Instead of prepay, we're going post pay.
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Hello, folks. Welcome back to the Straight Forward Farming Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Reid, alongside Nick McCormick, coming to you on a cold, kind of a rainy night here. What is it, March 21st? Sixth, I think. Sixth, yeah. Yeah, I'm off a week. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So what's new in your world? Anything? Anything good? No, nothing too exciting. Just...

Trying to get ready for spring. Apparently some people already are. There's been a lot of ground work. I know you guys worked some. Yep, got all the corn stalks worked. I think we're going to maybe try to plant some possibly later on this week. Maybe, I don't know. Have to see what happens here. Got a new to us second planter, so make sure that's going to run. See what happens there and

Go from there, I guess. Looks like the forecast is going to hold a little better. You know, we're still not getting hot, but, I mean, we're going to be up in the 60s and 70s now, 50s of a night. Yeah. So, might be getting. I did see one night coming up not too far off, though. It was going to be down to 31. Oh, really? I didn't watch the forecast this evening, so I'll be darned. I think, unless they changed it. Yep. I don't know. I've had a few people tell me that April's going to be a wet month. I've lost track of the fog days, haven't been keeping track of them this year, but.

So I don't know if that's what they're going by or what, but they say April could be potentially wet. Well, it's pretty dry out there now. I say it's going to have to get with it. I had seven-tenths of rain last night. I mean, soaked her all up. I mean, it was damn dry. Yeah, you wouldn't really look how we got much, you know, by the end of the day today. Yeah, and I'm not going down this doom and gloom trail that, you know, we're already worse than 2012, and this whole year is going to be a train wreck. I'm not going there, but we are damn dry. We have been since last summer. I mean, we're going to be.

Yeah, I don't know. Sorry, I've got to adjust my microphone here a little bit. It's sagging on me. Yeah, I don't know. You can't plan ahead on that stuff. You never know. Nope, but it shut off, what, last May or June as far as consistent rains? I mean, we still got some here and there. But we didn't get a rain over an inch.

Until probably December. Probably, yeah. The fall drug on and off. I mean, if you didn't get it done last fall, that was your own fault. I mean, it was from cleaning fence rows and laying tile, just anything you wanted as late as you wanted. Yeah, it was fall forever. Yeah, and it's actually been that way this spring. They'll put rain in the forecast. They'll tell you, oh, you're going to get an inch, and we end up with two-tenths. So, you know, I don't know. But we don't have much subswell moisture, I can tell you that. No, no, we don't.

but nothing we can do about it so no and that can change on a dime two weeks from now it may start raining and rain all the way through august i mean yeah never so don't take it wrong i'm not painting a doom and gloom picture already out the gate that oh we're screwed it's you know not that so yeah it'll be what it'll be nothing we can do about it so nope nope that's for sure so how's the winter been going getting projects done yeah yeah i've been been uh yeah staying plenty busy there getting stuff picked up fixed up for guys and out the door as quick as i can and

Yeah. And sometimes that can be a challenge. I tell you, this parts deal is just... Is it still pretty bad? It's as bad as it's ever been. No kidding. Yeah. Is it they don't have people to pull the parts off the shelf and ship them, or they just don't have the parts, or do you know? I don't know for sure on that. I'm assuming mostly it's they don't have the parts, but it's so random. None of these companies are ever going to stock up like they had before, I don't think. They managed to get rid of all that old inventory. It didn't matter what you had.

at some point in time there it's like well we'll take that because that's the only thing we can get so they got they unloaded all that stuff and they're not stocking back up to those pre-covid levels and it's just a struggle and you never know what's going to bite you you know it's like oh you got three out of the four parts well that's great you know but that doesn't do you much good yeah if you got five pistons for a six-cylinder tractor i mean yeah ain't gonna do me much good no no

But I know on the flip side of that, I just noticed at your state, going by our local John Deere dealer, I mean, they have got machinery lined up row after. I mean, they have got the most. That's the most machinery I've ever seen there. Unbelievable. And granted, with Sloan's, you have 22 stores. You know, I'm not saying that one in Wisconsin don't have any. I don't know. But, I mean, it's a lot for our local store. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, I don't know. Like I said, it'll be what it'll be when we work through it. Like, at least now they can halfway give you a date and

And they'll come through eventually. You know, we're there for a while like you didn't even know. May never make it again. You know, a lot of products did get discontinued during that time frame. But hopefully it comes back around at some point. Somebody goes back to work besides me and you. I wonder how many games are being played, though, because once again, we've talked about this in the past. I don't know of anybody who is normally in the workforce, a good, honest, hardworking American that don't have a job. Yeah.

You know, you've always got your deadbeats that have never had a job and are never going to have a job. Yeah. But why suddenly do we have this short? Is it truly because baby boomers have retired so we don't really think about that end or not? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. And I don't think the drive is there as much for some people. You know, they're at work, but they're not maybe being as productive as...

as they could be or as people have been in the past and so on and so forth. The workforce thing has changed so much, though, too. How many guys did we know that when they were our age now, they'd worked at the same place possibly since high school, and they may have worked one, maybe two places their entire lives, and loyalty was somewhat rewarded and so on and so forth. Now it seems like you about have to job hop to get to that next step or to get to that next pay level.

And you know as well as I do, like in general, a guy that's been doing something for 30 years should be better at it than a guy that's been doing it for 30 days, right? Yeah. But I don't know. So I think there's a lot of that too. Like some of those guys don't know what they don't know. They don't know the back story to some of this stuff. Like they haven't seen this situation or been through this or did that because they haven't been there that long. Yeah. So I think there's a lot of turnover and help.

Yeah, it's a messed up situation. It seemed like there for a while it thought, well, okay, this thing's going to get itself lined out, you know, but it just never has. No. You know, and all those companies, or not all, but a lot of companies went remote, which I don't blame them. You know, they finally realized, hey, we don't have to have a $2 million office complex. People can get this job done realistically. And instead of being here eight hours at an office trapped here and mad, they can get their job done in four to six.

And then they can still go pick their kids up, whatever. And that's great. I'm happy for them. Yeah. But, you know, it's not terribly uncommon for me to call in to someplace and you can tell they're at home. Yeah. You know, which is fine. I got no problem with that. But that changes things a little bit too. It does. It's not like they can walk over to the other cubicle and be like, hey, Bob.

I got this going on. You know, they got to email somebody, you know, because nobody calls anybody anymore. You got to email them, wait for a response. So you add that day in all the time. There's an extra day, extra day. Well, an extra day in February is not that big a deal. An extra day at the end of April, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Yeah, it's almost like we went backwards today.

As far as speed goes, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago when people were still at the office, well, you had answers and then things flowed really nice. But like you say, now it's all, it's all email here and you got to do this here. And it, it seemed like it has slowed way down the other way. Anyone always claim that email is faster and all that. I don't know. I just didn't have a conversation. I'm the same way. We can do the email thing, but.

I just didn't have the conversation. Yeah. It's better than nothing, but yeah, that just don't. Well, and there's things, there's things that, you know, you're in a conversation that you would remember to ask or get the details on that you, that you don't put in an email or, you know, the connotation is taken the wrong way in an email, et cetera. I don't know. I prefer to talk on the phone, but that's me. Yeah. And I get it. I mean,

It is the new generation. I mean, they don't even want to talk on the cell phone now to, hey, what are you doing tonight? It's all text. It's all, you don't use your voice at all for anything. It's all. Well, even down to a, even a smaller scale. And that's like, hey, did you see so-and-so Snapchat? No. Why wasn't that in our group message? Oh, yeah. He didn't put that in the text.

We have a group text, the three of us, or the four of us, or the five of us. Why do I have to see it on a Snapchat? Why can't you just put it in the text? You know, if it was relevant to you and I, why do we have to have another app that essentially does the same thing that we're already doing? I don't understand that. Yeah. I wonder how many apps we're going to end up with as far as social media, you know, like your Facebook, TikTok types. Well, we'll end up, the government's going to cut them down to nothing. Yeah, it sure sounds like it. Yeah, just the one they've got. Hopefully it works as good as the postal service. Yeah.

I don't know. I have a hard time believing this TikTok ban will actually go through. And I'm all for banning Chinese stuff in this country. I have no problem with that whatsoever. But of all the things to start with, we're going to let them own land. We're going to let them take care of this, that, and the other. We'll ship factories over there. We'll do whatever. Yeah, but TikTok, that's where we got to nip it. And don't tell me that it's a national security issue with the southern border in a complete train wreck. At least come up with a better excuse.

That's all I'm asking. Just call a spade a spade and be like, well, you guys are getting your information too fast. Yeah. That's why we got to get rid of it because you can get it out there too quick to millions of people instantly. Like, we can't have that. Yeah. You know? And of course, there's so much BS on there too, but like...

It is intriguing, the stuff that you can find out about super quickly. It is. You know, in far off places that you wouldn't know about. But the funny part is, is Facebook is the same way. I mean, they're mining as much or more data and Google and all these other companies in the U.S. than what TikTok ever did. Yeah, exactly. And I guess, and maybe this gets way deeper than I think, but it's like,

just what kind of information are they supposedly stealing from me that's going to make this a national security threat? I mean, I don't understand that. Maybe it goes deeper than I'm willing to think. Are they really getting a lot of information out of the 10 million women on there shaking this to whatever song's trending today? Or some guy trashing a four-wheeler or a cold start in a 40-20? Yeah, what big information are they getting on that? Are they like, oh, we've got to stockpile 40-20s? Are we going to start them up? I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah, there's your tip for the day. The Chinese are loading up on 4020s. Yeah, probably starters for John Deere tractors. Probably. They're probably thinking, man, we've been making these parts shitty for years and these things still start. I can't believe how this is working. We've been trying to water these parts down to where they're completely unusable. Do you think China's economy really grows as much as they... I mean, it's just 10%, 10%, 10%. Oh, they had a slowdown. This year it's only 7%. But it's like, when you look at the exponential function of that, it's like...

They should have 65 billion people in their country now. You know what I mean? And everybody's worth $24 billion. I mean, when you start talking 10% year over year over year, I mean. I don't know. Everything they make is junk, and you've got to throw it away, though, so it probably does grow. Like, when was the last time you bought something? I know you did your sprayer rant, which is kind of funny, because earlier that same day, I was stretching fence, and I bought this fence stretcher at a local farm supply store. This piece of shit, the first...

piece of fence I go to stretch. It bends because it's a pile of shit, but it was the only one they had, so I assume it's top of the line, right? It's the only one they got. Second piece, I kind of got stretched. Third one, nope, it's done. It just keeps falling out of the fence. I'm like, to hell with it. I went to the shop. I made my own.

Then I broke the post off because I could pull on a sword. So then I had to do something a little different there. Couldn't blame the Chinese on the post, but my fence stretcher is hell for stout and has all replaceable lugs on it. So I made them out of half-inch grade-8 zinc-plated U-clamps, and they don't slip out of the fence. I'm good to go now. But, you know, you think about all that stuff, how many thousands of dollars I've spent on shit over the years

that I just ended up throwing away or used one time. And it's like, well, it didn't work that good the first time. It's going to be completely unusable the second or third time. So you got to go buy another one. You know, it's like estate sales. When we're 65, people are going to be like,

This guy had all this Chinese junk shit for like, it's not going to be like sales when we were younger or whatever. And you go, well, this guy bought this big console TV. Yeah. This guy bought this ratchet boomer in 1941, boomed down 10,000 tractors with it a year. And it's perfectly fine. Still functional as opposed to the Chinese one that I bought that, you know, worked twice. Yeah.

Yeah, and I get so sick of that. It's any store you go into. Any store. It is just Chinese junk from top to bottom. Just nothing lasts at all. And you can't, there's not even another option. Like, I'll pay more for the better stuff. Can't even buy it. Yep.

Yeah. In 1980, I think it was 88, my dad bought a grasshopper lawnmower. And they were like unheard of in 88. I don't know when they first come to the States, but I mean like nobody had a grasshopper mower back then. It was a grasshopper 1212, the model number. Still got it. You've seen our yard where we grew up. Huge yard. Yeah. Mowed that yard for 20 some years, whatever it was. Long time. I don't know if it was 20, but a long time. Moved it down. Still got it. Yep. Never really done nothing to that mower. Yeah. Yeah.

But now everything's just, it don't matter if it's a lawnmower, a chain boomer, whatever. You use it a few times and you throw it away. Throw it away, buy another one, which is how they keep growing their economy. And then we sell our scrap back to them. They melt it down, pour it into more useless trinket T-shirt for us and send it back to us. And we buy it again. Yeah. It is frustrating. Yeah, that it is. Like some of that stuff, like, you know, you're going to put this part on an old tractor, right?

let's say it's missing completely oh there's this reproduction company and they make them and then you get it and it's like well this thing's like you'd be better off just be like nah nobody makes this because the one you sent me now i'm out the 50 bucks 500 bucks whatever it is and it's not much better than not having it at all yeah like it's not usable yeah you know i hate that when you get some of them parts and the holes are off just enough that it won't fit or you're gonna copy it of course you know they're sitting over there laughing about it probably but

If you're going to copy this shit, make it right. You know, that's why I don't super get worried about wars with them because I don't think most of their shit will work. Exactly. Yeah. The Russians kind of proved that, but their stuff apparently ain't that good. They can't beat Ukraine. No. Allegedly. Yep. So yeah, I seen today, speaking of the shipping stuff, big ships smoked a bridge out there in Baltimore. Yeah. So, you know, that'll take years to get replaced. We'll have to do an environmental study and a whole bunch of bullshit and so on and so forth. Yeah.

that that's a, that's a weird deal. Like the first video I saw on that, I'm like, I kind of thought it was AI generated or some bullshit or whatever. So I did see one. Did the Simpsons actually predict that years ago? I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me. They did everything else. I saw one with the, you know, the guy doing the news on the Simpsons, but with AI, you never know. Right. If that was actually, if somebody made the ding video or if that was a real portion of the, I don't watch the Simpsons, so I don't know, you know, but.

yeah it could go either way it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't predict it yeah this ai stuff's getting out of control because now you don't know just like that you never know do i believe that the bridge was actually hit by a boat or do i believe that the simpsons predicted it or not i mean you don't even know which way is up or down yeah up down back and forth you don't know what's going on i feel so bad for for the people involved in that like there you were just driving to or from work whatever and

bridge collapses because... Yeah, that's what I told my wife this morning. I said, I bet that just unlocked a new fear for you, didn't it? Yeah. She's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, no doubt. The guy's going to be keeping an eye on the boats when you get across the bridge. Of course, there's not like a place you can pull off and wait usually. You know, you're either on or you're off. Yeah, did they say was that bridge a mile or two? There's pretty good ways across there. I forget. Yeah, it looked pretty long to me. That was a little...

that the whole thing just crumpled like that and fell in. I was too. You know, I could see knocking a section out of it, but once it dominoed, I mean, it just started. Yeah, it was gone. Yeah, it's a bad deal. Absolutely. And I'm sure that's probably some major artery to get in and out of a port or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be a big deal. I'm sure that'll be a reason that grain goes down. Yeah. Yeah. And everything else goes up. Yeah.

Yeah, if you stop and think about the stuff that we've actually got to see in our lifetime in the last couple years, we had a boat wedged in the Suez Canal, been through pandemics. I mean, we've seen all sorts of goofy shit. Of course, the boat in the Suez Canal thing made for a shitload of funny memes. Like everybody with a little bit of time on their hands had a 1066 or a Dodge Cummins or something hooked to it, you know, fake pictures obviously trying to pull it out and square it up and so on and so forth. Yeah.

Yeah. Of course, then you always get the one or two serious guys that might have legitimate information on it, but it's like, that's not funny enough. I'm scrolling past that. I don't even care about the facts and the real stuff. I got to move on to the guy that's making fun of it, you know? Yeah. Ain't it funny, though, how fast you get information now? I mean, by 7 o'clock this morning, I knew that a boat had hit the bridge. I mean, just boom. And then once you scroll TikTok or whatever or Facebook, any of it, I mean, there's just 9,000 people that have posted about it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

In other news today, I saw where Pete Eddie got arrested. I seen that old puff daddy. Sounds like he was doing a little dealing of goods. Yeah, hopefully if that is in fact the case, hopefully that dominoes down and takes down all the players in that game. Yeah. If you want to sign me up for my dream job,

I want to punish child traffickers. That's my dream job. I want to be the guy in charge of their punishment. Yep. It might be cruel and unusual, Tony, but it won't be unusual if you do it to enough people. It might still be cruel, but it wouldn't be unusual. Wouldn't be unusual. Yeah.

Yeah, and that'll be the next conspiracy theory. And I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but, you know, he gets taken down, and so there's numerous high-profile celebrities, and now somebody hits a bridge to take the attention off of them. I saw 10 TikToks on there today that were using that to distract over this arrest. And it could be. I'm not saying it's not. You know, so, you know, of course, the algorithm is what it is, and they've done a good job on that. But, you know, so I'm getting all these videos about that, too, and...

If that thing's as deep as they say it is, you know, that's tied into Tupac's killing, Michael Jackson's death. It's like, holy cow. I didn't get to see hardly. I was busy days, so I haven't watched virtually nothing. I've just seen he was arrested. They raided one or two of his houses simultaneously and made it quick, you know, so he couldn't erase another whatever. And then they just said suspicion of child trafficking. And that's as far as I've got into it. No, no, nothing. One video I saw, they found the footage on the Tupac killing.

A couple other ones had something to do with Michael Jackson. Like, apparently it's fairly deep. And it named off all the celebrities that if this deal is real, they will be tied into this deal. And it was a ton of your A-list Hollywood and musician type people. And I kind of think they probably are guilty on that. And I hope they get what they deserve on that.

Yeah, that whole Hollywood thing is just a big cesspool. I don't understand having that kind of money, and the only thing you can find to rub up against is a child? I don't get that either. Like, really? Like, you can... Yeah, you could literally go and stay at the Playboy Mansion for a week with, you know, women that are well of age. Yeah. But no, we're not going to do that. We're going to... Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't mean to sound weird there, but you get the point. Yes. You know, you're not doing it to middle-aged kids. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. If they are, in fact, guilty. I'm not condemning them now because, you know, they can pull a lot of weird stuff on that, too. But if they are guilty, I hope they get what's coming to them. And I guess...

You know how it is. Let's just say that you and I were going to go outside here and do some sort of highly illegal drug or whatever. The last thing you're going to do is video. Why does somebody always have a video of this stuff? I mean, who is the idiot? Like the Tupac deal. I'm like, that's got to be on VHS at best. Yeah. You know, at least originally. I'm like, why did you keep the tape? Yeah. I mean, yeah, when did that go down? That was in the 90s, like the mid-90s or something. Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, it had been a long time, way before cell phone cameras. Yeah, cameras, yeah.

Like, why do you still have the footage? Richard Nixon, why'd you keep the tape? I mean, this, I just don't understand. Yeah. Like during the Rodney King deal, put the camera down and help me from getting my ass kicked. Exactly. But, you know, whatever. But now everything's filmed now, you know, it's like. Yeah. I saw some guy going into a bar here the other day doing something stupid. The bouncer just, bam, drops him. But there's 10 people that already had their cameras out or immediately got their cameras out.

And I'm like, I'm not faulting you. I don't know what the guy said, did or whatever. I just saw a little clip of it, but probably what he deserved, you know, clearly the bouncer viewed it that way, but it's all on film now. I guess I'm not quick enough on a camera. Let's just say I was standing here and I was scrolling tick dark or whatever. And I seen something that was pretty for sure going to go down, uh,

I'm not quick enough. I'd have it so jumbled I couldn't even get to the camera on my phone in time to get it videoed. But I'm kind of the point. I want to live in the moment, too. I do, too. You see all these people out with these video cameras or their cell phones at a concert or something. How many times are you going back to watch that? Firework displays. I don't need to see your firework display. Your concert on video is terrible. Like,

Enjoy the concert while you're there and remember it and go on. The last two or three big vacations we took, you can go through my phone now. I'll bet there ain't 10 pictures between all three vacations combined. I don't do that. I don't get into it. I don't care. Now, I do regret some of the picture stuff here and there because once it became a digital age, like I remember my freshman year of college, if you had an event, the photographer would drop off this book.

And then all the pictures and they were numbered and you put your card in an envelope or whatever that you wanted. Put your A2, put your A7 and put your A25 and you put your 13 bucks in there or whatever. Well, then my sophomore year, it went to all digital. I'm like, well, I'm not putting my credit card online. I'm like, well, I'm not doing that. You know, the internet was new. You know, I didn't use my credit card much then. It's like, I'm not doing that. So I have zero pictures for my sophomore year on, you know, and then you get cell phones like, oh, I got all these pictures on it. Oh, I'll get them later.

I've got three cell phones that worked when I shut them off.

Guess what? They don't come on now. So those pictures are just gone. Yep. And same with, I remember as a kid at my house, every once a year you'd get out the photo albums, look through them with mom or dad or whatever. My kids have really never. We got a few from when Henry was born because back then, sell the pictures on your cameras. I mean, it was starting to come out, but it wasn't as popular as today. So we do have a lot of Polaroids of him, but the last two kids, I'll bet they ain't got it.

Six printed pictures of themselves. Here's your scrapbook, Joe. It's this one picture. Yeah. It's just one iPhone. Yeah. So they don't get to really look through them, old pictures. My wife did something cool at the time, but I think it got jacked up in the meantime. At one time, like when we first had kids, she started them both an email address. So she would immediately email the pictures to that address. So that eventually, when they got older, they could open the email and...

voila, here's all these pictures of my childhood. But I think somewhere in there, maybe nobody knows what the email address slash password, et cetera, et cetera is. Got lost in the wreckage. Yeah. I never was privy to the information, so it wasn't me. But I have to bring the Polaroids back. Yeah, we should. No doubt.

Better times. But even then, like nowadays, you know, we've been to just different get-togethers, neighborhood parties, whatever. And all the young kids, you know, they're just looking down the whole time. They miss the party for taking pictures of it slash showing their friends the set. It's like, why don't you just enjoy the people you're around and remember it and go on.

Yeah, like last fall when I had my party when Iron Mike and COVID and Tractor Guy and all that was here. If you look that night, there was a couple of us that made some videos. It literally took two minutes. But outside of that, there wasn't really nobody on a phone that night. Nobody taking pictures. Nobody just, everybody was just there having a good time. And I guess that's probably the age gap because we were all in our 40s plus. I suppose they had their phones in their hand. We had beers in ours. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that was the difference, Tony. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm just not going to live my life looking through a cell phone camera. And it's funny because...

I get that on TikTok every now and again. You go, whoa, I wish I had nothing better to do than make TikToks all day. Like, it's this whole production. I got to set up this stage, and it's an eight-hour process to make a one-minute video. It's like... It took them the same amount of time to watch it as it did for you to make it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because if you ever notice, I don't do much editing. I don't do anything. In fact, I don't do any editing. I shoot it, and I post it. That's it. So it took one minute out of my day. Yeah, absolutely. Moving on. Got it done. There you go. If you don't like it, don't watch it. But ain't it funny, though, how...

When you get, like, I'll go to TikTok just because it's so much different than the other apps. But, like, you see a one-minute video of somebody every day, and you really think you know them. But in the realm of things, the one minute of their day is nothing in the realm of things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it does give you a little glimpse into their life, maybe, or it might be all fake. Yeah, right. But, yeah.

It does baffle me some of the things that people are willing to put out there on TikTok. Yeah, it is. Like some of the questions, you know, I'm like, really? Like that's what you thought you should put out there? Like middle-aged housewife needs in the question to some sort of grooming. I'm like, really? Like clearly your parents aren't on TikTok, I hope, and apparently your kids aren't on TikTok. Otherwise, you wouldn't put that out there. I mean, maybe you're in a big city and –

You're completely anonymous, you know, but around here, like everybody knows everybody. Like, yeah, you know, you could try to do an anonymous video in an anonymous location, but I'm going to see a shed or a tree or a car or something in the background. But why know where he's at? Agreed. You know, like, I don't know. Apparently they don't have that and they don't care, you know, whatever. And I realized some of it's reviews, giggles, whatever, you know, and that's fine. But I can't get over the ones. So take whether like I'll use a tractor guy up there up north.

You know, you'll see that, you know, he's working on tractors all the time and this and that. And so you think that that's what he does for a living and all this stuff. And so you feel like you know the guy. And so you kind of follow that story that, hey, I'm working on this tractor and blah, blah, blah. But he don't really sit there and tell you a story. You just pick it up without even knowing. But when you get to these people who...

want to make a 50 part series on how their husband cheated on me to give you every detail it's like i can't get into any of that my wife she would just she'll and it it may not be something like that but it might be a murder or something i'm like i'm out after halfway through the first episode i'm done yeah if they start off slow it's like now especially depends on what mood i'm in but i'm like no moving on yeah might have been very valuable information but i'm moving on yeah and i'm terrible that way because my the few videos that i'd

I do put on there are probably just as bad on that. So I should be better about that, I suppose. Yeah, some people on there take forever to get to the point. Yeah. To each their own. That's cool. Nothing pisses me off more on a YouTube video. Like, thank goodness people do those videos on, you know, how to change a headlight in a 94 Buick or whatever. But, like, some guys are like, well...

And they give you the whole back story on the car. I'm like, I only need the 30 seconds of information on how is this clip release. But instead, you're giving me a four-hour diatribe on the history of Buick. Yeah, I don't care. You know, et cetera. I don't care. Just give me the pertinent information. But to their...

like they didn't have to do it at all. Yeah, I've learned as much from YouTube as I have Google as far as taking stuff apart that somebody took the time to show it. Yeah, thank goodness they did. And I remember when YouTube came out. I'll never forget. I heard it on the radio. They talk about this new app that came out.

and you're going to be able to video yourself. And I just remember thinking to myself, who the hell is going to want to video themselves and make a video about anything? And now that's like virtually all, every app is TikTok, YouTube. You know, everybody's mimicking TikTok now, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat. Yeah, it's all morphed into that. It has. Yeah. Well, I think it's because Facebook turned into what you had for dinner. It did. And 60-year-old women arguing politics. And, of course, the feed on Facebook is so weird. Yeah.

And my thing on Facebook is like, oh, I saw that. I didn't do anything about it. But I'll go back and look at it here in a minute, and I'll show Kelly whatever. Gone. Gone. Never going to get back to it again. Couldn't find it if you wanted to. Nope. You know, you search the page. It ain't on there. Yeah. That part is super frustrating. I can't get over on my Facebook feed for the last month or two is nothing but ads. Yeah. Yeah.

It wouldn't, I think, because every day I've got 50 people wanting me to like such and such country creations. I don't do any of that stuff on there. That's not why I'm there. Well, the problem is once you start doing that, then it's just more and more ads, this, that, and the other, and then you can't ever get to anything that's actually that you want to see. Yeah. Yeah, that part is frustrating. I mean, essentially, Facebook's turned into the Southern Illinois trader. It has. Exactly. When we were kids, if you wanted to buy a hunting dog or a four-wheeler or a car, you

You went to the gas station, and you bought the Southern Illinois Trader. Yep. It was basically just a newspaper. It was a newspaper with all classified ads, and it was broke down by category. If you paid enough, you could have put a black and white picture of it, or it could just be text, one or the other. Yep, either way. And that's how you found, it didn't matter what you were looking for. Pool table, there was five of them. You want a dog, they were broke down. You want a cat, they had a column for that. International tractor. Farm equipment, all that was in there. Well, now you always go to Facebook Marketplace to find that stuff. Yeah.

And it's funny, that's like the standard answer that everybody goes to. Well, I'm only on Facebook for Marketplace. It's like, well, now I see you on there scrolling and liking and commenting. Everybody starts off that way. It's a gateway drug, Tony. Exactly. And then my personal favorite, like,

Well, you didn't answer within 30 seconds. Like, you had to see the second the guy posted the ad or you're not getting it bought. Because if it's been on there longer than 10 minutes, well, it must be too high. Or it must be junk. Or somebody else had already bought it. Moving on to the next one. You know, on the off chance that I am there the second that guy posts it. Been on there for two days. Must be a piece of shit. Moving on. And I'm just as guilty of it. Like, I've thought that before, too. I'm like, ah, I should message. Ah, I'm not even going to message. It must be too high. It must be bad. Something's got to be wrong with it. It's been on there too long.

The one thing that baffles me, especially with our generation coming up, what I'm going to call old school, you know, we didn't have internet when we were kids. And in fact, I think what we were like juniors or seniors in high school, and it was like very first introduced. Yeah. And really none of us knew how to use it or knew nothing about it. I mean, we weren't. Well, by the time you got dialed up. Yeah. I mean, we weren't surfing the web. I mean, the teachers would talk about it or maybe show you something that you could do. And that was it. But yeah.

Every time I go to order a part or something online, I just sit there and can't help but think, you know, how fortunate we are now. I mean, could you imagine 20 years ago when you needed some rare off-the-world part, the process you had to go through to actually get that ordered? Yeah, and it was a process. But to a certain extent, has that technology actually made it any faster?

Like in the grand scheme of it, like, yep, I can find this. You need something for your 4010. Yep, you can find it from 25 other places. You're getting it from Sloan or Sloan Express anyway, which is 30 miles from here at the most. But you spend another two hours scrolling through the other places, this, that, and the other. I'm like, so did you gain any time by that? In the two hours that you wasted looking at the other options, you could have drove there and been back. That's true. Like, how many times do I get caught up in something on that?

Or, you know, you've got to email this order in. We can't talk to anybody. Well, then something's jacked up with it. Well, then there's another couple days email and so on and so forth. Where before, you went to the store, you said, hey, Jim, this is what I need. Okay, no problem. We'll have it in two, three days. I'll call you when it comes in. You know, now we've got text alerts and we've got this alert. By the time you check all that shit, your day's spent. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

So I don't know that it actually saves you anything. I wonder, and I guess to some of that, now granted, with us being from small town America, we don't have access to these big stores. You're not going to go anywhere around here and just buy a guitar in any random corner. There's a specialized place you're going to get a guitar. Outside of that, you're going to drive to a house of guitars. Used to be Bruce's house of guitars. Bruce must have got out, though. But take, for instance, this equipment that we're shooting this podcast with now.

We're going to go back in time to 1990 and say, we want to get some recording equipment to record a song or whatever. Where would we have went to do that? Who would you have contacted? I don't know. Yeah. We had to go to Nashville, Tony. Could have been. We had to go to Music Row. Maybe the House of Guitars. Like, hey, we can hook you up. Maybe. Samuel Music probably would have had it back then. Could have been. Yeah. Apparently, people don't rent instruments and stuff like that anymore. I mean, that was a big deal when we were kids. Oh, for sure. That's where every instrument came from for decades.

50-mile circle. Yep. It's not even there now. Yeah, them people made a fortune on just the band programs at school. Yeah, I would have thought. Yeah. Yeah. Not anymore. But it is funny to think nowadays that any item you want on this planet is at your fingertips. Might take a couple days to get it, but you can find it. You can find it generally, yeah. It's probably a Chinese piece of shit, and you'll have to buy another one. Yep. But, yeah.

Yeah, who knew we could have been learning more about computers. Instead, we were spending our time learning how to play the recorder. Yeah, I'm going to get me a recorder. I'm going to go online because I know where you'd get one and get me a recorder, and I'm going to make a TikTok. Next time I'm in the shop and something stopped me, I'm going to get out the recorder and play it. I could change this hydraulic pump on this tractor, or I could play the recorder, you know, see if it just falls off. Yeah. I played it a tune like the Pied Piper, but it didn't work. It didn't? No, I still had to get the wrenches out. Yep. Damn the luck. Well, if you'd have known a pronoun from an adverb,

you might have got something. That would have made all the difference. Yep, or underlined a prepositional phrase. So all that stuff has, let me rephrase that, that English skill stuff has a purpose, kind of, sort of. But then it's like, oh, nobody writes letters anymore. Nobody writes official letterhead. It's all emails, and apparently in emails, grammar's out the window, capitalization's out the window. You know, now people are fussy. Well, you, you, you,

you don't need to leave two spaces behind a period. Well, by God, that's the way I was taught. That's the way I was taught. I even do that on text messages. Absolutely. All these people, like, you know how the text message world is. Yeah. I mean, it's anything but grammar. Yeah. It's just hodgepodge shit put together. Yeah. We don't have commas. We don't have periods. And at the end of the day, you still get the point and know what the guy was saying. Yeah, no doubt. I do love the things that's, you know, if you know, you know, and it's just a bunch of letters. And it's like the first letter of every,

thing, it's like, get your ass in the house before you blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, I know exactly what that parent's saying. And it was literally just the first letter of every word, you know, put together. So I guess maybe we don't need the grammar and the punctuation. The part that gets me on the whole English, especially the English language, is

How over here, this letter makes this sound, but over here, the same letter is not even remotely close. It's like, what are we doing? Gallagher had a whole series on this, Tony. Really? Do you remember Gallagher with the watermelons that always smashed him? The comedian? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He had a whole series on the letters. He had one of those. It was like a flip scoreboard like they would use in a volleyball game, you know, at the rec center or whatever, with letters. And he would go through, you know, this word's pronounced like this.

Flip this one letter. It should be this. No, but it's not. It's something else. But that's most of the listeners will have no idea who Gallagher was and or any of his skits. But he always had the sledge-o-matic and busted fruit. Was he the guy that wore the funny hat, had a big mustache? Mustache, long hair. Yes. Yeah, kind of a mullet. Had a giant wooden sledgehammer and always busted watermelons partway through the show. I know who you're talking about.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, and I get it. There is some things to the English or grammar that, I mean, you need. Drive out to the high school tomorrow and see if anybody can lay out a letter properly. Oh, yeah, with the date and the address and all that. And indent the first part of the.

My guess is they can't do it. Nah, probably not. And I'm not knocking the kids. No. They don't probably need to know how to do that because nothing official comes out like that anymore. Like we didn't have to learn to write shorthand. Most of our grandparents could for whatever reason. Of course, now the kids, they can't read cursive. Yeah. So we had a deal. It was when Dad was sick. The local hospital here got hacked by the Chinese or the Russians. I don't remember which one. Some communist organization. Democrat Party. Exactly. So they had to run...

They had to run handwritten stuff from one department to the next. Well, the doctor's writing cursive. Nobody under the age of 30 could read that. So they're taking these notes. They have no idea what to say.

Because they can't read cursive, which boggles my mind. How do you write a check if you can't read cursive? What are these teachers doing at school? I mean, that was in third grade. Oh. We learned. That stupid lined paper. Remember the chalkboard deals? You had to hold three pieces of chalk so you could do the chalkboard. Sure enough. And then you'd go up there and you'd write your letters. And I should have paid a little more attention to that because I can't write for shit anymore. My handwriting is terrible now. I actually don't write in cursive much for the simple fact that I don't write much. It's a...

All my stuff is like a list, the bolt here, this or that. So I don't write it in cursive just because it's for whatever reason. I couldn't tell you last time I sat down and actually wrote a letter, a paragraph,

Let's bring it back. We'll start writing handwritten letters. We're going to start doing TikTok. Next time I want to come over, I'm going to write you a letter. I'll mail it in advance. Hey, Saturday, what are you doing? You want to shoot a podcast? If we could put this on TikTok, I could be like, oh, postcard for Nick. Oh, it'll be your Saturday. Sweet. By the time you agree to it, send me a letter back. It'll be Tuesday of the next week. Well, by the time the post office fucking loses it. That ain't no shit. That's the stuff to Pennsylvania. A couple weeks ago, the 21st of March, it was in PA.

Today it was in Kansas. No idea why. Nobody can tell me why. It's priority. Nope. Apparently it wasn't too high a priority. It wasn't high priority. I can tell you didn't have that in the Pony Express days, Tony. That horse had been damn tired. That's right. It had dropped it off at the right spot. That's what we're bringing back. Pony Express. Pony Express.

A lot of our listeners probably don't remember. Joe Biden's economy, delivering it by horse may be the only way we can do it. Could be. We're going green. Yeah. Yep. But a lot of the listeners here probably don't remember back when it was called Federal Express. Yeah, that's probably true. That was before FedEx. It was Federal Express when we were kids. So correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that guy get started? Yep, by the way.

Yep, by shipping money. Checks. Yep. He would take checks, and it was federal expense. A lot of it was checks from the government. Exactly. That's where the federal part came in. He got a plane or whatever, and he would air freight checks because that made so much difference on the interest of large companies.

Scale transactions. His college professor, I think, told him that that was the stupidest idea he'd ever heard and that would never work. And so that guy sends that guy something every year, be like, ha, ha, ha, sends him his financial statement or whatever. Did that come out of the University of Illinois also? That I'm not sure of.

That I couldn't tell you. But yeah, basically, instead of... Playboy and Bill Murray did, but I don't know about that. Okay, I couldn't remember. But nonetheless, so is what Nick's saying, is if I'm in Chicago and I want to mail a very large check, $500 million to somebody in Shanghai, China, by the time it takes it to get there two weeks later, this guy's racked up $50,000 worth of interest and hasn't even got the money yet. Yeah. To where this guy said, hey, I'll just fly it over there personally.

Then you'll have it tomorrow. Yeah. So that's how FedEx started. I remember in the book, It Doesn't Take a Hero by H. Norman Schwarzkopf, one of the greatest generals we've ever had in the history of the U.S. military. And there was a section in there when Saudi Arabia wrote us some check during Gulf War I. It was like $760 million or some shit. And they flew it immediately back because the interest, the time that plane was in the air, the interest on that money that they missed out of just, and they did fly it, but that was...

a ton of money. Sure. Like, you know, I don't remember now what exactly what the figure was. I read that book in years, but it's a good read. I recommend it. But, uh, and of course, when you start playing in the millions and billions, like that adds up and it adds up fast. And that was a genius business plan for that guy. But, but you know, it baffles me how,

FedEx, UPS, whoever else, DHL, they can, for the most part, in a timely fashion, get things to and fro. There's always a few hang-ups here or there. But for the most part, I'm pretty confident. USPS, I have no confidence whatsoever. Can't pull it off with this equipment, too. No. So, like, you know, farmers got to file by March 1st their taxes or whatever. We run it right up to the deadline and ended up filing the last day of February there. And I told the wife, I'm like, I'm going to have to do the FedEx this thing just so I know that they get it in time. I mean, yeah.

It's insane. I just can't fathom how the government pisses so much money away in other areas, don't think twice about it, but when it comes to the post office or stuff that we actually need, it's like they're always budget cuts and short-staffed and won't spend no money. Yeah, it is mind-boggling. Like, you put UPS in charge of the post office, that's a 180 turnaround and it makes money the first week. Yeah, for sure. But...

whatever, like that federal express deal, like how much of that's just timing though? Like the guy had a good idea, but like five years before that, maybe you couldn't get, couldn't got enough pilots or got a plane or whatever, you know? And that's probably a poor example, but a lot of times the guys end up being these great businessmen. A lot of it just had to do with timing and they hit it, hit it at the right time, made a ton of money. Well, then it's, I assume they say it is fairly easy to make a bunch of money once you have a bunch of money. I'll never know. But,

You know, you see some of that, you know, guys that hit it big in the dot-com era or, you know, whatever. Like, you know, 10, 20 years after the fact, like, doing those check deals wouldn't have been. Now you can just ACH it through the computer system. You didn't need that service necessarily, which is why they deliver packages now, not checks. And back then, I guess, if I'm a big business or individual, whoever, and I'm going to write you a

a check that is so big that it needs to be flown over there to avoid the interest well at that point i probably have enough money i got my own plane why wouldn't i just fly it myself yeah exactly i don't know how that works a lot of it's just timing yeah yeah yeah there's been a lot of really cool businesses started that were either timing or grazing palms i don't maybe both i don't know but yeah one probably had to lead to the other but yeah

Yeah, and that's why you need to invest like Nancy does. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she's the best there is at it. Yeah, get in Congress and then you'll have the inside loop on all of it. Yeah, absolutely. Yep, I don't know. Yeah, it's a mixed up world out there these days. It is, yeah, it is. I would get involved in politics if you said you'd give me a million dollars. Yeah, I don't have the...

I don't have the stomach for it anymore. I can't take the PC bullshit and the beat around the bush. Let's just get to the rat kill and find the root of the problem and get it over with. Like, they overcomplicate all that stuff. They throw 10,000 things together in the same bill. It's like, well, so-and-so voted against this. Yeah, but the 15 other things that were in that bill...

were allegedly good things you know so which is why they throw them together so they can get does it become an ego thing and let's just let's just pick hillary clinton out of the the pile just because it's an easy target you know worth hundreds of millions of dollars yeah you know what are you still doing in that cesspool is it just now an ego power trip thing well and i think you have to stay in there to keep covering your ass right i i suppose like once you're out

Well, then you can't pull the strings of the people you need to cover up all the dirty shit you did before. You know? It's like the mafia, Tony. It is. Once you're in, you're in. You can't get out. Yeah. And that's no disrespect to the mafia because I actually have more respect for them than I do Hillary. Oh, I've said it a hundred times. In the event that I was to be elected president, my entire cabinet is going to be mafia because they get shit done. Yes. They make a believe right of everybody. In a very efficient manner. Exactly. Yeah. They pull it off quick. Yep. I would have no problem with that whatsoever. Yep. No doubt. No doubt.

So what else is new? Anything? Nothing else too super exciting. Just, like I said, gearing up for spring. Started working on the old Scout yet? You putting it together? I got a pile of parts for it. I haven't got it out yet. Just haven't had time. I get it. I can't be jacking with that when I need to get guys planting tractors done with spring coming on. But this summer I'll get around to it. And for those of you listening, I said this on TikTok two days ago and...

For legal purposes, I'm not saying any more, but I'm just going to say that Saturday, August 3rd, I will be at the Brew Bank in Stewartson, Illinois with my beater with a heater. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, there you go. So...

Whatever happens, happens. Yeah. Not true. Not true deal. We're just leaving it at that. Yep. And that's as far as it goes. Yep. It's hard to say what Buick you might have by then, Tony. That's true. I mean, it's escalating. Yep. I sold the old Redwood to my brother. He was looking for a work car, so I said, got just the car you need. Yeah. I upgraded to this other one here. So. Yeah. Yep. Been driving the shit out of the old 78 Ford. Runner every day. Up and down the road. Rain, snow, salt. I don't care. Just drive it. Drive it.

I get it. That's what it's there for. Exactly. It's what Henry Ford would have wanted. It is. Yep, it truly is. Yep, I'm not going to have it sitting in the corner of the shed and covered up. Yeah, I get that. No, I'll get the old Scout out of here. I got some stuff for it. I need to order some more stuff for it. I mean, it's drivable now. I forgot how good a shape that thing was actually in until the other day. It was out in the shed there. I mean, that is a...

Yeah, it's not, it doesn't have major rust anywhere. No. I need to do something with it. Did you dump Stabil in the gas? You know, Paul Harvey was always a big guy on Stabil. No, no. I think she'll just take off and run. She'll take off and run. If I get the battery charged up and put a fresh battery in, it'll just fire up and run. Or at least it always has. Yeah. Yeah. I've never had any trouble with that. Just...

that's one vehicle i have not met on the road in years as a scout you know when we were kids every now and again you'd see one here or there very often anymore of course back then they weren't you know some of them was 20 years old you know they weren't that old of a vehicle but yeah now they're getting there and most of them rusted out when they were five years old so yep yeah i got a lot of projects tony yeah i know that and at 14 two or three other tractors i want to redo and

So on and so forth. Which that 14 nits getting down to the short rows on it. Yeah. I don't have a ton of stuff to do to it yet. Just it's one of those things. If I wasn't going to paint it, wouldn't be a big deal, but since I want to paint it, well, I want everything tight and right. And so then that turns into a bigger deal, you know, and then it's, then it's the age old debate. Would you paint like IH did where you just hose it down in red or

Or do you pull this hose off or tape it off or this? They're like, International didn't do that. They painted it all red. Exactly. You know, but to be truly original, you paint over all that. I mean, over all that, the boots on the clutch booster. I mean, they just paint over all that shit. I don't really want to do it that way. So, I mean, we'll see.

But I got a few minor things, nothing major to do to it yet. The bad part on them old tractors is it's really hard to get them to not leak. You know what I mean? You can fix them now, but in six months, it might be just a drip or whatever. It's not different. I want them all fixed. It's hard to keep one of them things tight where it doesn't leak a drop. My dad always said internationals were designed to leak, and that's probably true. Yeah, my 4010 does. They all got a drip somewhere, you know. Yep, just part of it.

Yeah, but I'd like for it to be right at least initially. Yeah, I get that. I'll probably get around to it here, hopefully this summer. It ought to look pretty good, though. Yeah, it should be fine. It's almost a waste, though, because I'm not going to do anything with the damn thing, other than cruising around here and there. Which, luckily, there's enough tractor drives around here. I mean, I'll put it on something eventually, I suppose. But like I said, I've got a handful of other ones that I want to do similar things with. Some of them need a lot. Some of them don't need much.

I want to get on those too. I need to get my grandpa's old 630 case out and get it redone. But I've been saying that for 25 years. Yeah. But I'd like to get that out and going too. We were going to do that this winter and it just didn't happen. Some of that's hard when you get a couple generations deep. It's like, well, I want to keep this one and redo it because it was grandpa's and this one was dad's and this one was mine. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, I got several tractors on that lineup these days, so I got to get –

get on that you know get all that taken care of i want to get the old v8 repainted and i just haven't got around to that it doesn't really need anything it just needs painted yeah but yeah and that you know paint a tractor that's i mean i'm telling you now that's quite the undertaking i mean it is especially if you're gonna do like said and tape the only stuff the only major thing i gotta do to it's you know half those stupid little square nuts that pop in there need replaced or you know because they're shitty and janky anyway and

I wouldn't mind having the valve covers chromed and the headlight bezel on the grill and that shit chromed possibly. Which, I guess, well, you have to take most of that back down to somewhat bare metal. Because, I mean, the paint on it's good. It's just not factory colored. How do you go about it? That's my debate. I'm scared to death to have it blasted or I won't sandblast it. So you could media blast it or soda blast it or they got walnut shells or this, that, and the other. Or I could just paint over it. Yeah.

Or I could honestly, I kind of think if I just pressure wash it, you know, several times, I could probably just blow most of that shit off. Yeah. I will tell you this much, just from my experience with my 4010,

because i didn't sandblast it either i found the best thing that worked was the just the regular paint stripper you get at walmart menards whatever and man i'd slap that stuff on there just thick as hell i'd usually let it set overnight i'd do another coat of the paint stripper and then you could come back the following day with a wire brush and i mean that would just fall off i mean just down to bare metal i mean so it's a little bit time consuming yeah letting it soak

And I found the wire brush is what worked the best because I had scrapers. I took the grinder with the wire wheel. All that shit seemed like a grinder with a wire wheel. It was almost like it burnt through it and almost burned it to the metal. So just a regular handheld wire brush, and that shit just fell off in piles. I can believe that. And then, of course, I didn't do it to the frame. That was just the fenders and the sheet metal. I didn't do the frame or anything like that. You know, it's got one of those old stupid square chrome grills in it from way back because...

It was a long story, but the grill that was in it ended up getting robbed for something else and

And I had another one for it because some of those were cast aluminum and some of them were plastic. Well, I had a cast aluminum one there. I can't find that thing to save my life. I don't know if dad sold it, used it in something else, put it in something else or whatever. No, and then we probably sold it. Yeah, no doubt. I found the headlight bezel because I bought all that stuff when we were doing a pulling tractor for a guy. And we ended up getting all custom sheet metal made for it. So it was way bigger so none of it fit. So I'm like, I'll just keep that back. I'll send all that shit off and have it chromed, swap it out. Well, no.

The grill's gone. So I got to find another one of those because I'm not going to use the one that's in it. But I don't want to use the plastic one because it's plastic. So I got to track another one of those down, which is not a huge big deal. I just got to take the time to do it, you know. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, that stuff takes time. I mean, you'd think, man, painting this tractor, I can pop this in and out and be good to go. But, boy, it sure don't work. I mean, it don't work that way. It's time you start talking wheels and rims. You know, I want to paint the weights, right?

You know, for farming, we didn't have any weights on it because we just planted with it. And it's got two sets on the rear because that's what it had when we got it. But I'd like to put four on it probably just from a look standpoint. I want to put a full rack on the front or at least some weights on the front. Sure. I want to paint them up the way they should be painted, the way God intended IH weights to be painted. Well, that takes hours to do. It does. Nicely and correctly, at least for the outside too. Yep. You know, it takes a long time. And so I got to get...

I got a lot of shit to get done. Who knows? We'll never get to it. But I guess at the end of the day, it probably don't matter anyway. But I'll try to get to it. Yeah. You need to just win the lottery. Then you can just do that full time. No doubt. I still wouldn't have enough time. You've got to play the lottery to win the lottery. That's true. I don't do that. It's hard to win if you don't play, and I don't play. But I don't know. Did anybody win the last time? I've seen it was up to $800 million. It was $900 and some last time I saw it. But I don't know if anybody won that one or not. Yeah, don't keep up with it.

If I can afford the lifestyle I'm currently living with that, then I might get back into tractor pulling. So you get to keep $400 and some million. If I had $400 and some million, I'd probably get back in. A little different approach to it, probably, but I'd probably get back in.

Yeah, when you've got the kind of money you can spend a million dollars a day for a little over a year. Yeah. I would probably be out of stuff to, well, I don't know, because, you know, one day I'm going to rack up something that's $50 million a day that I wanted, where tomorrow I may only spend $500,000. So I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I'd probably get back in at some level with that deal. But I don't think I'm going to have to worry about it, though. Yeah.

I don't know, what would a guy do if he woke up tomorrow and he had $400 million just cashed? That was yours free and clear coming from the lifestyle that we live now. Tomorrow, an instant $400 million. I don't know that I'd go out and be buying a bunch of land and going hog wild. I just, I don't know. Unfortunately, you'd have to move to where nobody knew you, you know, almost.

The first thing you need to do is hire 10 of your buddies. Otherwise, who are you going to screw off with? Agreed. You're going to have to pay your buddies $100,000 a year just to hang out with you. Because otherwise, they're all at work. And here you've got $400 million and you're sitting around by yourself. Yeah. Once again, probably not a problem I have to worry about. Yeah, I don't think so either. I don't have the most pimped out Volvo you ever saw. Yeah, exactly. Just because I could. That would throw everybody for a loop.

Yes, it would. Yep. Yeah. That would be a drastic lifestyle change. The headaches that would go along with that would probably make it not worth it at some level. Yeah, you'd have to have a full-time lawyer, accountant, bodyguard. You'd have to have it all. Yeah, you'd have to have it all. I really do think you'd run out of stuff to do. You'd have to do it Brewster's Million style. You ever seen that movie? Yep. Blow through the first $30 million so that you're tired of spending money and you just go on from there.

Which, truthfully, between farming and tractor pulling, wouldn't take that long. No, you could actually pull that off in pretty short order. You could pull that off and not leave the county. I for sure wouldn't build a new big fancy house, I don't think, because I'm not going to give this state the justification. I wouldn't put it on the air a whole lot. Yeah, that either. I don't know if I'd go buy a bunch of land. I don't know what I would do. I really, I just...

I don't know. I don't know. It'd be nice to have a little spread like, oh, I'd like to plant today.

It's February, but I feel like we're on the planter. Yeah. Yeah, or, you know, 60 acres with just track hose and dozers, and you just call your friends and dig holes and fill them in. 640 acres of woods with 40 acres cut out in the middle, and that's where you live in the middle. And we're going to go four-wheeler riding today. We don't have to go to Attica. We don't have to go to Missouri. Just right here. Oh, you want to knock a tree down with a high hoe? That one's kind of bothering me anyway. Fire up the cat, knock it down. That part would be fun. That would be fun.

I don't know that I would do the Whistlin' Diesel and build a new fancy shop and then fly helicopters through the ceiling. Yeah, I probably wouldn't do that. Stuff like that. It just couldn't be wasteful like that. I love watching his videos. They're hilarious. But it's like, holy Christ, this guy goes through a lot of money. I mean, when you look at what he has tore up just in his new shop alone. It's a lot. It's a bunch. It's a lot. I mean, it don't bother me, and I couldn't care less. It ain't my money, but it's like, holy potatoes, this guy is just tearing up shit left and right.

I always said I would approach tractor pulling a little different. I would probably go to our local county fair and donate a lot of money to the fairgrounds. And then I would have several pulls there a year.

And I wouldn't have to go very far. That's true. Yeah. They could come to me. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the part I don't like is the travel on this, that, you know, which I suppose wouldn't bother me as much if I wasn't missing work and somebody else was driving the semi, et cetera. And you could just be like, well, you go ahead and take off. I'll be there in a couple of days in the plane. Yeah. I'll just fly in. Yeah. That would be nice. But then I think about every celebrity that's got killed in their own plane. I know. I agree. Davey Allison, Fox.

The Big Bopper, so on and so forth. I just saw one the other day on somebody else that was supposed to be on. It wasn't Tammy Wynette. It was Patsy Cline, I think. Yeah, her and her. George Jones had ate her chicken dinner. So she didn't like to eat a big meal. I think it was Patsy Cline. I could be wrong. It was one of those old-time famous country women singers. She didn't like to eat a big meal before a show. And I think it was George Jones. I think. Came in drunk. Saw this chicken dinner sitting there. Ate it.

She got done, got mad, wouldn't take him on the plane, and then her plane crashed. No kidding. Yeah. I'll be damned. He was supposed to fly with her to the next show, and she's like, no, to hell with it. You're not going with me. And then her plane crashed, did it not? Yeah, it did. Yeah, she had a plane crash. Yeah, it was Patsy Cline. Yeah.

Yeah, chicken dinner saved his life. He'd come in drunk and there's this fried chicken, mashed potatoes or whatever. He was like, oh, I really need that before I can go on stage. And he woofed it down. And yeah, she wasn't happy and wouldn't let him ride on the plane. Yeah, there's been a lot of them. Reba McEntire's old band. Mm-hmm.

Well, Waylon Jennings was supposed to be on a plane with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in it. Yep. Sure enough. Lost a bet, didn't he? It was coin toss, yeah, or whatever. Yep. Because, yeah, the heater was out on the bus and they flipped coins or drew straws, whatever. Here's what I know about planes, Tony, if I ever get that kind of money. Planes got to have four engines and two pilots or my fat ass ain't getting on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Playing with one engine will take you all the way to the scene of the crash. Yeah. Those little planes, I've flown on them a few times. They make me nervous. Yeah. Yeah. They're not as robust as I'd like them to be. Same with helicopters. I've flown on helicopters a few times. And if I've flown a helicopter, I'm looking for air wolf. Mm-hmm. You know, I want something that's pretty badass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not looking to be on your local plane.

yeah look at john denver gets killed the fucking ultralight i mean why would you have one of them with his fame and fortune an ultralight of all things yeah one thing you go down in a lear jet i mean yeah you went down in an ultralight come on yeah no thanks yeah i'll take something bigger than that yeah that's just not my not my cup of tea

No, no, it's not. But next thing you know, you're crossing a bridge on your way to work and, you know, some asshole runs into it, knocks the bridge down. So I suppose it's your time. It's your time. Yeah, I suppose. Try not to increase my odds any more than I have to. But I guess the flip side of that is, is my hat's off to whether you're a comedian, a music singer, whatever, you know, living on tour buses. Man, I couldn't do that. No, no.

300 days a year just on a bus. No thanks. Yeah, I'm good there. We took a Bresson senior trip. That was about all the tour bus and I needed. Yeah, same here. That's just not my jam. That was a great trip, but buses are not my thing.

Yeah, and I don't know why more of them don't fly. I mean, maybe it's the expense, but most of them, you know, when they're doing a tour, they're going from St. Louis to Indianapolis. You know what I mean? Yeah, they're not going that far. But still, it's the fact you've been on this bus for nine weeks straight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm good there. I'm good there. Give me a residency in Vegas. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. Yep. Shack me up with Celine Dion or whoever the new ticket is in town. Yeah, I'll just keep playing my same show here and there and move on. Yeah. Yeah.

Once again, not something I'm going to have to worry about. Yeah, I don't think I'll have to be booking any tours or anything like that. No, no. So you've done a video on the 1580 Heston with Ryan Kelly the other day? Yeah, we did a tractor story. I think Ryan's on to something. If you guys ain't checked it out, go to YouTube, check out WI Titan 2, Ryan Kelly. He's going around the Midwest checking out different...

tractor stories. Not every story is this way, but just for instance, if somebody bought a 4010 new and he just interviews them, they've had it for... Just a unique story to them. It doesn't have to be necessarily the rarest tractor you've ever seen. That tractor has a story on their farm for whatever reason. And it's Indian all brands. Grandpa fell off of it. Grandpa took a loan to buy it. Yep, traded in a team of mules for it. Yeah, whatever. Like,

You know, they're all unique in their own way. Yeah. Yeah, they're good stories for sure. Yeah, you need to do more videos on that, Heston. A lot of people still don't realize Heston. Still don't realize they had them, yeah. Tractors. Hell, I suppose I probably wouldn't either if you guys wouldn't have sold them when I was a kid. Yeah, no doubt. Just because of you guys is why they're around here. I mean, what other reason? Wasn't anybody else close, no. How far would a guy have to went to the next dealer that sold tractors in this area? The next one that sold tractors would have been, I honestly can't tell you.

Had to have been a long way. I don't know. It had been fairly far. There's a spot in Oklahoma, Texas, somewhere in there that somebody always comments. Must have been kind of popular there. Yeah, there was a bunch of them in Oklahoma. There was a ton of them on feedlots and stuff in Oklahoma. There was a few dealers in Kentucky, for sure, that I know of. I know one in northern Illinois, like around Yorkville. Other than that, I don't know that I can tell you for sure. Of course, there again, I mean, I was three to...

12 you know something like that 3 to 15 somewhere in there i mean like it so it's hard to you know my memory is pretty good for the most part but it isn't that good i wasn't paying that much attention to that stuff back then you know and even when fiat bought new holland's like well who bought who here and then you know they chose a different path and that's fine it's probably the way to go but you know wasn't really thinking it would go that way necessarily so

Did you know that, and I'm not going to mention any names, and it's probably all of them, but these companies nowadays are getting carbon credits from the government or however this works to reduce the number of tillage tools that they produce. Really? And the flip side to that is, is they're all coming out with 800 plus horse tractors.

Now, just what are you doing with an 800-horse track? What would be your first guess that you would need 800 horse for?

Well, probably to put on a PTO generator once the power grid collapses. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that is a fact that they are actually giving company carbon credits. I can believe that. To reduce the number of tillage tools. We are so stupid. The make-believe shit that we do with the illusion of money and the fake shit that we do just boggles the mind. It does. If you were just...

And I, we've talked about this before, but like if you're playing the game command and conquer, which was popular when we were younger, the first thing you do is build a shitload of power stations because you can't build anything else for self-defense to build your city or anything without a shitload of power. Once the power's out, you're done. Power's out, you're done. And none of those were wind. None of those were solar. No. And you wouldn't waste the real estate building that stupid shit.

You built nuclear power plants. They're small, and they produce a shitload of power for a lot of people, a lot of things instantly. So that's what you build, and that's real life. That's the way it should be done. If you're starting your own society, if you're starting from ground zero, we drop you off in Liberia, we drop you off in Mexico, California at this point, and honestly Chicago. But if we drop you off and there's no infrastructure, nothing there, the first thing you're going to be like, well...

I guess I'll get a solar panel out and see if I can't, I'll Amazon me in a solar panel and see if I can't get some power for this thing. Hell no, you're going to build the most efficient thing that produces the most efficient power, the most power, so that you can expand from there. And I'm not saying emissions be damned on some of this, but like we're worried about all this. Meanwhile, China, India, every other country in the world for the most part is doing whatever the hell they want to do.

It's net zero. Yeah. And forgive me if we've talked about this, maybe even on the last podcast. We get to drinking and I forget what we talked about. No doubt. But nonetheless, so if this is an emergency, right, because, I mean, we're told that now the climate change, we're getting to the emergency stage, right? Yes. Okay. So in my opinion, when something's an emergency, you cut all non-essentials, start

starting out, right? Yep. Okay, so to me, no more Olympics, no more World Series, no more sports of any kind. None of that shit. That's not essential. No, not essential. I mean, look at the carbon footprint that just the NCAA tournament has. Oh, it's huge. From the people driving to it, the people, the teams, the news crews, all over the... Just look at the paper that gets wasted making the brackets. Yeah, agreed. But that's people running chainsaws, evil two-stroke chainsaws polluting the world.

Yeah, so it's all smoke and mirrors. Every bit of it. My thing is like, okay, politicians want to push that down your throat that you need to do this and you need to do that. Okay, that's neat. What are you driving? And when was the last time you were on a plane flying by yourself? How big's your house? How big's your house? You cut down U.S. military. Not that I want our soldiers getting blown up because their shit's regening, but if it's good for us, it's good for them. Agreed.

The presidential limo, that son of a bitch is electric, and it goes 45 mile an hour, and it's got a 100-mile range. We'll stop, and we'll charge it up. I don't care if we've got to get a team of homeless guys on the corner with bike generators, and they pedal their asses off until that thing's charged back up. I don't care how we do it, but we're going to go as green as possible on that deal, right? Totally agree. Lead by example. Totally agree. Lead by example. But I don't see any of them doing any of that. Could you imagine if all we have ever known in the history of our life is electric vehicles?

And then all at once, tomorrow somebody comes out and says, you know what? I got this vehicle. Got this little tank here on the side. You dump this gasoline in this, you can drive 600 miles. When you get to that 600 miles, just dump another 10 gallon in it, and you can go another 600. Yeah. People will be lined up around the fucking block to buy one of them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now we're going to subsidize electric vehicles even more because Ford basically said, hey, we're done.

This shit ain't working. We're not making any money off of it. Like, we're done. No, no, we're going to double down. We're going to raise the tax on petroleum vehicles, and we're going to give more credits for the electric shit. But once again, why isn't the government flying electric planes? I agree. You know? Yeah.

Lead by example. You guys do it first, we'll follow suit. White House, strictly candlelight. No computers, no nothing. This is a crisis. We're going to die, so we have to cut everything. In the 70s, we were too cold. In the 80s, we were too hot. We had this huge hole in the ozone, which near as I can tell was letting out the bad shit. I think we're going to get the Aquanet out and try to get the hole made bigger again. I agree. It seems like we're clamming ourselves up now.

Yeah, all it is is a payoff. Tal Gore, his house burns more than my house and your house will in the next 10 years. He does that in a week. He's made millions of dollars off of his green bullshit.

He didn't abide by any of it. But it was a nice little agenda he pushed, got invested in the right companies, and made a ton of money out of it. Yep. You know? See that hailstorm that came through Texas City and wiped out all those solar panels? I did, yeah. I'm assuming that will break an insurance company. I would assume. You know? Don't know how it couldn't. How much energy is going to be wasted making replacement panels for those damn things? Putting them up and then disposing of the oven. If that had been a coal-fired power plant...

That little bit of hail wouldn't hurt shit. Turns out if you put glass out in the open, it breaks. No shit. Who'd have thought of that? Can't believe it. I'm to the point now, though, that we've taken this far enough that now I want to get in on the piece of action, and I want to invent some kind of elixir bullshit that I can go through with a sprayer and spray on these solar panels, and it'll clean them. You know what I mean? Yes.

And just, so we just sprayed on there. We wait for the next rain. It'll just wash that shit. Windex for solar panels. Yeah. And I mean, this shit's fucking $500 an ounce and just clip them for all they're worth. If that's how we're going to do this, then I want it on the action. Might as well get in on it. Yeah. I don't know. It baffles me. The stupidity of it. Like, I just saw a video today. Deere released the, you know, the new four track because it's not a quad track.

And, you know, those are behind a force power if they don't fall underneath the normal guidelines. So that's how they get by with no death. And when they announced they had no death, you know, the farmers cheered and this, that, and the other. And I'm sure they did. But I'm like, how long is it going to take before they close that loophole? Well, yeah, that's going to last long. The next series will have it. And now every mine in the world is going to be like, well, thanks a lot. Or in the U.S. can be like, well, thanks a lot, assholes. Now we've got to put all this stuff on our mining equipment. But, yeah.

I mean, have we really reached this point in farming that we need 800 horse tractors? I mean, seriously, have we really reached this point that we actually need 800 horses? Horsepower is like sex, Tony. I've never had too much. I mean, this is getting out of control. I like the horsepower. I'm cool with that. Because I do get a chuckle out, like Big Bud had 1,000 horse back in the 80s. And then we revert back to 400 for whatever reason. And now we're back up knocking on the door again. You know, finally, again.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. We probably don't. But as stuff gets bigger, et cetera, et cetera. But to your point earlier, like you're not running an auger with 800 horse. No. You know, you're pulling heavy tillage with that. Honestly, I think their main purpose for it is big-ass air seeders in the mountains, isn't it? It could be because I know that does take a shitload of work. I mean, when you're climbing hills with –

80 foot of air. I was talking to Montana Doug the other day and he was telling me about his one tractor and it's on triples, et cetera, et cetera. And he was telling me he's got a race cart up the hill because the hill is so steep, like he can't go up it. Yeah. So he's got to go around it and then plant down it, go around it, plant down it, go run it, plant down it, which is a little bit mind boggling for my feeble flat central Illinois mind back.

That seems like a big hill. Yeah. Like we think we've got some hills here, and they really don't qualify. Yeah, and he told me, and don't quote me on this, but I thought that he'd tell me that was

700 feet in a quarter mile rise. That's something atrocious. Yeah, it's astronomical. Yeah. By our standards. Yeah. You know, we're like seven feet. Holy shit. Yep. We're just talking about your shed earlier tonight and you had to haul four foot of fill into the corner. Mm-hmm. You know, and we're, holy cow, that's a lot of dirt. And that, you know, that's every six inches for them. Yeah. You know, on a field like that. Yeah, and it might not have been 700 in a quarter. I know that's, but I know it's damn steep. It's a bunch. It's a bunch. Because he's even told me that they have trouble climbing it with combines. Yeah.

Yeah. Going up it. I mean, just physically crawling up it. Yeah. Which, like I said, it's hard for us to grasp in our Flatlander little minds. Yeah, but I don't know. It's out of control on the whole gamut. I don't understand how a company can say, okay, we'll swipe the carbon credits over here to not make much tillage equipment, but we're going to unveil our new 800-horse tractor. Yeah, because they're just playing the game.

They are. Just playing the game. Take it over here, pass it out over there, collect in the middle. Yeah. Which I suppose is the way America's always worked. We've talked in the past, though. Are we really better off once Case H made a combine bigger than a 2166? No. I maintain that if companies would have stayed with all class sixes, the world would be a better place. There would have been a backside market for them. They'd be producing more models every year.

Every day I'm seeing a new article that this guy took it up the ass on his X9. That one I seen, providing this was true, was $1,000 a separator hour is what he lost on that fucker. Because they sold it at auction, and that's just what it brought. A buddy of mine tried to trade his in. That's what they wanted was $1,000 a separator hour. Jesus. Yeah.

which makes pretty expensive harvesting, you know, but like what's the backside market for that? Where else, you know, if you drop one of those off at your place tomorrow, what are you going to do with it? Exactly. And the guys that are buying them up front, they don't want to use one. I'm buying a new one. Absolutely. You know, you can't, you know, if you drop one off here, well, you don't have enough trucks, wagons, et cetera. Your grain bins won't keep up. The elevator can't keep up.

You don't have enough guys to drive the trucks. If you had the trucks, like, you know, your auger's got to get bigger. There's a lot of things that work into the logistics of a big-ass combine. And, I mean, I get why they're doing it, but by the same token, they went down this path how many times? You know, you always hear about, well, we shipped all these 9500s to Mexico, or we melted them down, or we did this, we decommissioned them somehow or another. Like, they're going to do the same thing again. I seen here two weeks ago, maybe three trucks,

In less than 24 hours on Tractor House, there was 407 80 combines put on there. So there was like 1,400 one day. By the next morning, there was 1,800. So in one day, there was 407 80s put on there. Yeah. One day. Yeah. And how many guys do we know that are farming with stuff three or four generations older than that? Three. And they're not looking for a 780 tomorrow. So where are those things going? You know, maybe nowhere.

It would boggle the mind to know the amount of equipment that sits on dealers' lots that never sees the field. Oh, for sure. In a growing season. Yeah. Because it's a lot. I mean, we see it here locally every year. Every dealer here will have one, two, three combines that never leave the lot, sometimes more. Yeah. Or let's say they do, but then their trade-in doesn't see the field until the following trickle-down season. So it's an entire something that used to be big, astronomical at some levels,

that never touches crop. You see it every year. I mean, it's going to continue to happen. And could somebody please, if you work for John Deere and are listening to this podcast, could you please tell somebody, why are we now screwing up the combine number?

It didn't get much simpler before. I had a 767, 777, 87. I mean, what do we do? This is getting as bad as seed corn now. Stop. We don't need 400 digits in series and classes. I don't care if you call them 1, 2, 3, and 4. This is stupid. I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to talk guys through the Case IH numbering system that was a cluster for a while. And they finally streamlined it. And now we're to the AF11. I'm going to assume they're going to do an 8, 9, 10.

I would hope. And make it pretty nice. But in the meantime, Deere's like, you know what? People know too much about our shit. It's too easy to do. Let's throw some letters in here and a number. But the number doesn't really mean anything. Yeah. The number has nothing to do with the class size, et cetera. We're going to bring it on the backside, and we'll have another number for that.

Holy shit. Like, did you ever go into the Ford dealer and be like, yeah, I got an F-150, 760, 420, 326? No. Nope. You've got an F-150, an F-250, an F-350. When you go outside, it's a Ford. Yeah, it's a car. The numbers had nothing to do with what you're driving. Yeah, exactly. Nope. But that's where we're at on tractors these days. Like, we're out of letters and numbers to throw at this shit. Like the new deer tractors, you know, and this is a 9RX. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it ain't. It's a fucking 9630 with tracks on it. I'm sorry, but it is. Yeah, more or less. But we just, we got to complicate it. When we were kids, Seedcorn, 3394 Pioneer, 3377. Now it's fucking half the alphabet, a whole bunch of numbers. Yeah. It's supposed to tell you something about it, but it probably really doesn't. And then come to find out come spring, oh, by the way.

We can't get that for you anyway. We're going to have to take a substitute. You and I both were taking my order in October while I was still in the combine. I had to let you know what I wanted, prepaid for it, only to find out that you don't have the shit anyway. How about you figure out what you got and then let me know what you can sell me.

Yeah, wouldn't that be handy for you in the shop there? Yeah. Hey, give me a big list and just go ahead and pay for it. And then, oh, well, hell, I couldn't get that and that. We're going to have to switch this around. Next thing you know, they come out. I know you wanted pistons in this thing, but how about we just put sleeves in it and let the old pistons ride? Yep. You know, you got a problem with that? You good with that? Yeah. You know, we can get you one new ring. We'll just put the other one we used, but it's fine. Or we'll...

We'll substitute it for a ring that's close. It's a little bit smaller. It's probably not going to touch a cylinder wall, but, you know, that's what we got. But we've seen really good results of that. Yeah, yeah. It's just as good as the other one. It's just a little bit older. So basically when the guy comes to pick it up, he was expecting to pick up a 1066. He's getting a Cub Cadet. Yeah, yeah. Same money, though. Same money. Yeah, there's no discount on that. You missed the early order at this point. Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, that was back in August. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. How much longer is it before we buy our inputs a complete year in advance? Oh, it's coming. I mean, it gets earlier and earlier every year. I'm like, pretty soon I'm going to have to fertilize standing crop. Knock the corn down. I got to dry fertilize for next year. Get it on there. Deal with it. We got to get it out there. Yeah, it is getting crazy. Yeah, I'm getting to the point anymore. I'm done with it. I'm going to post pay. Instead of prepay, fuck you, I'm doing post pay. Yeah.

Seriously. It's all federal explicit to you. Yeah, exactly. You put the shit on and then I'll pay you because I'm tired of these games. Yeah. And I'm done with it. I know what you mean. It is frustrating. It is frustrating. I don't know. I'm going to be like Clint Eastwood by the time I'm 60 years old. I'm going to be so sick of all this shit. I'm just going to go live on a mountaintop somewhere. I don't have to deal with any of it. Well, please tell me it'll play. Yeah. Get off my lawn.

No doubt. You know, you mentioned that movie. I empathize with Clint Eastwood in that movie. I do too. I feel like that's me, just with different... You know, I don't have anybody from wherever they were moving in from taking mungs. I don't have any mungs taking over my area, but I do, in fact, have other people moving into my area, and I feel about the same way about it. I'm kind of looking like I saw a stat today, like,

It was by county in Illinois how many people moved out of the county. I'm like, well, can we get that number higher? Yeah. Like, I'm looking for a lot more people to get the hell out of the county because it's getting overpopulated. I don't need any more people here. And this is where I part ways with a lot of people, and I have to agree with some other people around here. When it comes to poor people, quit catering to them. Tax the fuck out of them. They're a drag on society. You want to run them clear out of your state. Yeah.

You want to live off of somebody else. I'm not talking the working poor. I'm talking these deadbeat, low-rent housing who've never had a job or never going to get a job. Tax them at 95%. Get them the fuck out of your state so you don't have to support them no more. It's kind of like the migrant thing. Hey, you want to be a sanctuary city? Hot dog. We're sending them on a bus or a plane. They'll be there in a little bit. Oh, we don't want them. We can't afford it. Nope. You want to be a sanctuary city? That's where they're going. We chose not to be.

You chose to be. We're taking them to your place. Now you see what we've been dealing with for 30 years. Yeah. And you don't think it's so funny now. Yeah. Now it's not as cool. But the part that bothers me now, and I'm not saying this towards...

Mexican people or whatever. I'm not, I don't mean this racist prejudice, whatever. I'm just saying that now with warm weather coming on, Chicago is going to be shipping all them downstate and we're going to get over. Yeah. They're going to screw us on that. Yep. Like when they don't want them, when there's no one and we have no facilities for them or no dollars for them, et cetera. But I'm cool with keeping the Mexicans. Can we deport the liberals? Let's start deporting them first. Yeah. Well, in fact, we'll do like a five for one trade. Absolutely.

And they like tropical vacations anyway, so let's send them to Mexico. We'll take the Mexicans. We'll call it an even swap. I think that works out better for everybody. I'm fine with it. They get what they want. Cartel ran bullshit, and we'll take, you know. Yeah. At least they're willing to work. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And they know which bathrooms to use. Exactly. So we'll swap it out. Yep. Seems like a good trade to me. Yeah. It's going to be a shit show by the time this is all said and done. And I don't blame Greg Abbott.

You know, anybody that's shipping them up here, hey, you guys are sanctuary cities. Here you go. What did you say? Deal with the other day where Venezuela is dumping all their prisoners off. They're clearing out all their prisons and dumping them off at the border. Let them sneak in here so they don't have to deal with them anymore. Exactly. We don't have to feed these people. We'll send them to the U.S. They're going to let them in.

Would we not be fools for doing the same thing if Canada had the same policy? I'd clean out every prison in America. Dump them off. Right here to the border. That's the only stipulation. You're a free man, but don't come back yet. Here you go. I bet you most of them would take you up on it. I'm sure they would. At least for a little while. Now that the shoe's on the other foot, we get to cry foul. We can't handle all this. This is inhumane. You're just dumping them off here. You can't do that. I saw some state in the south

was expanding, was trying to expand the castle law to where if they were on your property, it was just like they were in your house. You could drop them. Really? I'm like, well, you can't be doing that. They're stealing your shit and they're violating. Like, I don't know that that's wrong.

I don't personally have a huge, big issue with it. You got those deals in some states where now if you come home from vacation and they're in your house, you can't kick them out. Exactly. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, that makes no sense at all. Did you see the mayor of Peoria, or not the mayor, the police chief of Peoria, Illinois, who is fuming fucking pissed? So here in Illinois, we got what they call the Safety Act.

And so this all, then this all got tied together. So now basically in Illinois, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can't be arrested for it. Like you can come to my house with a gun and I can basically just say, Hey, you need to leave. And you're like, well, I'm not leaving. So I'm like, well, okay, that's pretty much all we can do. Cause the cops can't arrest. You can't do either. So, uh,

We also went to cashless bail. Yeah, which is a great plan. Which means if you're a nonviolent offender or have no big record before that, that basically you can pretty much do whatever you want, and you don't have to post bail. You don't have to do nothing. You just get to walk free. So here, like a week ago, there was some guy, and I think he robbed a bank or he robbed something, and when the police tried to pull him over,

He jumps out of the car, starts waving a gun, going to shoot people. He goes to the cops, back off. He jumps back in his car, takes off, this big high-speed chase. So they finally end up catching the guy or whatever. Haul him in jail. Judge is like, well, he's got no prior record. Turn him loose. And I mean, the police chief is fuming pissly. Like, this guy robs a bunch of shit, gets out pointing guns at my guys and this and that. It's like, hey...

That's what you guys wanted. I think it was Pittsburgh, right? They basically said the cops aren't going to patrol from 10 o'clock to 6 o'clock in the morning. Really? Nobody at the police stations, like, you leave a message, we'll look into it later. Jesus. I think it was Pittsburgh. God damn.

Yeah. So I got to think their tourism is going down at least for the nightlife anyway. I would think so. You mark my word. This is going to fix itself. It might be five years from now. Yeah. This problem is going to fix itself. Eventually. Yeah. Eventually it will. Yeah. I guess I look at that as these crackheads tried to break in my shed and guess what? I had no prior record either. So yeah.

When some boomsticks go off. Yeah. Don't know nothing about it. Guess I'm getting out too, because I didn't have no priors. Yeah. I mean, how are we going to cut this? I mean. Well, it's so ridiculous that it's to that point. There's just no logic applied to any of it. That's the frustrating part to all of it. Nope. And people just keep voting for this shit over and over and over and over again. And that's why I don't vote. And I know that's where I part ways with a lot of people, but I don't because it.

Yeah, I know what you're saying there. I haven't missed an election since I turned 18, nor do I plan to. But I don't know what good it's done me. But I feel like my ancestors died fighting for that. I've got to keep doing it. But by the same token, I know what you're saying. I've missed the last time I voted was in...

So in 20, when Trump was for re-election. But I'm firmly convinced that election was stolen. I'm firmly convinced. So why would I waste my time anymore? Yeah. Well, it doesn't matter in Illinois. We've been stealing them since the 60s. Exactly. We're good at it. Yeah. We announce who's won before the election's over. Exactly. So what's that tell you? We count really fast, Tony. Common core math is kicking ass here. We are estimating the winner, calling it a day. You haven't lived until you have a Chicago in your state. You can be...

three and a half hours from there yeah and they can still run the whole show yeah that ain't no shit it's no different remember mike madigan the longest serving speaker of the house in u.s history all we gotta do is get him out of there get him out of there things are gonna change well how much has changed i think it's actually got worse yeah so what's that tell you yeah no doubt

It is a shame. He did a ton of damage to this state. Yes, he did. But it didn't get any better once he left, really. They ever put him in prison? What's he doing now? Hopefully breaking big rocks into small, but I doubt that. He's old enough, though, just to appeal, appeal, appeal until he dies of old age. Yeah. You know, he'll never see a bit of jail time. He's got enough money and enough lawyers. Connections and papers. Hell, he's appointed most of the judges in this state at the appellate courts and all that. Yeah. You know. That's fact.

So, yeah, he'll never go down and do hard time. No, unfortunately. Unfortunately. I was thinking the other day, instead of this TikTok ban, how about we ban together and we say, you know what? Tell what the politicians. We're forcibly...

And I don't mean you got to take up arms necessarily. But no, we're putting in term limits and age limits. As a population, you want to ban TikTok, that's fine. We want to ban old politicians. Agreed. If you're over 65, you can't run for office. I want your ass living underneath the laws that you passed. If you're over 65, you shouldn't be able to run for office. I agree. Life expectancy is about 75, so you don't have to put in at least 10 years underneath the shit you passed.

And at that point in time, your mental capacity isn't as good as it was before anyway. And people even think differently. Like, my dad and I talk about this all the time. He'll be 74 here shortly. Because he's all for that, too. You know, age limits would do just as much good as term limits. Because when you're that age, you don't think like a younger person. You know, you're more reserved than, well, man, I wouldn't do that. Well, I'm sure you wouldn't because you're 74. Yeah. I can take more of a risk at 44. Absolutely. So...

You just don't think the same. And honestly, you're like, well, I'm probably not going to be around in 25 more years anyway necessarily. Agreed. I kind of like this power deal. I'll just keep sitting at this desk and keep wheeling this and wheeling that. And the flip side of that is there's other things that my dad will do because he'll be like, hell, if it kills me, I've had a good life. You know what I mean? And stuff like that. I'm not going to do that. I mean, yeah.

So it goes both ways, but you just think differently when there's that much of an age gap. Absolutely. Yeah. That's why I think we should just say, you know what? You ban TikTok, that's fine. We're banning politicians. Yeah, we're banning you. We're banning you. We're banning anybody over 65 from running for office. You're done. You've been in office four terms, six terms, eight terms. Pick your number. You're done. I don't care if you've been the president of the freaking sanitation board.

You turn six terms, you're out. You're done. School boards, all that. All the way. You're done. We're moving on. I'm talking from grassroots all the way to the top. You're done. Yeah. It's over. Bullshit. And it is hard to... You've got to learn... You've got to be in there for a little bit to learn some of the backstory on shit. Not even necessarily the way things go or how things are done, quote unquote, but the backstory on certain things like...

You know, you could bring a tractor into me and be like, hey, Nick, this has a soil leak. I want it fixed. And I could be like, well, the reason it has a soil leak is because you did this, this, and this with it, and that's what caused it to leak. I could just fix the leak, but then I send you back out and you do these same three things, it starts leaking again. So there is some value in the experience. I get it.

You got people that have been in there for a lifetime. That's not how it was designed. That's not how it was set up. And the bad part now is all we're doing is you got the old power players that are just grooming the new power players and teaching them the bullshit ways so it never changes. No. You wouldn't have hired AOC to be the head bartender because that was her career. She was a bartender. You wouldn't have hired her to be the head bartender prior to her getting in Congress.

But she's played the game long enough now. She'll probably be, 30 years from now, she'll probably still be an offense. She'll be a lifer. She'll be your next Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, whatever. Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt. Which is just sickening.

But here we are. I just can't believe, I cannot believe people just line up. But it's not so shitty anymore. Like nobody, nobody, nobody good or good is going to run for it. Right? Like, why would they? I don't blame them. I don't want to be on any local. I mean, you know, my policy, I don't go to meetings. Agreed. I don't either. You want shit done? Let me know when and where I'll show up and help you do it. You want me to go to a meeting? I'm probably not going to make it.

I'd rather scoop rock as go to a meeting. I would too. Nobody can get along. You let me know where the rock needs scooped, I'll be there. Or I should say get along. Nobody can make a decision. That's what I get. Well, it's not even that necessarily. It's the backdoor shit. It's the, well, you know, we really got to do this because...

well, Bob did that 23 and a half years ago, or, well, we can't step on this toes, or we owe a favor to this, or we... There's always a backstory. There's always some bullshit with some of that. I just don't have the time for it. I'm the same way. Or, we agreed to do this, but...

In the meantime, I'm going to talk to Tony, and I'm going to get him on this deal, and we'll just end running it around. We'll just bring it up again in a different way at the next meeting. We'll get it through so it plays in our favor. I don't have time for that shit. I don't either. I've got enough problems in my own life. I don't need to look for other ones. But if you want some volunteer shit work done, happy to do it. I'm not going to the meeting. Out of the few boards, committees, all the stuff that I've been on, and it's been very few, I've never been on one yet that they open the books, and they're like, damn, you know, we've got 50 grand here.

We're doing pretty good. Let's just kind of keep rolling, doing what we're doing, save some money back. Nope. As soon as I get any money, what we need new lawnmower, we need a new this, we need new that. And so we always keep the balance of fucking zero.

And then when something catastrophic happens, well, what are we going to do? And then they make stupid rash decisions because they have no money. And I don't roll that away. My experience with meetings is where stupid people are allowed to speak and nobody stands up and says, that's a terrible fucking idea. We're not doing it. That's dumb. We're not doing it. Because you don't want to offend them because, well, they've been on here for 30 years. Well, maybe they've been doing it wrong for 30 years. If they've been doing it right for 30 years, we wouldn't be in this position. But nobody can say, that's dumb. We're not doing that.

because you don't want to offend anybody, and I get that, fine, whatever, but I just don't participate in it, because I don't have that kind of restraint. I'm to the point, like, the world is very, and I'm not, the world is black and white at some level. Like, there's a right decision and a wrong decision. There's a small area of gray where we can appease everybody, kind of, sort of, but compromise is where things get done half-ass. I'm looking for it to be done right. I'm old school math. There is a correct answer for this equation, and there's lots of wrong answers for it, but I'm looking for the correct one.

But that's not how the game is played at a meeting. And I don't care if it's a meeting for if we decide if we're putting a blue tablecloth on this table with the entire family or if we're putting a black one on it or if we're having the entire town come to whatever to decide how we're running the sewer lines. And I just don't have the patience for it. I don't either. I'll gladly give you money. I'm not sitting on your committees. I'm not doing none of that. Wyans Club wants $20 for whatever. You want the work done? I'm happy to help with some work. Whatever. You guys have decided how you want it done?

That's fine. But I'm not going to the meeting unless you grant me control over the fact that when you stand up and say, well, we don't really want to put a tablecloth on this. What we want to do is sell some carbon credits so that our tablecloth can be made out of biodegradable plastic that won't protect the table from any water or heat. And then we'll have to buy a new table next year after we raise the taxes. See, I don't have the time or the patience for that shit.

No, I don't either. I just, I can't. I'm done. I can't do it, and I won't do it. No. And I'm not going to do it. No, I'm glad some people do it. It's just not my cup of tea. So that's where I'm at on that. Bottom line is, you want some shit moved? Let me know. I might help you. You want me to go to a meeting? Probably not going to make it. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. Yep. One of the last meetings I was at, I made a motion. It passed unanimously.

And that was on a small, that was in a group meeting, we'll call it. And then it went to the, that was in a committee meeting. And then it went to the larger meeting. Passed unanimously, mind you. Never even got brought up at the big meeting. And that's when I'm done. Never even got mentioned that way. I'm like, I'm done. Not going again. I'm out. I wouldn't either. There's no point. Argue until you're blue in the face. Not going. Go another time. I see it a hundred times too.

Just from the outsider looking in, a lot of these committees, oh, we've got to get these young people involved. We've got to get these young people. And so they get all these young people in there to do all the work. Yes. They want young people as long as the young people do it exactly the way they want it done. Yeah.

Without them having to do the work. Exactly. If you guys will just do it the way we want it without actually making any decisions, we'll make the decisions for you kind of on the backside. We want you to be part of our team, but don't just shut up and just do what we tell you. Just do what we tell you, do the work for us, and then we'll take the credit for it and everything will go great. Well, yeah, I'm not interested in that either. I'm not either. No. In fact, I'm the type, I don't want any credit for any of it. I'm just going to go do it and I don't need to be world-renowned all over town that, oh, look, I put a new set of bleachers in the ballpark. Who gives a shit? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. But, well, we've pretty much went around the world on that deal. Well, we have. This has been a long podcast. I hope to hell you guys are happy. That's all we hear is you need more podcasts. Well, God damn it, we're trying to cram three or four into one here. No doubt. I've damn near got death threats on my TikTok live last night. So, guys were wanting the podcast bad. So, I'm like, well, I'll get over to Tony's. We'll knock one out for you. Oh, yeah, I guess it's been damn near a month here. Yeah, it's been a while. So, we'll try to. I know we say this every time, but we'll try to be better.

Well, we say that, but you know we won't. Yeah, well, we've got other stuff coming up. We might be a little better. We're not wasting any time going to meetings, so maybe we can get these podcasts out. Exactly. Farming time's coming up, so we're going to have to put this on the back burner again. That's true, but we've got to get a bunch knocked out so people have something to listen to during farming. That's true, too. We'll have to make it a priority. Yeah, so anyway, the takeaway from this is don't go green, don't get in politics, don't join committees, don't do any of that stupid shit. Just do your own thing and tell everybody to fuck off. Be a Christian. Live the good life.

And stick to yourself and wave at your neighbor. Yeah. Well, some of your neighbors. You don't have to wave at all. Most of them. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We'll probably see you again sometime in the next six months. Yeah. We'll be back eventually. Allegedly. Yeah. Possibly.