention. I want to say stop. Stop for a minute and just look at this. Look at this glory. That's just And and I don't Yeah. I don't And see that is one thing I guess maybe that I sort of embied from those days of of being out and doing things like this that has never left. You know, sometimes I'll come home and I'll say, "Julie, God, you should I just wish you'd been over the market with me." I said, "It was an acid sky." You know, I'll say that because it's just almost like Yeah. It's It's like artwork in motion. So then what happened was early fall of ' 69, I my good sources disappeared. I, you know, I couldn't get the anymore. I couldn't get the Sandos anymore. So, I bought some stuff off the street and it was [ __ ] [ __ ] up. I got [ __ ] up. Some [ __ ] that was supposed to be acid and it wasn't. I basically it was like a three-day weird weird trip in three months to fully recover. Oh man. And after that, I was like I I I was scared to do it. It it it really up until that point I could not even imagine. I How do people have bad trips, right? I couldn't even Yeah. fathom a bad trip, but this course was. And you've had 50 or 60 trips by this time until you get that dirty the dirty stuff. And they've all been they've all been great. Yeah. Like 15 or 20 trips on measculine. Yep. Derivative, which were incredible. Um but yeah, so up to this point I've had I I was keeping a journal and I know it was over 50. It maybe topped out 60 70 at maximum, but it was probably closer to 50 trips over like a year and a half. Then I just quit. And so then uh fast forward, this is like now getting into early 70. And summer of 70, I just left with my buddy Greg. He had a blue and white 58 Chev. And I'd been hearing that Boulder was the place. Boulder, Colorado was a Yeah, I hate Ashbury's dad. Boulder's the place. So me and Greg again, buddy from high school, we decided, let's roll on out to Boulder. So we packed up our backpacks, jumped in his blue and white 58 Chev, which by the way, the year before I had lost my virginity. Um which was a memorable event for me because it was what five six years of like finally finally after all those years of you know that being one of my highest priorities in life as a matter of fact um it was like a scene right out of uh do you remember the movie uh American Graffiti? Yeah. It was like right out of a scene out of that. It was a strip in Minneapolis where all the cool guys with their jazzed up cars would drive up and down and it was all of the, you know, the drive-ins and like totally totally out of that archetype, right? So, me and Greg, we were down there. We were gonna pick up some babes and we're coming out of a of a drive-in, you know, where you pulled in and you you would the girls would come out in their roller skates and stuff, you know, you had that you had drive-in movies were still everywhere, you know. We used to go get a bunch of us, you know, in high school and we'd like pack like five people into the trunk, you know, so you could get everybody get every in get in at a discount. Yeah. And uh anyways uh so we're coming out of there and there's these two girls and I was pretty shy actually but we were maybe maybe Greg probably rolled his window down. He wasn't as shy as I was but cuz I would get tongue tied. I would be you want to go do something or whatever. Um I didn't know how to go about But anyways, we end up the girls got in with us and I got in the back seat with one and we went out by what a lot of lakes in Minneapolis and I remember it was cold as [ __ ] cuz it was the winter time and we went out and we parked by the lake and I was in the back seat and that was it. Wow. Blue and white 50. So we had all kinds of fun in that car. We would go we'd get some buddies. We'd all pull our change because gas was 35 cents a gallon. Yeah. and we'd go fill up the tank and head out for the day. Usually somebody would have something. We'd roll up. We'd head out of the suburb into the countryside where I knew all the roads cuz I'd grown up out there. There was no cops out there. There was one cop for the whole Plymouth village, right? So, we'd drive out and yeah, great great memories there. So, we we're in the blue and white Chevy. We're heading out. This is early summer, maybe late May. Well, school had probably just gotten out. We pack up our knapsacks. We drive. We're driving west. We get right into South Dakota. We cross the border and guess what happens? He throws a rod. No way. Airs up the engine. Now, this is before the the going to Washington, right? So, well, what do you want to do, Greg? H. He says, well, you know, I don't know. I want to get to Boulder and the engine is shot. So, we just got our backpacks, walked down the highway, left the car, left the car sitting by the side of the road. Different time, man. No VIN numbers hitchhiking. We uh we decided we wanted to check out the Black Hills. So, we somebody drove us up and dropped us off up in the Black Hills and we camped up there for three days next to this spring. And it was to this day the best one. It was like I just it was such incredibly good water. And then it, you know, we're like, well, we want, we need to get on the Boulder, right? Then we realize we're 25 miles in, you know, we have to walk out. I mean, it was the probably, you know, from early morning till after dark, we're walking all day to get out of there. We get out to the highway, we start hitchhiking. We hitchhike and we get as far as Denver. and we're in Denver and we're drive, we're hitchhiking and we get picked up by two exotic dancers that were just getting off of work. They put us up for three days. I can still remember their names. Um I don't remember which one I ended up with, but but three days the mountains were calling. I could see from their balcony I could see the Rocky Mountain front. Me and Greg are looking at each other and going, "We need to get on. having a great time, but I needed to get on, right? So we we go hitchhiking and we're it's sun's going down over the mountains and this panel truck very much like the one that we had had done excursion and it's pulls over and it has this painting on the side and it was the name of the panel truck rebirth and it was this guy with his wife and maybe I don't remember one or two kids and he'd been this corporate guy who got sick of it. They sold her house. They bought this van and called it named it Rebirth. And now he's out. He's headed to Boulder, right? So he goes, "You guys headed up to Boulder?" Yep. We go up to sunset and over the mountains. We pull into downtown Boulder. Here you are. We get out. We step on the sidewalk. Well, what now? This guy's across the street looking at us long-haired guy, you know. And he goes, he comes striding across the street, goes, "Hey, brothers, just get to Boulder." Yep. Pulls out this big fat duber, drops it in my shirt pocket, and says, "Welcome to Boulder Brothers." No way. And I thought, "Hey, I might like this here." So, people told us, "Well, there's an encampment up about 30 miles up. It's up on the other side of Netherland. You go up there towards Ward, right? And there's an encampment up there." And told us how to get there. So we went up there and found the encampment, went off in the woods and built a leanto. And I spent most of the summer in that leanto studying spiritual books and the Iching. And about two days a week, we'd hitchhike down into Boulder. And uh you were living outside? Yes. Sleeping in on the dirt in a leanto. Yeah. At a sleeping bag. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sleeping on the dirt in a lean. Where do you get water? There was springs and you just drink the water out of a spring. Yeah. Go. We had a canteen. You go fill it up and Yeah. It was It's incredible. And you're just reading. You got these books. You're reading and hanging out in nature. Hanging out in nature. Yeah. For months for Well, until it got too cold. Yeah. Um until they kicked you out. Yeah. But then Okay. So then what happens is uh they have this thing called Oh, well, let's see. So Greg decided he was going to leave and go, what was it? He was going to Texas for some reason. And he and I had been every day together for like two months, two and a half months. And we kind of got to the point where kind of needed a break. He decided he was going to head on towards Texas and I stayed behind. And I met this guy from Minneapolis there. Um Gary Aught was his name and uh he had an encampment and I went over and stayed there with him for a while. Then he was going to Aspen or no he was going over to the Maroon Bells. So we went up trying to remember the sequence here. Uh he had an encampment up by the Maroon Bells. So I went up there and for for about a week or two weeks was up camping up there and then he was going to go back to Minneapolis. So I rode back with him. got back to Minneapolis and my friend Pete uh who'd you know been on that incredible camping trip at Pipstone, he had gotten busted and gotten sent up for like six months. That was the end. You know, I told you we did uh light shows for rock and roll concert. Right. That's right. And he was my partner in that. So when he got busted, that was kind of the end of our light show. Business falls falls apart. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, he was out and I said, "Man, Boulder, you got to come to Boulder." So, we had been we worked together before he got busted and he had bought a we were like doing home repairs and painting houses and he had a an old Dodge camper, an old Dodge van and he still had it. So we decided took that and we drove out to Boulder back out there and uh so then they had this thing there on the on the uh University of Colorado campus called the Holy Man Jam Festival and you had all these spiritual teachers there coming in there uh Swami Sacha Danda Lamar Poche Steven Gaskan uh more probably 10 or 12 of them. So I was just soaking all of that in for a whole week. Did these what what these guys are teaching or talking about did it relate did it resonate based upon the experiences that you had had? Absolutely. Okay. And and Steven Gaskan who was the founder of the farm I told you about in Tennessee. So his group, his his caravan was there in Boulder for that event and he was one of the speakers and he was basically his thing was try tying you know psychedelics into a spiritual experience whether it was Zan Buddhism or yoga whatever it was and he had been teaching this class in San Francisco and so now he was on this pilgrimage with I don't know 150 200 people and they had this caravan of buses so they were there in Boulder along with these other spiritual teachers. And uh then after that was over, we went up and we did an encampment right up by Mount Ottabon, which is right on the uh Continental Divide. And that's where I stayed. We finally When you say encampment, you just You mean everybody just kind of Well, everybody, I think there was, you know, half a dozen of us and then scattered about. There was other campers, but we went up and you set up a camp make a whole like a little little village. Yeah. But it's I mean at this point there was hardly anybody else there. We were up in Okay. north end of this lake. I can actually if I look on Google Maps I can find that lake. But it was right by Mount Ottaba which is right there on the Continental Divide. Okay. So I stayed up there for there was maybe three or four of us. What are you doing all day when you're outside like that? Exploring. Walking. Hiking. Walking. Hiking. Exploring. One day I climbed Mount Audabon which was 13,000 some feet. Uh all by myself which was stupid. And then I got up to the top and even stupider, I got to the top and smoked a joint and then had to climb down. It's lucky I'm here, guys, after that. Um, but uh, yeah, we were there until I don't know, it must have been towards the end of September because we had to hurry up and pack up our tent and get out of there because there was a snowstorm. Getting cold. Yeah. Yeah, it was getting cold in late September. Late September. Yeah. Yeah. So then this is the end of the summer. I go back to Minneapolis. and winter comes and we've had this long cold winter and then spring comes and then that's when we hear about the anti-war demonstration. So after that anti-war, I was like in this position where like I was just reflecting deeply on everything that had happened in the last three or four years and I was probably down somewhere on the University of Minnesota campus and I had been reading books about spirituality and meditation and all of this and I saw a flyer and it was Dr. Usharia offering meditation classes. Um and I thought I need to check this out. I told my brothers Rocky and Rowan, my buddy Pete, we all went and there was like 10 of us s of his in his attic. And this is now summer of early, this is summer of 71. And then after I get back from being out on the road, my dad tells us now since my grandmother died, my my father was a house builder. And I remember just before we left to go to Baton Rouge in ' 67, he was building a house and it was all dried in. The whole house was, you know, they were ready to start plumbing and electrical. It was all built and dried in and a tornado came through and demolished the house. Oh. So I have a picture of we're there like this is like literally two or three days before I left for Baton Rouge. We're helping our dad pull everything apart, what we can salvage. something, a board popped up, hit my dad right in the eye, and I got this picture my brother took. I'm helping my dad. His the blood's running down his face. And uh I think because of that, the house that my dad had lived in, I should mention that in that uh winter of of ' 62 when we went back to Minnesota where we'd been living in Louisiana, my dad comes down to pick us up and drive us back. Well, he's got this lady with him. Uh, now at this time, I think she's 18 or 19 and he's 34. So, she's, you know, she's very attractive and very like, you know, this is 62. And I look back in ' 62, you know, the thing for girls, you know, they had the beehive hairds and, you know, the suntans and um, so she was cool though. And so we dad had a station wagon. We drove all drove back together and then um he ends up marrying her and she stayed with she's still alive. We me and Rowan had a conversation with her about a month ago. She called us. Uh great love the lady. Love her. Didn't didn't back then because y you know what it is. You know you're a kid, your parents get divorced. You fantasize that they're going to get back together. Yeah. then one of them remarries, you realize it ain't going to happen. Now you resent the person that they remarried. And that was, you know, I went through that for a year, couple of years or whatever. Yeah. Um and and he had built another house on the same lake on Schmidt Lake, right? Um and we moved into that house uh in the summer of 1963. And then it was in that house that I went to middle school. Um, and we were there four years until ' 67. And that's when I went to Baton Rouge with my mother, partied with the WHO and all of that. Stayed there that year, my junior year in high school. Got back to Minnesota the next year. And my dad and his wife Judy, and now she had had a baby, Mitch, who's mine and Rowan's younger half brother, who I just found out has leukemia. You just found that out? Oh, about a week ago. Oh my gosh. Got the shot. Oh man. Yeah. He married to a nurse and he didn't want to do it but felt the pressure and fell for the Yeah. But he says, "Yeah, but it's not the worst kind of leukemia." And he said what was the worst part was when he lost the feeling in his leg and he went to the emergency room. They had to operate on his leg and they pulled out one of those long clots clots out of his leg. Yeah. So, how did um how did the experience with psychedelics help with the anger or the processing your your grandma dying and sort of your dad marrying? Did did they help? Did that help at all or did they Oh, yeah. I would say once I started doing psychedelics, I got, you know, the the my my purview of reality went from this to this and I was so engrossed in the search for God really is what it was that you know all of that. Yeah. It took a year. One year after my grandmother died, I you know I when I went back to Minnesota the following year, summer of ' 68, got back in with some of my old buddies and hanging out and stuff. By that time I was I'd worked through it. I it was almost like it was just like this relief. Um cuz I felt like if I stay here in Baton Rouge I'm going to just get in more trouble. I got back and you know even though my grandmother had died and now my dad and his wife and our little halfb brotherther had moved into the house that my grandparents lived in. So me and Rocky and Rowan we moved in. We lived in the basement. We had our own back door. And it was then that um it was after that that you know later that in early that fall that I decided I wanted that I went and saw 2001. Yeah. Right. thought, hey, and this must be what an So, I had to find out. So, once I did that, everything changed. And uh I guess it's uh the um what do you call it? The uh the um when the they can't charge me anymore, right? Yeah. Statute of limitations. There's no more statute of limitations. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a government, so yeah, that's right. You're good. You're good. Well, so I sort of became the guy at school. Okay. Okay. My last year of high school there, somebody needed something. You knew how to get it. I knew how to get it. Got it. And I was making a pretty I was quite an entrepreneur and I quite enterprising. But then once I really got to the point where, you know, didn't want to do acid anymore. Um, and you know, I was just leading wanting to explore spirituality. So I got back from Washington summer. This is maybe like late June, early July of 71. Find out that my dad had that the house that we were living in that had been part of my life for all that I could remember, my grandparents house was had been sold. And you know, we'd been there for what some from the summer of ' 68 to the summer of 71. So 3 years. And I have some amazing interesting pictures from that era. You know, me and Rocky and Rowan were all living in the basement there. friends, we had our own back door entrance, so friends would come and go. And we set up, we did our practice for the light show. We had all of our light show equipment set up there in the basement. And um we had, you know, our turntable and our amplifier and all of that. We had headphones and we had this, we made this curved screen like kind of imitating cinama, right? So I would get people over, you know, and get them high and then we would practice our light show. Um, you know, get the headphones on and what the hell did we call we had on our basement door? We had this quote from the the Herman Hessa novel Steen Wolf and we had this sign on our door. It said, "Magic theater, price of admission, you're mine." So cool. So we would get these guys in there and you know and then we would play the dead or you know Pink Floyd or Quicksilver Messenger and that's how we would practice. So we cobbled everything together. I mean we would go scrging for equipment like you you guys maybe don't remember they used to have these in schools these overhead projectors. Oh yeah. Okay. They still there. So we had like four of those and we would get, for example, we would get two glass clock faces that were like kind of hemispherical. You get two of them and you get theater gels. You put different colors in one and then you put the other on top of it. You put that on top of the overhead projector and you could, you know, move it around. Yeah. And then we had um like old eight uh 8 mm movie projectors that had a pretty good powerful beam of light and we would get um get those and then we'd get like a record album and I would cut holes in it and then we would get different colored theater gels. We had like four or five of these different ones. And then we would go and I would uh scavenge like old sewing machine motors and the women women would have foot pedals and it led to a spindle that could spin. Yep. And you control the rate of spin. Yep. Yeah. So we would have that mounted and we could do strobe lights, right? We could have colored strobe lights, you know, whatever. Um you're making it all yourself. Yeah. That's incredible. For a light show. For a light show. You don't like go to Best Buy and buy a bunch of different lights that are pre-programmed. You have No, we're putting it all together, right? That's amazing. And then the coolest thing is we'd go to the like secondhand source and we would buy these crystal dishes and you could put you put one on the overhead projector and then you'd put another one on top of it and by rotating it you could get these incredible 3D effects, right? And then and then you shine that through this colored strobe. So I mean Yeah. So we would do we we would do the lighting for rock concerts and then we got the the just at the time uh when it reached its peak was lasers had come out. Oh yeah. So we got this little laser and all it would do was make an infinity sign, a red infinity sign, but you'd have all this stuff going on and then right in the middle you'd have this Yeah. this little red infinity sign doing this. So that was a lot of fun until Pete got busted. the show. Yeah. I mean, we had all worked out, you know, we each we rehearsed cuz it's all this a lot of manual stuff. Yeah. But so coming back from Washington, we find out that my dad had sold the house and he bought 8 acres of land up in northern Minnesota on a lake. So I don't remember one long few weeks. We end up, me and my brothers tent, move up, live on the land in the woods for the next year. Um, and then, you know, um, that spring we started, my dad, we we put in a pump and we started building a house up there. There was an old garage on the property. Um, and then we added on to that and built a split level house by the next summer. I think what's so amazing about these stories is how it seems so how easily you lived outside. that I think that would be so foreign to so many people today to think that there's some land and you're like, "Well, let's just go live there and build a house while we and live outside while we build this house for Yeah, we lived in a tent." Yeah. Mainly, right? And it's fine. You were fine. Yeah. It's great. I think I think we need to do more of that. And that summer is when I after coming back from Washington, I'm like in this very reflective thinking about all of the the last three or four years and where's it going? And that's when I saw this flyer meditation class with Dr. Arya. He was a Sanskrit professor at the University of Minnesota. And uh so me and Rocky Ran and my buddy Pete, we all go and sign up. We're meeting in his attic. And uh I got very dedicated to that. And what does that mean? A lot of meditating, a lot of like time every day or what does that look like? That meant like two to three hours of meditation every day. And what would you do for those two to three hours? Well, I would sit in a full lotus position, okay, with my hands in a mudra, my eyeballs turned up towards my third eye, and I would repeat my mantra, and I would go into an altered state. And you repeat your mantra, and you just keep doing it for two or three hours, and two or three puts you in an altered state. Now, not at the beginning. I didn't not do two or three hours. You you work up half an hour, 45 minutes, right? Um, and then I was doing lots of asas, which are the yoga postures, and me and Rocky and Rowan, we we laid out an 8 mile running course through the woods. And we would run that. We started running. And we would run and meditate, do a running meditation. A running meditation. A running meditation. Yeah. Eight miles. And it was up and down hills through through the forest. How do you run and meditate at the same time? Well, you just run and you you repeat the mantra in your and the what's the mantra who who gave the mantra is a a way of focusing your consciousness and like for example I've never spoken my mantrum out loud not once not once have I ever spoken out loud but what it does is I mean it takes you the way I would describe it is that well the first time it I had this experience we were still living in the little house in Robbinsdale and I had made a little the stair when you came We were in the basement. So you come in the back door and you go down the stairs and I made a little meditation area under the stairs and I would sit there and I would meditate and you do your breathing, you coordinate your breathing with visualizations and when you're breathing and you would also do these breathing exercises. Can't do it. Oh yeah. Left, right, nostril. Left, right, the pingala. and you would uh do this and then you would start your mantrum and and I guess I'd been doing it a month or two um and I'm in the meditation and then something happens and it was almost like whoosh it was it I have to use a metaphor. It's like we're sitting in this box and the box is no bigger than this table and there's walls up and you're in this box and then all of a sudden the walls fall away and you're in this much bigger gallery. Right. That's what it was like. And then um later I learned that what I was experiencing was what was referred to as entering the great hall. Oh, entering the great hall. So I entered I would enter the great hall. Is this the same great hall from DMT trips? Never done DMT so I don't know one of these days in the right circumstances I will probably get up the nerve and try it. Okay, got it. Um but so then yeah we lived up on that land and every Thursday Dr. Arya would have meditation class. Did he give you the mantra? Does someone give you a mantra? A Swami gives you a mantra. They'll tell you the sound. Yeah. Dr. Arya gave us the mantra. Does everyone get the same mantra? No. You get your own mantra. He tells you privately. Yes. You hear it and you never say it. And you never say it. Okay. Correct. You think it. You think it. Okay. How does he give you a sound? He whispers in your ear. What is How does he decide what your mantra is? Well, I know what I was also given a name. Okay. He gives you a name. Yeah. Okay. When he gives you your mantra, get a name. My my my Sanskrit name is Mahaja. Okay. Which means he of the great life. All right. Yeah, I kind of liked it. It's a cool name. Seemed to fit. Yeah, it's a cool name. Yeah. And so, did he only ever say it once? Is it a sort of thing that he would only whisper to you once? No, as I recall, he whispered it to me like three or four times and then I had to like like whisper it back maybe or I don't remember whispering it back. If I did, that was the only time I ever spoke it. Yeah. Right. And I still use it. Not like I did. Um but then this is transcendental meditation or similar similar because they give you a mantra too. I think similar to transcendental meditation. Okay. So what did you think you were getting out of it or not to get out of it? What what's the point? What was the point of doing it for two or three hours a day? Well, did I begin to realize that you could access higher realms of consciousness without having to take any external stimulus without any psychedelics? Right. You can get there on your own. Breathing exercises. Oh, yeah. Meditation. All of these things. Oh, yeah. I mean, after about six months, I would sit down and I could instantly go in and to the great hall. Into the great hall. What did you ever encounter anything in the great hall? Not really. It was just I don't Well, I'll tell you. One of the the most remarkable things that happened was I started going back like regressing. I mean I in the sense that I started remembering things that must have been like when I was just months old, a year old, things like that. Memories started coming to you. Yeah. Wow. And then it got to the point where maybe a memory of a plane of existence between lives that there was that impression. Um so every Thursday there would be meditation class at Dr. areas. And uh I would leave walk down the highway from the uh from the woods there and I would hitchhike 140 miles down into Minneapolis to go to meditation every Thursday. Every Thursday and then Friday I'd hitchhike back up or sometimes I'd stay over an extra day or two, hitchhike up Saturday. Um, so that that was for about a year and then uh at the end of the year my dad sold the eight he made probably pretty good money and this was right after we came back. We had two retreats. Um the first retreat uh with with the swami was up in uh rural Minnesota, northern Minnesota. And then by the next year we had grown from a small group in Dr. his attic to like 120 students. And he actually the the or did had an organization called the Daam Mundrum and and we bought a building in downtown Minneapolis and we started holding events there and one day I was very good at yoga asas. So sometimes when they needed somebody to demonstrate a particular pose, I would go up on the stage and demonstrate cuz I was really good at I'd been doing it, you know, now for close to two years, right? I was I was get very good at it, you know, and I was in really good shape. Um, so one day we're I'm leaving and uh walking out and I see this attractive blonde. I say, "Ah, hey, how you doing? And then I leave and I'm there was something about her. Something about um next week I come and there she is in the in the I say, you know, I start talking to her and and then I realize that that was it was Vicki, the girl from my sixth grade class that I had a crush on. No way. Yeah. Just a weird coincidence. the one that you had to leave when you when you never went back. No, that was that was Pinky, right? I don't I didn't mention just in case she's listening in. I figured there's not a lot of Pinkies. Yeah, I did. Years later, I when the internet came, I looked her up online and I found out she had been a Louisiana beauty queen like in her college. So, I thought, "Okay, well, I was all ready." Yeah, I had good taste. Yeah, that's right. Uh so she and I we she was regular seeing this wild rock and roll guy. Um, so I felt like, you know, well, at this point, this is now 19 summer of 1970 and by this time I've been I've had so many girlfriends and one night stands and stuff and every, you know, I just I was going through them just, you know, like, ah, this isn't the one, this isn't the one, this, she's great, but, you know, I can't even talk to her about, you know, whatever the stuff that, you Um, but this girl was different. I thought she might be the one. You might be the one. And then, um, I got, she's only of my girlfriend's from that era that I have a picture of in my kitchen where I was living in this old mansion in downtown. And uh, but she had this relationship with this crazy nut. and she and I had been out one night and coming in. I was dropping her off. It was a snowy, it was getting into, you know, it was before Christmas. Um, it would have been late fall of 73, snow on the ground, and I dropped her off. Now up to this time now I've now also been studying taekwond do for over and I was getting good at it you know and because I was so limber from all the yoga man I had an unbelievable high kick and spinning rear kick and all of that and uh I'm dropping her off and there's this car down the street and it's running because I remember could see the exhaust coming out but no headlights. She gets out and starts walking across the street. All of a sudden, this just guns it and starts roaring at her like it's going to run her down. And the engine stalls and it was this crazy boyfriend of hers. And I jump out. I was ready to go at it. And she just rushes over and pleads with me to not just let it go. She'll work it out, handle it. And okay. And I left. That was the last time I saw her because shortly thereafter, a week, two weeks later, 3 weeks later, whatever. Um, I left 2 a.m. in the middle of a snowstorm. And with my Dodge camper van that I had gotten in trade for a job, um, cool van, fold up top, shag carpeting, love couch. Yeah, I was I was good to go, man. Yeah, right. So, I'm going to come down, spend Christmas at my grandparents house in Pineville. And uh cuz they knew I was kind of foot loose, they invited me down. My friend uh Casey, yeah, Casey um who I was rooming there with at the house, he had friends and or relatives in Lake Shore Lake in P in Louisiana. Sure. So he said, "Can I ride with you?" Uh and I said, "Sure, man. Yeah, if you help with the driving." And we went through Chicago. Rowan was living in the ash with the swami down there. We picked him up. We headed out. We d just outside of Kankake, Illinois. Kankake, Illinois. Can Illinois. And guess what happened? I'll give you one guess. He blew rod, dude. Number three. No way. Left the car. Well, I walked up. What I did was I had just gotten paid for this roofing job I had done. And there was a used car lot up the road. I could see it. We'd pass the sign. the rod of course tow up tore up the engine and I walked up there and went to the gas. I said, "Look, we've got a I got this t camper van." He said, "Man, I you know, I'd have to put a new engine in." Ah, [ __ ] You know, and we got everything I own's in it. I walk up to this used car lot. I went in, I saw this maroon Plymouth station wagon sitting at the lot. I said, "Hey, man. How's that? Is that a station wagon?" So, we negotiate, make a deal. $150 cash. I give him, he gives me the keys. No title, nothing cuz you can get away with that kind of [ __ ] in those days. I get the keys, we go down, unload everything into the back of the station wagon and head on down the road. Goodbye. And the thing was that I only use it used it for the um one time for um well, you know what, for what it was designed for, right? stationing. Yeah. Yeah. So, goodbye. And we rolled on down and uh went to my grandparents, dropped um Lake Charles. That's what it was. Dropped Casey off in Lake Charles. Went down to my grandparents and then went back and picked up Casey, went down to New Orleans for New Year's Eve and that was wild and had a lot of fun down there. I went back up, spent a month at my grandparents, um, working on their house, um, and then get got all this maintenance work done, and then it's like end of January or something, and I'm thinking, well, it's too cold to go back to Minnesota, so I'll I'll go visit mom that's moved to Atlanta. So, I toodled over here, but I was broke by the time I got here. So, I uh got a job with a roofing company. And for the next two months, I was working as a helper to a builtup roof mechanic, repair man. And we're all up and down Peach Tree from like Fox Theater up to 14th fixing every roof. So I got that bird's eye view. This is now, you know, early 1974. And uh you know I'm waiting going to wait out the the the winter and then go back to Minnesota cuz I wanted to pick up summer of 73 me and my buddy Pete we'd started competing in canoe races and the first canoe race we went in we got last place and we trained our asses off and the second one we went in we got third place. We thought okay next year we're going to get first place. Well then my grandpa gets sick and it looked like he wasn't going to make it. So my mother packs up, hurries back to Pineville, and leaves me with a luxury apartment paid up for, I don't know, three or six months or something. So I didn't go back. I stayed here. And then by the time the summer came and went, I had started making friends and getting odd jobs and all of this. And one thing led to another and I never left. And then 78 I was remodeling a little vegetarian restaurant called the Golden Temple and they wanted to uh expand a singlestory old building and they wanted to build a shoe store, start selling shoes and they didn't have enough room. So, I went in and I built a second story all by myself on top of this building. And uh then I opened up and I I would go in after hours, you know, and do this work. And then uh then I uh I remember one day I was up in the attic working and there was a plaster ceiling. It had a little hole in it and I was doing sheetrock mud work, right? You know what that is? Yeah. So, I had my knife going and this big glob falls off my my tel and it just falls perfectly through that hole in the ceiling and goes down and guy's just about to have a eating a bowl of soup and it lands in his bowl of soup. Um, but yeah, I finished I finished the job. I got, you know, a lot of good food. Boy, did I get a lot of Birkenstocks out of that job. I had the store. I have a scene actually where uh a picture of me and James and Allan in the band and I've got a pair of my Birkenstocks on in that picture. Yeah. Um but that's where I met Julie. Oh, cool. Yeah, I met 78. She was 78. I'm pretty sure it was 78. She was working. I came I was in there for the in the daytime going to have lunch or something and I went back into the back into the kitchen and she was back there washing dishes. No way. And I asked him, "Hey, who who's that back there?" "Oh, that's Julie. She works here, you know." And so, a month or two went by and we kind of got then one day we had lunch together. And then she invited me over to her place and she had just actually had had a shortlived marriage. Um, and they had broken up and she's living in this little cottage outside of Atlanta. um out back in the woods and uh he invited me over and I went over and we started going together and off and on for the next four years or so and in between I 78 I'm 27 wasn't ready to settle down. Mhm. Uh because I knew what I I I'm still almost 100% certain why my dad mom's marriage broken because they got married. He was they were 23. My dad was 20. And I go there's no way I would have been able to at 23. There's no way I could have done it. How did he do it? Right. And I think that uh you know he probably you know in fact the the rumor was and I think my mother was kind of tipsy one night and she kind of hinted well that he slept with her older sister. Right. Yeah. I think that'll do it. That'll do it. That's right. And it was probably the older sister that seduced him cuz he was, you know, back in those days uh with his canoe racing, you know, he was out. He was muscular, tan, blonde hair, and like my mother would say, Yeah. women would just throw themselves at him. Sure. You know, so I suspect that's kind of what happened. Um, but I never got the story. But but anyway, so yeah, I ended up in Atlanta and uh started uh then I after two months working on that roofing job. I didn't like my boss. He was an [ __ ] So I quit. And the next day I went out. There was a condominium project near my mother's apartment. I just walked on the job one day and said, "Hey, I'm looking for a job." They hired me on the spot for like the next 10 months. I worked on that, built it up and and then it was a a recession, a bad recession. 74 started in 73. I don't know if you remember the oil embargo of 73. Oh, yeah. Gas prices, lines at the gas stations. That's Yeah. Lines two blocks long. Then you get up to the pumps and they'd be out of gas. Right. So this was still the repercussions of that and this uh project got taken over by the bank. Okay. And they came in and started letting people go one by one. But my job was that I was the punch out carpet, which is I don't know why they call it that, but so they would get a unit finished, somebody would buy it, but you'd go in and there'd be little flaws that had to be fixed before they moved it. And I was that guy. Okay. So, one by one, you know, the first day I was there, there's probably a hundred people working on the whole project. My towards the end, I was the only one. I had the master key to the whole project. I would come in, there wasn't much to do unless one sold. So, I would just come in and go up in a unit and thick shag carpet or whatever it was, and I would go to sleep. I was just up there sleeping away up in the Then finally, they let me go. Um, I wonder why. What? So, I wonder why you're just sleeping on the Well, it was nothing to do. But then, you know, if they sold the unit, Yeah. then I had stuff to do, and it was usually only a day or two. So, I went and I did this apprenticeship program with a brickmason, two-month program, and I did the best that anybody had done in that program. And I so I did so well that I went farther than anybody else had done in the program. um that the county came out and took pictures of me and the other only other white kid in the program and we were in the newspaper and stuff and I have a picture of it I can show you guys of me and him standing there triumphantly above our brick work we've just done but that was a important eye opening lesson for me because the first week when I went to work for the roofing company they put me on a hot tar crew I was only I was you know what was I this is so I'm 23 I'm this skinny long-haired white kid and all these big, strong, hardworking black guys. I was the only white guy and these guys were 30, 40. And this is dangerous work. You got this big vat with this molten tar in it. And I would be, you know, hauling five gallon buckets full of this molten tar, you know, and I said, "Okay, I'm going to show these guys." I mean, the first day or two, they're like razing me, giving me a By the end of the week. Yeah. I showed them. I'm I'm going to Of course, you know, I'd had I was in really good shape. You know, I'd been paddling and, you know, I was strong, so I was able to keep up with them and I earned their respect. And then, but now when I went to this program, it was OEDA program. There was probably 12 boys in there. And me and this other guy, I don't remember his name, we were the only white guys. And these guys, they didn't give a [ __ ] you know, they were from the projects. And I remember thinking the contrast between these two generations, you know, these guys came up hard scramble, hardworking guy, real. I mean, men, you know, these guys were just like break, they'd be out smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, time to come back, be 20 minutes, 30 minutes, they'd all come wandering in. And by the end of it, they couldn't, you know, two months they hadn't learned [ __ ] right? Me and the other kid, we pushed it and went farther than anybody else had. I can show you pictures and here's what we were expected to be able to do after two months. Here's what we did. And so, I mean, because nobody had ever done this. The county came in and took these pictures of us, right? I contracted my first job before I even finished that. I mean, I was ambitious. I went out and I contracted and put a brick veneer on a whole house by myself. Mixed all the mud, laid up all the brick, the whole thing. myself and that kind of launched my my contracting. So I was for the next until Rowan got here, I was pretty much like a hippie carpenter. I had a pick a couple of different pickup trucks with my tools and I would go around do all kinds of stuff. And when I was doing the Sufi work, there was an architect in that group and he comes and he says because now at this point he was aware that I had done this masonry program. He said, you know, he says, "Do you do block work or just brick work?" I says, "Yeah, I do block work, too." Whatever. Stone work, block work. He says, "Well, I've designed this house for this guy. Ron Slack is his name. And he's really into sacred architecture." And he showed me this plan. What he wants is a master bedroom upstairs, and he wants it to be a replica of the Great Pyramid. Said, "Do you think you could build that?" Well, what this was not first first was he said wanted us to do the foundation. So, so we went out there, my brother Rocky and I, we went out there, the two of we be out there at the crack of dawn with our picks and shovels and we dug these deep footing trenches, 200 f feet of them, chopping our way through tree roots, digging up, you know, rocks, you know, building the forms, wheelbarrowing the concrete, you know, and and made those footings. Then we laid up the block. Built the block. I have a picture of me working there laying up the block. He comes, the architect, Ron, no um doesn't matter. He the architect comes to me and he says, "Hey, you guys did such a good job on this foundation. You think you could you guys do do some carpentry work, right?" And I said, "Well, yeah, we do." Because for one thing, in summer of 72 when we did that second yoga retreat, the an architect in that group designed two Buckminister Fuller geodisic domes. And me and Rocky and Rowan got recruited to be lead carpenters because we had the most carpentry experience in that group. And I'll show you some pictures. We got some great pictures of Rowan. He was lead carpentry up on the top of this thing framing it in. Right. Well, so we stay there, me and Rocky, and we build this um we build this we frame up the whole house. And I had to figure out how to build the pyramid, you know, 51 degrees, 51 minutes and figure out how to build all that. And it's basically where I learned carpentry. And I I had my carpentry manual that I kept up in the the vehicle. And uh whenever I got stuck, I would walk up there and I would Yeah. Oh, okay. Go back down and and do it, you know. Did you do like a proper survey of the Great Pyramid? Was that the first time you looked at the dimensions of the Great Pyramid? Yes. And the angles and all of that. Yes. That's right. That's right. That was the first time. was building this model like bedroom size model at like at the base the thing was probably as wide as the studio from this side to this side and of course square and then it was a big old thing so I had to figure out all the compound angles and cut those and everything and so and then up the road there was a guy he was a one of the Coca-Cola heirs and he bought all this riverfront property and he would drive by every day and see us working so he came stopped one day and said hey man I need to build a boat dock I want to build a raised pool around my house. I need a barn for my boats. We went up there and so for like the next three or four months and that was where I first saw dowsers at work. Oh man. So I'll show you pictures too of this. So he had he had 15 telephone poles he'd bought somewhere and he said, "Can you guys do anything with these telephone poles?" And I said, "Yeah, I think we can." I said, 'Let, why don't we take them and we'll we'll we'll put them in vertically like they would be and then I'll just we'll frame your your boat barn around that. Right. So, we had this bear blot next to the Chattahuchi River and we go out there and and I laid the thing out, figured out the dimensions, and everywhere where I wanted to put a telephone pole, I drove a stake in the ground. Right. Then we called uh Southern Bell, which we all we called Ma Bell back then. Uh and for $8 a pole, they would come out and they would with their auger truck drill a hole. Oh. Get the b the the pole with their boom and set it in the hole. So I was already I had diagonal bracing, you know, with my my level. We'd plum it up and Right. Well, they came out and uh the the the truck, the official truck pulls up and there was like two guys up in the front cab and then it was like a crew cab type truck. They stop, one of the guys or maybe they both get out and they're wearing the the Southern Bell uniforms. This guy gets out of the back and he's a tall, skinny guy, must have been 6'5, 66, 6'7, overalls and an old crinkly hat. And he gets out and he's carrying what looks like a a a violin case. And he comes walking down and he's looking and he sees our cases, our our our stakes, opens up his violin case, and he takes out and he's got two swing rods in here. Swinging rods. Yeah. Now, I' I'd heard of water witching, but I'd never seen it demonstrate. So, this guy goes and he walks over each, you know, the swing rods are just gently doing this, and he walks over each of the stakes, and then he hollers up to the truck, "Clear." Go to the next one. Clear. So, all 15 of them were clear. Then he starts walking towards the house. And I knew that the water man came in from the somewhere across the road. came in and crossed the driveway somewhere, but I didn't know where. So, he's walking and I see him go across the driveway and I'm watching. Okay. Because at this time, I'm still mystified like cuz at first I'm like, "Wait a minute. Is this Are they like pulling my leg or something?" It's, you know, I didn't know what to think. Um, it's a strange thing to see for the first time. Somebody's walking around with these rods that are hovering and yeah, we're waiting for them to do something and if you don't know what you're looking at, it's it is it's it's weird. Well, then they did something. They crack. He walks across the driveway and as soon as he hits, he's above the water, man. It's like they just go into an X and they literally bent. I could see him like under tension bending and then he steps across and they relax and start doing this again. Then what he does is he walks in a zigzag and he could trace out the whole water man coming up. And I'm looking there and you know because nothing had happened when he was over these stakes, right? But now and then he turns to me and he goes, "You want to try it?" uh, okay. So I get it and like I step across the water, man. It was like getting a shock almost. It was like if I'd had my eyes closed, I could have imagined that somebody grabbed the ends of those. And what they were was they were oldfashioned telescoping antenna that you'd had on cars with a little ball on the end and it was just simply bent so they were free to swivel in the sleeve. And I step across and it felt like somebody grabbed the ends and I could like was bending them. You could feel it. I could feel it. And I was able to trace that thing out. And I've tried with some success, but I've never been able to repeat that sensation. And I could never figure out why. I think I know why. Because this is something that is a function of your consciousness as much as anything. And I think with that guy standing there next to me while I'm doing this, I think was the key. He helped. Yes. Yeah. There was something there. Also, my state of mind was like I I I I was just like almost like innocent. I didn't know. Yeah. What? No expectations. Well, and I think sometimes the ego when it is encountering something it doesn't know it. It actually says, "Oh, I don't want to do I don't I don't want anything to do with this because I don't know what's going to happen and I don't want to be embarrassed or I don't want to." But once you do it, then the ego goes, "Oh, we can do this. I'm a part of this now." And maybe your mind can't get out of the way. And you know, I've read a lot of studies and you know, the skeptics, you know, the scientific, well, we've tested it and they were only 50/50, no better than random. And I'm thinking, well, wait a second, there's something else going on here. I know I know this now. Um, and it has to do with consciousness, has to do with something on a subtle level. And you know, your skepticism is kind of what is sabotaging this. It's like what was the parable about Jesus when he went home to Nazareth and he couldn't work any miracles because nobody believed that he was anything special. Yeah. I think he said a prophet will never be able to will never be accepted in his hometown. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like that. I think you know um we talked to Joe McMonagle up at the Monroe Institute and he was really good friends with a very famous dousser and this guy he has verifiedly found over 3,600 wells and he had he's a contracting business like this where you know cuz it's a it's a more affordable way to find water and you have to find water and these people will hire him and he will just go find wells. So it's real. He's making money off of it and people keep hiring him. Yeah. And I've known other dousers since then. Sure. Yeah. Same thing. And Yeah. It's real. So I mean people can listen to this or what you felt it. I did. I did. I felt it. But I've never felt it like that since. Right. You know. Yeah. I couldn't I could like a physical pulling that you felt like you saw. That's what it felt like. I mean, imagine you're holding it. You got your eyes shut. Somebody walks up, takes the ends, does this, and then just kind of bends almost like they're under tension. Yeah. And you're holding like a platform or you're holding the rod. holding. Picture um picture you've got a sleeve that's about this long uh metal and you've got this other smaller piece that's in there and it's bent at 90° so it can swivel around. Yeah. And it's can swivel. So you're holding two sleeves. I'm holding two sleeves. Just that they can ro and it's got these two things coming out 90 degrees. It can rotate easily. And they can rotate and they just start they cross and they and they start pulling. They cross over the water. Yeah. Wow. But other dowsers can find other things. Yeah. So, I've looked into it and I I I you know, further than that and I think there's a whole lost science behind it because I think once upon a time our ancestors were able to even like detect and and and feel those detect those fields even without the instruments. You know, if you need water and you're out in the middle of nowhere and you got to dig somewhere to find water, it would be pretty nice to know where water is. It'd be pretty nice to know where water is. Yeah. Yeah. And just go, "Oh, here it is. Oh, here it is. Let's dig." and you get it. So, I've got a whole collection of books up there all about dowsing and subtle energies and all of that. And and I, you know, it definitely I think was part of the I call it the geomantic survey that ancient peoples all over the world did when they had a site that was unique that was sacred if you want to use that term. Sure. They would uh they had means of detecting the energies in the landscape. the work of Paul Dero whose books I have up there going back to the 80s he was the one who realized that a lot of the sacred sites were associated with fault lines and the movement of underground water and I think there's a whole science there of of knowing how to how to influence or utilize these subtle energies of the landscape probably somehow influencing the geomagnetic field is what I think there's probably something that's even more subtle than the geomagnetic field but then the changes in the geometric field are the function of these subtler changes that are occurring maybe what uh like uh uh Terrence Howard was saying today he says that's the ether you know that that during the the the morally experiments when they decided that the ether didn't exist he said well the reason is because they were assuming that the ether was static it's moving and I thought ahuh Huh? Okay. Maybe. Yeah. And I definitely am now thinking that, you know, I came to this conclusion a long time ago that your state of mind is very powerful in terms of what um you know, you're capable of doing. And when you get out, oh, this is [ __ ] You know, it ain't going to work for you. No, it ain't going to work unless it's an exceptional because there are some people out there that did a [ __ ] and then oh wait a minute maybe there is something to this cuz I found out you know they in Vietnam they were uh using dowsing to try to detect underground tunnel tunnels of the Vietkong. You can find pictures of them online. They were training how to use dowsing room. Right. Well, what's so interesting, we already have examples of birds everywhere that migrate. Yeah. And I mean, we don't know how they we know they interact with the magnetic field of the of the earth, but that that is the the vaguest way of describing how millions of birds can leave one section of the world, fly thousands of miles, and go back to the same nest that they were in the previous year. And we're just like, ah, they've detect magnetic waves. And you're like, oh, what does that mean? What does that mean? And why couldn't some of us do it or all of us or to different degrees? It's already being done in front of our eyes by nature. Well, and then there's repeated stories of just prior to a major disaster like an earthquake, animals animals all get out of there. Yeah. Yeah. Like they know. How do they know? How do they know what's going on? Well, you know, things was it 2006 the big earthquake down in Indonesia that caused the huge tsunami and over 200,000 people were killed. But you watch the the videos of that and what you see is that there's all these people lining up. The ocean has receded and they're looking at the ocean bottom going, "What is going on?" Right. Then the wave comes back and it was like they didn't understand what they were seeing. Yet their ancestors would have known. That's right. Their ancestors would have known what that meant. I had a very interesting conversation with Dallas Abbott a week and a half ago. We were talking about tsunamis and that subject came up and we agreed, you know, I don't think it's it hasn't been dropped yet, but it should drop within the next week. Dallas Abbott, she was at the cosmic summit. Um, and she's been studying tsunamis and we talked about that that and mentioned that. I said, well, you know, and she's very open-minded scientist. And so so she she agreed, yeah, there the the ancestors three, four generations ago and back, they would have known, but this is like traditional knowledge that's gotten lost. These people and the tourists and the locals, they're standing out there. Oh, and they're running out picking up shells and things. So here comes the wave. 200,000 plus people washed away because they didn't know the signs that they didn't know that nature was talking to them, giving them a warning. It's it feels like a metaphor to what's happening in a lot of ways. It is a metaphor and it's a very apt metaphor because people are are oblivious. The world is the earth is talking to us. Everything history is talking to us and people are just not seeing it. They're not and I've noticed something now since my numbers online have gone up. You know, people who are tuning into to my podcast um are mostly fans and and they're very receptive. Then, you know, Beckett and his team are posting these shorts just on social media and it's kind of seen by this broad section and the comments and stuff, some of them that I see and I'm like, my god, there's a lot of people that have just dumbed down to the lowest rung of the ladder. It's like I'm trying to lay this stuff out for them and they just they're not even interested. All they have is some smarmy comment or some insult, you know that. And it doesn't sound like you're saying that in anger. It's almost like sad. Yeah. Like what is going on with our with our species? Yeah. Yeah. But then you guys show up. People like you, you know, your generation, which I'd about given up on. I've you guys have rec. And it's not just you. It's Beckett. It's John Arthur. It's, you know, I Okay, there is a I don't know what it is. 10% 15% of your generation that's awake, who's looking at the world and asking questions and seeking answers and knowing there's more to all of this than than this narrative we've been spoonfed by the establishment, which is [ __ ] And we've seen that. I mean, you know, just all we have to do is go back to the whole COVID thing that we've just seen play out. And some of us knew it was [ __ ] right from beginning. That's why I didn't get vaxed. Julie didn't get vaxed. Rowan didn't get vaxed. But my one year younger brother who got vaxed, he's got leukemia in it. Whatever happened to Rocky? We think he's in Louisiana in a small town. He went out to Hollywood and he was going to make it big and I don't know what happened to him. Um it went sideways some reason. Um, I know that at one point he got assaulted and got stabbed and then he was in a few movies in the 70s, you know, not speaking parts, but a few mo some like maybe some Francis Ford Capola movies or something and then the last time I saw him I think was 1980. 1980 he just it's just I don't know what just went different ways. Yeah. I mean, if you look, you know, we were like this growing up. No bad blood. Just he just went a different way. Just went a different way. Yeah. I mean, we did psychedelics. He was there on all those camping trips. Yeah. You know. Oh, I wanted to ask you, you said this over dinner. I just What would you say to um people today that are interested sort of in the psychedelics because you've had so much so many experiences with them and like we talked about not a party drug. Don't do it for that. You got I mean, do your homework. like LR used to say set and setting. You want to be in a in in an environment that's conducive because it's it's a it's a gift of God in my opinion. Now LSD just mimics the the naturals, you know, masculine and psilocybin and those it's very similar very similar chemical structure just simply, you know, there's a synthetic version of it. It's LSD. Um but yeah, you don't whatever it is, mushrooms, peyote, it doesn't matter. If you're doing psychedelics, you do them with an attitude of reverence. You do it about seeking knowledge, about insight into getting uh greater awareness of higher realities and the spiritual realms. You don't just do it, you know, hey, let's go to the I'm going to get a six-pack and drink it when I get home or go to a park. Don't you don't do that. You set it up. you plan it. The best way to do it is in nature, right? Otherwise, if it's not in nature, do it in a nice setting, you know, have some great music. Um, and there is some great music from the 60s and 70s and even more recent stuff, but also some of the incredible classical music. Uh, Frederick Das, Mozart, I mean, uh, yeah, Beethoven. I mean, you listen to some of that and and yeah, you'll listen to it in a very different way if you're tripping, but but yeah, that's the idea. You do it's it's your mindset because it is an incredible gift and it shouldn't be abused and shouldn't be used frivolously. I mean, you don't do it frivolously and don't just, you know, I I hate hearing this. Yeah, I did LSD once, but yeah, it was just I just did too much or whatever or you know, I was out wherever and everybody was drunk and I said, "No, no, no. You don't do it that way." You know, first time you do it, don't do 500 micrograms. Don't do a,000 microgram. Do 150 micrograms and you'll have a very good experience, right? And, you know, use it to seek greater awareness, to to seek knowledge. And then if that's your attitude, you're going to have a really good experience. And make sure you know that what you're getting is real stuff. I mean, that it's not cut with something or nobody's decided to put strict nine in it or like happened sometimes back in the day. Um, that's what I would say. and and you know you you can come back from it and it doesn't really matter really whether you're you know if you're a Christian or a Buddhist or you know Jane or doesn't a Sufi you can get increased intensified insight into your own traditions um or you may like me I you know I came up you know I was baptized in a Methodist church mostly went to a Lutheran church the year that we lived with my mother's parents we bundled up in a suit twice a week and bundled off Wednesday night and Sunday mornings to church listening to the Baptist preacher preach Fire and Brimstone and that didn't appeal to me. But but uh yeah, I I I think that what happened was we were given a great opportunity back in the 60s to evolve to another level and the power structure suppressed it. Turned it into a crime. Like changing your consciousness is a crime. But no, declaring changing your consciousness a crime, that in itself is the crime. And you're going to jail people and put people in prison for that, you know. But see, it needs to have See, if it had been allowed, I mean, if you look at what the leaders of the movement were doing back then, they wanted to create a whole supportive infrastructure where you could go and you'd have just like now they do with Iawaska. You don't just go and do Iaska flippantly. You go and you prepare for it. You meditate, you fast, you get somebody who knows what you're they're doing to be your guide. That's how it should have been. And if if that had been allowed to happen, no telling where we'd be now. I tell you we certainly wouldn't be, you know, with cities turning into cesspools of degeneracy, right? people out there with all these, you know, all the hard drugs and stuff because for one thing, look, you use this catch all term drugs and you're lumping in, you know, you're lumping in crack cocaine and heroin and hard drugs with with with psilocybin with magic mushrooms. No, you know, with with some some marijuana or whatever. See, so you know some 14-year-old kid, 15-y old kid, you smoke marijuana and you get high and you laugh for a half an hour and then you go and have a delicious meal. You get the munchies and hey, well, they were lying about this. Well, they might have been lying about heroin. They might have been lying about meth. They might have been lying about crack cocaine, right? There's no discernment, no differentiation because there's bad drugs and there's good drugs. And the good drugs are pretty much what I think the good Lord gave us. and what we discovered accidentally through, you know, what Albert Hoffman discovered accidentally. Um, yeah, I've heard I've I've actually read they've done studies where, uh, when they say that marijuana is a gateway drug. Uh, it's not that you do marijuana and all of a sudden you want to try all of these other things so much as it's the supply chain, right? Because if your supplier is supplying all of those things and you get one, then they have a very high incentive to get more sales from you. And so you're buying one thing and they go, "Hey, here's a free extra something you haven't tried before." And and it's actually the supply chain that creates the roll. It's a sales. It's the salesman upselling because they control all the supply chain cuz all of this stuff is illegal. I mean, now weed, not so much anymore because it's it's being legalized everywhere. But that that is actually the mechanism of being a gateway drug is actually it's the supply chain issue that creates the roll over into other things. Well, the interesting thing was though back in the day when I first got involved in it, it was you were Yeah. I mean, there was a very clear line of demarcation between, you know, psychedelics and weed and stuff and the hard drugs. Yeah. Like, no, you don't don't [ __ ] with those hard drugs. Stay away from that. And the guys that were selling the hard drugs, they were like, you don't don't mess with that guy. he's, you know, stay with somebody you trust, somebody who's who's got the vision, who wants to who who believes that this is this is a valuable asset for the human race. Go with that guy, you know. Um, but then that kind of by the time you get to the early to mid70s, that all kind of got erased, got squashed. Got blurred. Yeah. And uh I think it really started during the Nixon years because weirdly 7071 you just all this weird [ __ ] started showing up. Where's it coming from? You know and of course the word on the street was well you know there weren't enough you know because part of Nixon's campaign was he he gave us the drug and you know oh it's dangerous drugs you know all of the overdoses and they're flocking to the emergency rooms when they weren't. It was all [ __ ] But so what do you do? You start putting this weird [ __ ] on the street and then people do start showing up at the emergency room and now you can say see we told you. I mean that was a part of a big part of the belief system of what was going on. But uh you know if Liry and and his uh colleagues and Keezy and those guys had had their way and it had been able to develop organically, I think nature and science both gifted us the tools to a to to heal what ails the human species psychically and we suppressed it. We pushed it underground and by pushing it underground, you know, it just went haywire. and got completely cluttered up with everything else. What do you uh what do you think of Alan Watts? Oh, I liked Allan. Uh to me, he you know, I wanted to say couple because when I was reading Alan Watts, I was in this transition where, you know, that year in Baton Rouge, I just went I was drinking. I got drunk a bunch, smoking cigarettes, doing unhealthy things. And I came back to Minnesota and I just got into this different frame of mind and uh I quit quit drinking. I quit smoking and I started thinking I want to be healthy and I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life, you know. Um so I basically I was 17. I'd been you know I cleaned up my act at 17. And then once I discovered marijuana and I had my first I went out on a double date with my friend Steve and I'd given up. I I don't get high from marijuana. Um I've tried it. You know I I smoked 10 times. Didn't do anything. I've got some ashes. So we go out on this double date. My date was her name was Judy. I won't mention her last name. She might be listening in. Um he's probably a grandmother now and does doesn't uh shout out to Judy. We'll keep Yeah, we'll keep the some of those stories from Shout out to Judy. Yeah. Yeah. Steve with his date was in the front seat and I was with her in the back seat. And Steve says, "Hey, I got some we could smoke. It doesn't work on." He says, "I Well," he says, "This is hashy." I've never tried hashy. Well, let's try it. Okay. I don't think it's going to work. you know, we're we're out driving in the country. It's at night and he we pull over some or there's, you know, we're on the road, there's nobody else around. So, he lights up the pipe, passes around, I take a toque, goes around, I take another toke, go, "What's happening?" Oh, nothing. Nothing. We're coming over this hill like this, and I don't know why it's out there in the middle of nowhere, but there was a stoplight the bottom of the hill. And just as we're coming over the hill, the light goes from green to yellow and then it turns red. And then I had this sensation that there's this wave that started in my feet. And it just I could feel it like just going up all the way my and as soon as it got to my head, it was like the last 3 seconds of my existence replayed. And it was like for about the next 30 seconds or 20 seconds or something. It was like I was just having a replay of coming over this hill and seeing the traffic light turn red. And I remember going I think I feel it. I think I feel it. And that was that was after that I had no trouble. It it worked from that point. It worked from that point. Huh. It did. So um so anyways um so uh so what do you think of Alan Watts? Oh Alan Watts. Yeah. I thought he was a little overindulgent. I was disappointed. He died too young. In my opinion, he did. Yeah. You know, and and and I believe his philosophy that you don't want to be so strict that you don't do anything ever. And you know, people like that get self-righteous and you know, and yeah, you can have some vices as long as you keep in control. I don't really have any vices other than I like to smoke a little reefer now and then. Sure. You know, like I think what's been three or four, what is this? Saturday. Well, let's see. Julie and I watched a show. I think it was Wednesday night, so we each took it because I like that's one of the things I really enjoy watching like listening to music or like watching a movie or something. I seem to really get more into it. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool that you've maintained your memory so well and it I think it really shows that you don't abuse marijuana. Yeah. No, I don't abuse it because you can't if if you abuse it, I think your memory starts going and I It might. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty sure it does from experience. But but but I but I can tell that your memory is incredible, which means you've really found a good balance. And it's kind it's it's good for the rest of us to see, I think. Yeah. I Yeah. I mean, there was a while I loved it so much. Yeah. I like, okay, let's see. I think I'll try this getting high. I think I'll get high and do this, you know. Um I was always looking to try new things. I think I'll try this when I'm high. That was like a year, two years. And then I got, yeah, you know, I'm not enjoying it as much as I did at first. So I, you know, and then once I started doing the the the spiritual stuff, I I went for like 3 years with pretty much nothing. And I had this incredible hashish stocked away. And I ended up just selling it and giving it away because I wasn't doing it. um really until I got back to uh till I got to Georgia I guess and got away from you know I went through the the period with the with the Sufi somewhere in there you know nah you know I made new friends and hey man I got some yeah I'll join that what the hell you know and that's kind of the way it's been you know it's not an everyday thing but for special occasions yeah hey I'll indulge but you know I don't smoke cigarettes I don't drink much. I'll have a beer now and then. Uh, a mixed drink every now and then. I might have something. Uh, like seems really balanced. Yeah. Last New Year's um, New Year's Eve, I had a glass of eggnog spiked with rum eight months ago. Yeah, I'll confess. And it was delicious. Nice. But yeah, I I don't know. I me and alcohol. Well, I think it's cuz the first date I ever went on, 15 years old, was the first time I ever got drunk. And I got just sloppy sick drunk. And uh Yeah. And and my date and all my my carefully laid plans of course did not come to fruition cuz I got too drunk. Yeah, it happens. It happened. Yeah. Rum and Coke and what was I drink? I don't know. But I got so sick I just I think it spoiled me on on booze. I just have never had for the best I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Julie's younger brother drank himself to death. And he was a you know, smart guy, had a good high-paying job, but he was a high functioning alcoholic and he uh what was this? It was just before co and he had been told by his doctor if he didn't quit drinking he wouldn't live another year. And uh it was sad because his wife went away for the day and she came home and he'd been on a binge and she found him laying on the floor when she came in and he helped put him to bed and then in the morning he got up and said, "Oh, I think I better go to the hospital. I'm feeling horrible." He rushed him to the emergency room and his esophagus had ruptured because the alcohol just eat it away. Oh, and he had bled out about twothirds of his whole blood into his digestive system. went into a coma. I came out of the coma for a few days and then didn't make it. Died after three and like I what a waste what a waste but you know I had this thing I said Julie how did you end up being so interested in stuff and spiritual and Jeff just doesn't seem to have any inner life and I think that was it. He just didn't have something inside to sustain him. He was I mean I don't know what it is the people who who you know get become addicted to drugs for me like I don't like alcohol just because um you know it just it clouds my brain. Mhm. I don't like the feeling of you know not having a clear head. Now a little bit of pot now and then if if I do it every day Yeah. then it's like it starts feeling like if I do it once twice a week it doesn't seem to have that effect. Instead, what happens? I'll oftentimes be mauling over some problem or something. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. I've been thinking about it for a week, two weeks. I take two hits and boom, I have this epiphany. Oh, it comes together. Ah, that's it. And I found that, you know, if you use it that way, you constructively, I think nature's given it to us. And you can use it or you can abuse it. And if you use it, it's just like a tool. And and I use the analogy of, you know, when I'm on the construction jobs, we use tools, but you got to know what you're doing with those tools. You know, they can be dangerous. They But if not, if you if you know what you're doing with them and you use them properly, Yeah. you can build beautiful houses, write great music. You can Yeah. Yeah. I if if our generation or the generations below us are just lost, let's say they just don't have any purpose. How do you derive so much purpose out of your life? Because you seem to be fascinated with curiosities and it's like a never- ending quest. Well, yeah. I mean, psychologically, I'm not different than I was 50 years ago. I'm still totally curious about things. Can't wait to like dive into some problem. And I think I'll probably be that way for as long as I'm here. Um, and I think it does go back to those early experiences that I saw something greater, you know, both with the help of psychedelics but also without by by using tried and trueue traditions that have been handed down for thousands of years. Um, that take a little more work. But I came to the conclusion that well you can achieve and Swami Rama said this he said you can achieve yeah you can achieve those things cuz he did he tried he did LSD and he said okay so his his conclusion of that was you can achieve these things without the external agents it's just it's going to take you more work and effort but the thing is is that a lot of people aren't willing to to put in the work and the effort if they have no clue of what waits for them at the end of this process. And so these nature has endowed us with these things that can show us that there are higher realities and greater states of being. We, you know, look, there's a whole massive spectrum of vibrational frequencies and our access is only a limited part of that spectrum. And you brought up the idea birds who can detect these forces and things, right? Well, they're they're experiencing things on vibratory frequencies that we don't experience. But I'm absolutely convinced that under certain either through through mental preparation, through the exercises and the meditations or through the use of plant medicines is what I prefer to call them rather than drugs. You can access those realms. But ultimately, I think what you want to do is, you know, learn to access those realms without relying on the external. But my kind of phil spiritual philosophy is kind of based upon more now the western tradition is the western tradition and of course there's lots of exceptions to this the eastern tradition is more about the inner world and withdrawing and and going into the the monastery and all the western world is more actionoriented and to me everything that we're doing the world at large is like a symbol and a living symbol if you will and you know I've traveled over Europe and looked at the Gothic cathedrals and these incredible magnificent structures, you know, that embody the highest aspirations of the human species. When you and if you haven't been, go to Europe, go to Shart, go to Amian, go to Reams and look at that, ponder the stonework, ponder the the the the stained glass windows, the statuary, the symbolism, and you realize, oh my god, this is something on another level alto together. I mean, and then you see like you go back to the mid 1100s and you realize, well, something inspired almost the entire European civilization to get a get behind this project to build these and it was going strong until the climate changed and uh the medieval warm period gave way to the little ice age and then you had a decade of crop failures uh which led to the bubanic plague. half the population who get Europe gets wiped out and that was pretty much the end of the the glories of the the the cathedral building era because you know half the labor pool was gone. You had whole villages wiped out. You had so many corpses in some places they couldn't even bury the the the the dead bodies. They just laid there on the on the ground and that was the end of this glory. But while you had this century and a half of this warm, they did it. They presented something to the world that we still haven't really fully grasped the the message of of those that cathedral building era. But it was the most recent manifestation in civilization of the of the great sacred template of of old, which I think even goes back to prehistory that the Egyptians had access to, the Samrians, the Greeks later on, the megalithic builders of of, you know, Northern Europe. There's a template and it's a template about what we're supposed to do as the human species to return the world to its original state, its its inherent state of paradise. And at any time, all the tools, everything we need is right here to re recreate Earth as paradise. But we're too oblivious, you know, we're just we're we're we're fighting over we're in this locked in this uh zero sum mentality that we have to go over there in Ukraine and we have to get those resources that oil and that those precious metals that under the ground and resources because if we don't then the Russians are going to get them. Well, just like uh Terrence said today, you know, he's got this deep spiritual orientation, but he said, you know, the asteroid belt is there because everything that we need need to build civilization from the earth, we don't need to take it from the earth anymore. You know, the the and and and I agree with that. And the reason I agree with that is because I have studied so deeply into what I believe is the primordial template of civilization. I believe it's the game plan for how we bring life to the solar system. And that is our role. Life, nature, however God, however you want to characterize it, brought out of all of the millions of species inhabiting this earth. We're the ones that can actually take life back to the cosmos from which it ultimately came. Except now we're on a higher whole higher octave of existence, right? Life is seated to the earth into the primordial soup of the ocean and then from the ocean it transfers to land and from the land we go through this series of evolutions where life goes from a horizontal orientation to a vertical orient or orientation. And that's us. We're at the vertical orientation. We are the Gothic vault of the cathedral. We're the steeple on the church pointing like the nose of a rocket towards the heavens. And on the nose of that rocket ship is the cross. And the cross is universally the symbol of the world and the material the material realm. There it is poised in the Christian tradition on the nose of the rocket ship which is pointing and telling us here's your mandate. You have to reach out to the heavens and secure the fact that life will not undergo the mass extinctions that it has gone through repeatedly in the 600 million years since life appeared on this planet. I think nature has been experimenting, trying new species over and over again, looking because each time life starts to arise and and and and aspire to greater sentience, something happens interrupts the the the the pathway to the stars and we get thrown back. We get thrown back. First, we discover that life, which we thought was a smooth continuum, is not this. It's this, right? Well, now we know the old models of civilization was this. You know, thousands and thousands of years of barbarism and now we're here. Uh-uh. It's this. It's this. We know that now. And the defenders of the paradigm, the old paradigm, the absolute paradigm, don't want people to understand that for some reason. Why? Because they're feeding us a bunch of [ __ ] about the the predicament we're finding ourselves in. And it's all a manufactured crisis to basically subjugate us, to create this hierarchy of power and to keep people from from claiming or reclaiming their own freedom, external and internal. And that's what we're trying to overcoming. We're we it's kind of like, okay, hey, here's the stopwatch. It's clicking. You got x amount of time before the [ __ ] all hits the fan again. And you know, we came through what 40 years of the Cold War where on more than one occasion we went toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union. We came this close, they say within an eyeblink of nuclear war back in October of 1962. And you know what kept us from that from happening? Talking, dialogue, diplomacy, right? Come on, Cru. Come on over here and see what we got. We'll go over there and see what you got. Right? We ain't doing that. And you know, a lot of people supported Trump because they believed Trump was going to do that. and he hasn't done that. He's betrayed. I was cautiously optimistic thinking Trump is really and he could do it. That's the thing. He could do it, but he's sold out to the hierarchy of power to the establishment in in my estimation. But I also think he's got a big ego and he wants to do what is going to cement his legacy. And he's doing what he's doing because he's it's who it really it comes down to who's he listening to, right? Well, if we could do if we would do again what happened in 7071 when 20,000 people surround the Pentagon, we'd see some changes. But, you know, I'm I'm disappointed in my generation because they've forgotten. They've gone back into their hypnotic state. Too many of them. Some of us haven't, but too many of us have of my generation. They've forgotten. You were there in Washington, right? How do how do you not get it? How do you think that government, big government is still going to be the answer? The big government created the problems. Big government's not going to solve the problems. We need to reclaim our sovereignty on an individual basis, on a family basis, on a local and community basis. And it's starting to happen. It is starting to happen. And we have these powerful tools now at our disposal that I think is going to make it possible for us to do this to turn the tide because you know I mean like right now you know here's Trump. He's talking about sending more missiles to Ukraine that are going to have the power to reach Moscow. And what would happen if Russia was sending missiles to Cuba that could reach Washington? What would we do? Why would we not expect the Russians to do the same thing when all we need to do is be talking to them? Look, there's if we work together, there's it's a win-win situation. Where we're going now is a lose-lose. I mean, if this thing goes to a hot war, you know, we got came this close during the 40 years of Cold War and we're damn lucky that we got through it, right? And we were given a reprieve back in the early 90s when the Berlin Wall came down, when the Soviet Union collapsed. But what happened was you had these factions that had hijacked our American government, our Democratic Republic of America. And what they saw was, hey, this is our golden opportunity to create a global empire with us in control. And that's what they began to implement back in the early 90s. Clinton was part of that. Bush daddy was part of that. Bush son was part of that. Right on down through through Biden totally on board with this agenda. And it looked like Trump was going to turn the tide and could. But what's he doing? He's sold out, man. That's what it looks like to me. And you know, he's still doing some things that I would approve of. I don't like the way he's, you know, the immigration problem. I don't like the way he's hand the heavy-handed way he's handling it is not going to work in the long run. You know, you should say, "Okay, rather than sending ICE out with these heavy-handed Gestapo tactics, you need to say, okay, over the next four years is we're going to stop the influx and we're going to begin vetting." The first thing you do is you you vet just like, "Okay, what's the answer to what happened in Israel?" Well, you know, you you just like when uh you know, you had the uh the bombing of the of the the jetliner. What did the uh what did MSAD do? They went and met methodically, meticulous, meticulously traced down the actual perpetrators of that terrorist act and they caught them and they imprisoned them. I think some of them got executed, but that's what they did. They didn't go on this mass campaign. But see, this is there's a different agenda now, you know. Um, like my thought is, okay, oh, we targeted this this apartment building because we knew Hamas was in there. Oh, really? Okay. Well, how did you know Hamas is in there? Well, because our our intelligence agency are so capable, right? Oh, really? They're that capable. Yet, Hamas was able to spend one to two years preparing for October 7th and nobody knew about it. Sorry, [ __ ] I'm calling [ __ ] on that. Of course, they knew about it. and they let it happen because this is it's not in my mind it's about a larger agenda. Um, and I didn't mean to necessarily get off on all of that, but you know, part of the problem is is, you know, it's it's just it's to me it's a sign of intellectual laziness to just like sit there and be spoonfed. Hey, you don't have to think for yourself. Just, you know, hey, they tell you you need to get this shot for this vaccine. Well, never mind that it hasn't been tested. Never mind any of that. You don't know anything about it, that it's rushed. Never mind that typically 5 to 10 years is your your your testing protocols last that long. Never mind that the that the big pharmacy companies have been granted immunity from any ill effect. Never mind any all all of that. Just go there, roll up your sleeve, and let them shoot this experimental stuff into you so they can make billions. Yeah. like people, you know, and like Julie's two friends that we were talking about, they're in that picture there. And one of them, the Valerie, she's Julie, they they maintain friendship. Every Sunday, Julie would go out, meet them, and they would go on this two-mile walk. And then as we got getting into the co thing, Julie was trying to tell them, you know, don't don't do that. Don't do it. and you know she would talk she's very much you know uh knowledgeable about what's going on in terms of the you know current events and stuff. She's been very libertarian just like me and Rowan have been for years. Fact that's one reason why I hooked up with her is because not only was she a a beautiful dancer and an electrician, she was also very libertarian. Um, so then one day she gets an email from Valerie and the email says,"Well, we really enjoy your friendship, but we don't want to talk about this anymore. So until you, you know, are willing to come and walk with us and without talking about any of this, we'd prefer that you don't basically walk with us anymore." And that was essentially the last contact she had with him. Now, she was had breast cancer nine years ago. It was in remission, not a trace of it. Okay. So, she got the vax, she got the booster, and then not long later, we heard she's back in the hospital and she has blood, some kind of blood cancer. And Julie, oh, I guess not long ago, a couple of weeks ago, wanted to find out how she's doing. She called, her phone's been disconnected. Don't know what that means, but she may not be with us anymore. And it's like, Julie feels bad. And I said, "Julie, can't feel bad because you tried. You tried to open their minds, open their eyes to this, and they they wouldn't hear it. They put up a wall and wouldn't hear. What can you do? You did what you could and they said, "No, we don't want any part of hearing any of that." And uh yeah, I mean, it's it's, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen the Cosmographia podcast. You ever seen that? Mm-m. So you never saw normal guy Mike who helped us with some of the tech. He was a retired CNN. Great guy. Loved the guy, but total liberal and just he wouldn't want to talk politics. And I know I absolutely have no question that he went and got the jab, probably got the booster, and now he's going undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia, just like minor's younger brother. So what I can say neighbor down the street again total liberal big Kla Harris supporter etc. total liberal. Didn't even need to know that he went and got the jab. Three months later, dead cancer just so I mean I know what four or five you know friend of mine uh who's probably 33 or 34 now. He's a uh just got a PhD in neuroscience about a year ago. Smart smart young and uh he was at the University of Tucson and they put so much pressure on him to get the jab that he said I didn't want to. I finally did. I just got the one jab. Totally healthy guy, athletic. About three months later, he had a mild heart attack. Go to the e hospital. Came and visited me. Oh, I guess last summer. Got him. He really it. So, yeah. You know, I knew right from the start cuz I've been seeing the [ __ ] for too many years. I I I knew [ __ ] when I saw it. You know, this is [ __ ] Yeah. I hope I hope we learn as a society. I hope we do. Well, I think some people have learned, but I think, you know, we've got, you know, people are turning away from legacy media, thank God, because that's just now an organ of [ __ ] And I think what we're doing right here is going to provide another pathway. We're opening doors and we need to continue doing that. You just crossed 500,000 subs. That's incredible. I think you're getting more views than a lot of the legacy media shows. probably getting on a regular basis. They could be getting there. That's pretty amazing. A lot of them. Yeah. And who am I? That's the thing. You know, people, you know, I'll see things and I don't know who these people Oh, he has no credentials. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm a I'm a college dropout, but while I was there, I did damn good. I was recognized for outstanding academic achievement while I was there. That doesn't count for anything. Well, I think that the the idea of this credentialed system is is slowly losing um importance for most of the younger generations. They they're not it doesn't even make sense anymore. It doesn't you have you can't just get a degree and still not think, right? That doesn't give you a right to be that way and to hold that over people. First, you know, look at you see all that that's all research. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's rows and rows. There's probably 50 uh three- ring binders, all hand research um that Randall's done from the 70s to the early 2000s. All of his research in on It's amazing. And uh yeah, that's from in the days when you had to like actually like go to a library and read. Yeah. But I don't do that much anymore because, you know, I've got all kinds of I have passwords and I've paid a few things here and there, research gate and all of this and so I can find almost anything online. Now there's a few things I can't. It's been probably a year since I've actually physically gone to the library and photocop something. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it is great. Yeah. Um we're getting more access. Yeah. Yeah. Information's out. The problem is is that there's so much information. How do you discern between the wheat and the chaff? Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's that's the next thing, right? Is uh you can actually it's not about it's about confusing. It's about just throw enough stuff out there that you just go ah I'll just watch Netflix and you don't have to I don't want to think about it. It's it's you know what I mean? It's now it's not just like oh one or two options. Let's just overwhelm with a bunch of things and now it's just it's it's you have to be dedicated to just go through one subject one something because there's so much going on. Yeah. And I, you know, one of my goals, I guess, is to, you know, I go through, I put a newsletter out every month and I review three, four, five things, reports, studies that have just come out that I think are very in I call it uh my cosmog uh cosmographic newsletter. Cosmography was, you know, back in the Renaissance days, you know, Leonardo da Vinci was the epitome of the cosmography. You know, they knew about geology, they knew about astronomy, they knew art, you know, they were very holistic people, you know, uh, Galileo, Tiko Brahi, you know, the list goes on. Kepler, you know, these were the cosmographers, you know, um, Giodarno Bruno, you know, who ended up being burned at the stake. horrible story. But but um so I select I go through if you look at my list, I've got about 40 or 50 journals that I check. Not everyone every month, but regularly. Regularly. Yeah. So I find things that look interesting. Like the one that I'm writing on right now is about Spirit Lake, which is in Nevada. And it goes back to the 1940s when they found a mummy in that cave. And they estimated that it was 1500 to 2,000 years old. Well, once upon a time, this is going back about 10 years ago now, they actually did the radiocarbon date on it, and it's almost 11,000 years old. Well, then the the Pyute Indians who uh live in that region of northwestern Nevada, um uh they have an oral tradition about their ancestors and in their stories they talk about how when their ancestors lived on the shores of a great lake. Well, where this cave is is right on the shores of an ancient lake that ain't there anymore. It's called Lake Lahont and it was a end of the ice age lake. So I mean their stories totally well how do they know that this was a lake 10 11 12,000 years ago but it's in their oral traditions right and so what this article is about now is they've done addition spent the last 10 years and they've been working with some of the pyutes who gave them permission to do the DNA testing on this mummy because they were reclaiming the mummy uh under the opices of the Native American graves and repaid Patriation Act and they were testing this mommy and they discovered that it is in fact genetically linked to the modern-day Pyutes. And now the question is how the hell did they maintain an or oral tradition that lasted almost 11,000 years? Because not long ago that idea was completely dismissed. Oh well, are you saying that that Plato had access to a a tradition that was 11,000 years old about Atlantis? That's ridiculous. Nobody's going to hand down an oral tradition that long. And now here we've got this evidence that yeah, Native Americans were doing it. Why couldn't the Greeks and their predecessors do it? So that's not going to work anymore to throw throw something out by saying you couldn't have an oral tradition that lasts 5 or 10,000 or maybe 12,000 years or longer, right? But so that's the story that I'm reviewing right now. It was it it appeared uh in was I believe the May issue of American Antiquity. So I'm that's one of the things I'm writing about for August newsletter about to go out. Well, and I think what's interesting is uh it's like we're saying we're losing trust in our educational institutions. Totally. Why why trust Why trust them? Who cares about a degree? Like we have kids that make more money being influencers than all the other kids who go get a degree in something and come out with a bunch of debt with no money. Right. So, like what is the point? What is the point of getting one? And I think that's that's sad cuz cuz there used to be a point. That's what's so interesting is there used to be a point that it was a helpful place to go to go learn and explore new ideas. And then eventually you that starts waning and they just start holding on to power and going well we have the degree and you let's shame people who don't have the degree. It's like it's become like this exclusive club. It's hollowing out. It's hollowing out from the inside though. And everyone those who are paying attention I think see it and you know earning earning a living is being disconnected from education from a from higher education at this as we speak other than being a doctor lawyer where now you need this for for for for insurance purposes that's the last one that they can hold on to those because you can't get insurance without without getting these specific degrees outside of those and those those will probably go away too thanks to chat GPT and and large language models but wow you know outside of those there's no reason to get a degree. Most most businesses don't even ask you for it. They never check that. It's not worth anything, right? Well, and and you know what's so bizarre is I'll say people, oh, well, he's not a real geologist. He's doesn't have a degree. Okay. So, yeah, I did study geology for two years. I got I I don't know how many people went through the program. I mean, what it was back in those days, it was still quarters. So I think we had two to three geology classes a week which were 40 and there was at least three or four geology. So probablyundred and uh you know 150 students 160 students would go through each quarter and then you got four quarters eight quarters that's however many. So, I got somewhere around here, there's a plaque that I got, outstanding geology student of the year, right? Because I came in there had already been obsessively studying geology for 10 years. I was like the oldest guy in my class. I'm already like your guys's age when I went in, you know, cuz I said, "Okay, I want to get some formal education on this." Um, I made good friends with the head of the geology department. Still still friends with her. Still see her. Um, you know, access to a lab, which was cool. Um, but you know, I have literally read 10,000 papers over the last 40 years. I've traversed at least 200,000 miles in the field doing geological, spent thousands of hours in the field with field guides, with papers. I've been out in the field with probably 25 pedigree geologists learning firsthand from them out in the field studying two weeks out in the field with one of the leading uh experts on drumlands in the world learning directly from him out in the field, right? How is that not worth as much as somebody who sits in in a room, you know, with a 40 other students listening to a lecturer or then watches lectures online, which I've watched hundreds of hours of lectures online, but some these people that just with a wave of hand, oh that none of that, ma, oh, he's not a real geologist yet. the last trip, the last two trips I've been on, I've had three geologists come on each of those trips because they realize I'm doing something that's unique and different and that I have actual real knowledge about things that have happened. Well, I think it's about uh doing as trying as hard as you can to just uh not pay attention to the haters because yeah, they the people who are really know and are really interested are paying attention and yeah, you know, I mean, the whole system can be gained. I heard this story. Well, it's not a story, it's this fact. Uh I went to UNCC Chapel Hill and in the in about 1994 uh they did this survey of what's you know how much money is everybody making from different majors and actually the geology major it was they they do this whole thing and all these majors are making different and and and it's landing exactly where you think it would be you know business majors are making this and whatever they go to the geology and the average geology m the average geology major from UNCC was making like $400,000 a year in 1995. five and they they kind of looked at it for a while and they had to dive into the data dive into the data and there was one major one person who was a geology major and that was Michael Jordan and so he skewed the data completely on the average geology major for UNCC Chapel Hill to being like over $400,000 and it was just oh god you know so yeah so you know I when I was in therec taking geology courses like what were the the the the professional prospects. Well, either you went to work for industry or the government. Yeah. And that's not why I was there. I had a job. I was loving my job. What I can't believe is you just told us a few hours ago that you live outside on a regular basis for months at a time. I I mean, I think every geologist should have to go do that. I mean, I think you'd learn a lot about the land. I I like your your intuition about being out in nature for so long, I think, has given you an ability and an insight uh that no one else has. that to spend that many hours in nature has to be helpful in the for for being interested in the world and how it operates. Oh, I think so. Absolutely. And I mean my my love of the geology really stemmed from that. That summer of 70 that when I traversed the Colombia uh gorge along the Columbia River was mind-blowing to me. And I I I came away from that there's a story here. I want to know what's going on here. But I I never I probably never will because it's I mean how how you know seeing these incredible landforms I felt like you know Guliver's travels when he was in the land of the giants right these features were on such a a huge scale that I'm like I that's what I came away with this feeling like you know like I was one of the Liipuchian or something and you know I've been back there god I don't know eight nine 10 times now since making that same traverse and only now I've gone with knowledge I understand what I'm seeing now. But once upon a time, I looked at it and I would have thought, "Oh my god, there's no way I'll ever know what's going the story is here." But now I know. So at least it's there's still things that I haven't figured out yet. But what I need to do right now is go take a leak. Get us all I've got some fresh if you guys like uh not from concentrate organic grape juice. Sure. Yeah. I've got a bit of a dry mouth from all this talking. Heck yeah. Yeah. And then I think we should maybe have a little celebratory sounds a great idea. Does that sound like an idea? Well, this has been a wonderful time, Randall. And thank you for spending all of this time with us and I just being man. I appreciate it. Your story is incredible. Yeah. And it's incred the way I just made it all up on the spur of the moment, you know. Yeah. All right. No, you know, I I don't think there's any I don't really need to embellish or exaggerate because it's just what happened, you know. I think you have an idetic idetic memory. Yeah. E I D E T I C. I think idetic. I mean, I think if anybody's listening to this the whole thing, it's un it's beyond contestation about your memory. It's it's unbelievable. Which I think gives you more credibility for what man, I wanted to talk about the moon. Let's go talk about the moon. But uh this has been awesome. We we we'll come back and do it again if you have us. This would be so fun. Or you know, I mean, I'm always willing to do something remote, but this is more fun. So, we're so close. Yeah, we can get here easy. Yeah. Well, you know what? Maybe what you guys do is, you know, we are looking at these this properties up in Tennessee. You might want to tag along and just see what we're looking at because we're going to we're going to we're going to close on one of the when we find the right one. We've looked at four four properties so far. The most recent one I haven't seen, but it looks like it could be the most promising one yet. Woof. Um, yes. And, you know, we've got some good people involved, people that I've worked with for years, people that I, you know, some people my age, some younger, some guys your age that have, you know, been successful in one and, you know, we want something alternative. Cool. So, I've put together a whole perspectus on creating a I don't know what to call it. Um, I'm calling it cosmogonia, world creation. And I talk about this, I've talked about this before, uh, you know, audiences, probably a dozen audiences now in the last couple of years. All I have to do is start talking about it. And people are like, "Yes, yes, we this." And this is I've been I've thought about this for 50 years, you know, and so the ideas have gelled around how do we affect this fusion of the best of our past and some of the lost knowledge of our past that we're now in this position of recovering and how do we blend that with modern technology to create a new world? I mean, that's what we have to do. We literally have to create templates for a new world. that that's our legacy. So a thousand years from now, humans can look back using Buckminister Fuller's terminology, omnisuccess, excess successful, and go, you know what? Thanks to that generation that was alive on the earth in the early 21st century. We're still here and we're prosper and the planet is prosperous. Yeah, they looked ahead a little bit. Let's do it. That sounds great. Roger that. Yeah, let's do it. All right. Well, let's get out of here. This was great. Hey, I think it's it's 1:00 a.m. That's a good good time to cut it. All right. See you. Bye, guys.