Ep. 465: A Truck Story That’s A Love Story

Steve Rinella talks with Clay Newcomb, Dirk Durham, Jason Phelps, KC Smith, Tyler Jones, Chester Floyd, and Phil Taylor.

Topics include: Clay’s appetizer; sleeping in a convenience store parking lot; seeing the buck from the truck; when trucks and boats going aerodynamic; Chester’s Grandpa Czekalski; the blurred line between tighty whities and skin; bear scratches down your brand new truck; the universal animal stop call; getting the chance to throw one on the back of the pickup; floating on the snow surface; how those cursed wrestling shoes and a truck fire make a great love story; Old Grey driving nine miles in reverse; hauling mules all over the country in that truck; and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Listeningcast, you can't predict anything.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every
hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
dot com, f I R S T L I T
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Speaker 3 (00:38):
All right, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
If you're sitting there on a and you and you
look at your feed, and you and you think, what
in Sam Hill? Is this a special episode of the
meat Eater podcast, Well, you're correct. This is a special
edition called truck Stories met Eaters truck Stories. Maybe you've
heard meters campfire stories. This is truck Stories. And here
to share in this event with us is as though

(01:02):
dealing poker, not the dealer.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
Clay nukelemb Yeah, Clay nukelemb here, glad to be here, Gamble.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
That's probably why you don't know what I'm not as
No dealing old maid.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
Little horse, little horse racing, dealing old maid Texas hold
them yeah, Clay nukelemb from Barrier's podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Casey Smith Casey Smith from The Element, Tyler Jones, Tyler
Jones from The Element.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Big Truck Guys out Here, Chester Floyd.

Speaker 6 (01:34):
One time I won rent money off of a poker game.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Chesterha has a big concert coming up the har Dady
asked him how long till the concert? When was the concert?
And he gave it to me in hours days and
said he wasn't nervous, but the fact that he knew
how many hours the way it was suggested nervousness.

Speaker 6 (01:53):
No, I'm excited. I saw a great concert last night
Paul Coffin, and I took some mental notes of performing
and it should be fine.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
The Big Velvet they call him, do you know that?

Speaker 6 (02:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:06):
I did.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
I like that guy.

Speaker 6 (02:07):
Yeah, he's good, talented.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I texted him about coming on the show. Yeah, we
should get him. Well, he's like referred me out. It's
just got complicated.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
You're like, was like head talk to like the manager is.
But if you're out there at Paul Cough, we still
like to have you come on the show. I just
want to like not have to make it so complicated.

Speaker 7 (02:27):
Ye.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Jason, Jason Phelps cutting the Distance.

Speaker 8 (02:33):
And Dirk Durham cutting the distance.

Speaker 9 (02:35):
And you boys are going weekly. We are changing it
up from bi weekly to weekly. Yeah twice, How are
you gonna double the output?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (02:43):
Just add Dirk every other week? So right now I'm
every you just got to every other week.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
So if you're cutting the Distance podcast fan, now you
can listen to every week.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah? What if that cuts into my listenership?

Speaker 4 (02:54):
Here?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It shouldn't.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
Should the name of the podcast now not be twice
as long as opposed to cutting the Distance?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Brent?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Who?

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Who's Who's gonna start out? I mean I could tell
my story. I could tell my truck story and listen,
my story is so old I had to call I
had to call the person it's about to go over
all the details this morning.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You should?

Speaker 4 (03:31):
I mean, I think I think this is what we
should do. I think we should go around the table
rate our story based upon the what how we think
the world is going to perceive it, and then you
could assign because you know, I may have like a
really happy, fun story about family that people are gonna go, oh,
that was cute. And you may have a story about

(03:52):
a truck, you.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Know, inferno.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Yeah, and you may we may order it a certain way.
I would say mine is like a It is like
a four point eight on the scale of like fun
And then there's a smaller story that's like a seven.
It's got a great punchline.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Mine is a is maybe a seven, and it's a
love story. Listen, you're gonna think it's about wrestling in Infernos.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
It's a love story.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
It's hard to be What about you, guys.

Speaker 8 (04:25):
I think everybody thinks their own story is the best.

Speaker 10 (04:28):
Usually.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
I gave mine a seven, but you know that's the
best we got to offer seven.

Speaker 6 (04:33):
I don't I don't think mine it would be the best.

Speaker 9 (04:36):
But you know, mine just got like a funny part
at the end, and then like it's a lot of
a lot of build up to a funny and then
there's a predator issue at the end. You know, poor
Kren had to really talk to a lot of people
to find a room full of people with a good
truck story. So you guys better bring it.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Mm hmm, it's gonna be good. What are you guys rating?

Speaker 11 (04:54):
Mmm?

Speaker 2 (04:55):
I'm I like to under rate but overachieve, you know,
like four, probably because I don't know how people perceive
out of ten.

Speaker 11 (05:05):
Oh, you know, my jersey never was a five, So
I'm gonna go with that.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Okay, who goes first? You had the highest number at seven.
Here you go.

Speaker 11 (05:16):
Okay, So that's for last though, right.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
What's that stories?

Speaker 10 (05:23):
No?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
No, no one story.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
I got one story that I'm very committed to and
I even made phone calls about it, so I'm there's
no backing out now, Clay, go ahead.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
I was just gonna say this. This isn't even on
my roster of stories, but just to get as started.
When I was a junior in high school, I had
a four wheel drive pickup truck.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
This is the story or not.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
This is not the story. This is a appetizer story.
And I started complaining to my dad that there was
there was mud getting into the cab of the truck.
I said, Dad, the cab of my truck leaks. There's
something wrong with my truck. I don't know what's going on.
And so we were like, what's wrong with this truck?
And a few weeks later, is back when we developed film.

(06:07):
You know, you had film cameras and you took to
the store and got filmed. Well, he took a camera
to the to Walmart, got the film developed, and there
was a picture of me in my truck and you
could not see the truck. I was, I was deep.
I was, I was you know, rear view, like side mirror,
deep in mud, going like twenty miles an hour. And

(06:29):
he came home with a photo and said, Clay, this
is why your truck leaks. And it never occurred to me.
So that's your appetizer story. That truck was an incredible truck.
It was a it was a it was a reclaimed,
it had been salvaged, had a salvage title because it
had been in a flood somewhere down south. And so
for like eight years while I had it, I didn't

(06:51):
have it for eight years. However long I had it,
it blew sand when you turn on the air conditioner,
had like wearing glasses in the truck was blowing sand ambience.
That would mean that wasn't even my story.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Guys, are you going to do I go out No.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
That somebody else. I passed it off. Now right, well, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Feel like the main course comes after the appetizer.

Speaker 11 (07:12):
I'll go, okay, all right, I'm tired of this.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
All right, gell and buckle up for a four.

Speaker 11 (07:18):
Let's go Uh, okay, so I'll start it.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
Uh. You know last song was on the podcast you
had talked about kind of our story and it involves
being a true white tail bone. So just completely broke
trying to kill white tail deer on video and make
something you know that we can people would like, right,
So we Uh I had. I was living basically.

Speaker 11 (07:43):
In my truck for the season.

Speaker 5 (07:44):
I mean like I would camp some, but I would
sleep in the back seat. And so I had uh
I had a let's see two thousand and seven half ton,
is that acceptable you're staying and and I killed a
couple deer that year, one on Texas public land, which
was my first Texas public land buck that I killed.

Speaker 11 (08:05):
This is twenty nineteen.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
And then we spent I had an Iowa tag, which
is like a five year draw. I mean it's like
and it's six hundred bucks you got to put in
every year. It's like fifty bucks, sixty bucks every year.
So you're like racking up an expensive tag for a
whitetail deer, I mean close to one thousand bucks probably.
So it's an important tag. It's you have the chance
of shooting the biggest buck you've ever you know, seen

(08:28):
in Iowa. It's just it's the greatest state in my
opinion for deer hunting. So anyway, the first time we
went up there was in October, and Case and I
went together and we hunted last part of October all
the way up to Halloween, like eight days, and there
was like two snowing events, and I mean, we're from Texas,

(08:48):
so that doesn't happen in October. We get up there
and have a pretty good hunt, we don't kill a deer.
So I got to go back. Well, on the way home,
I'm going to edit some footage, so I get the
computer out. He takes my keys, and we were driving
right and uh, we get down into Missouri and it's
it's icy, and we come up over this big hill

(09:09):
and it's just flat prairie, you know, come.

Speaker 11 (09:11):
Up with this big hill.

Speaker 5 (09:12):
It's pretty ice. So we've been driving for like two
or three hours and I'm like, hey, look at that
eighteen wheeler right there. It's turned over. And about that time,
it was like the top of the hill turned and
went to the left and we just kept going and
black Eyes.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
I mean, it was absolutely.

Speaker 5 (09:28):
And it was like there was a bunch of cars
that had the same problem that day. But I mean
we tore through a fence like two hundred yards of
pasture I had. I had a tree about that big
around that was coming right at me in the pastures.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
And I'm held as he held his hands out as
though gripping Clay's head.

Speaker 5 (09:46):
That's right, a solid tree, like you don't want to
hit that, you know, And it came so close it
blew the mirror off side.

Speaker 8 (09:55):
For sure.

Speaker 5 (09:56):
And then and it was like it was deep snow,
you know, Well we somehow I'll come to a stop. Finally,
I mean, way out in this pasture. We limped the
truck back up to the road and got it fixed
that day. Enough, it had broken a tyrod or something,
and so anyway, ended up getting it fixed that day
and made it home that night with no rearview mirror

(10:17):
on one side and like some of the lights weren't working.
But uh, you know, I got to borrow a truck
and come back in the rut because it was a
special tag. So I come back in December and I'm
doing and I'm literally I leave my house with a
dollar sixty seven in my account. I had played, I
played guitar, I had played a show and I made

(10:38):
like two hundred bucks, which is pretty good.

Speaker 11 (10:40):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
Interesting.

Speaker 11 (10:46):
I'll tell you.

Speaker 5 (10:46):
I'll tell you the venue name later on. You know,
get to Inner Bucks, you know, pretty easy. Uh, but
I I had the cash, so that was what I
was gonna pay for gas to get up there, and
I was gonnaigure it out. I think we were supposed
to have like a deposit. Happened, you know, happened when
I was up there. But my wife, she's been very
faithful through this whole thing.

Speaker 11 (11:04):
So, uh, we get up.

Speaker 5 (11:05):
I get up there and I'm by myself and I
have to sleep. I have no money, so I have
to sleep in the back of this this new truck
that I got, and I'm borrowing across it in a
sleeping bag. It's it's cold out, and I'm in a
Casey's parking lot.

Speaker 11 (11:21):
You know what a Casey's is anybody?

Speaker 5 (11:22):
Yeah, like a convenient Uh, the general store, some pizza,
they have great pizza. You can get gas there, Yeah,
you can't get gas there, and so anyway, I mean
it was just terrible, like all night, just big trucks
were coming in and waking me up. I slept terribly,
but I end up like the third or fourth day
that I was there on that trip, I'm hanging like

(11:43):
eighty yards off the road. This road was too too
slick to for cars to come through at the time,
it had been raining. And uh, I see a deer
pass across the road and then I hear the buck
before I ever saw him, and I thought it was
a motorcycle coming down the road.

Speaker 11 (12:00):
He was he was doing.

Speaker 5 (12:01):
He was grunting so loud and long that it was
just like I thought of dirt bikes coming. He's fixing
a mess. This whole thing up. It was, It's crazy.
It's all on videos on YouTube on the Element channel. Yeah,
and I shot him and he ran like twenty yards
and fell over. Could see the truck from the stand too, Yeah, yeah,
it was up the hillways.

Speaker 4 (12:18):
Oh that was your punchline. Yeah, it's not like I
can see the buck yeah from the stand.

Speaker 11 (12:22):
Yeah. No, but I you know, just sleeping in the
bed of my truck. Is poor boy in it? You know?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
So that's great?

Speaker 5 (12:27):
Yeah, No, no, like no infernos or I was sure
happy to shoot that buck.

Speaker 11 (12:34):
For sure.

Speaker 5 (12:35):
Whose truck was it? It is my wife's granddad. He
had uh had gotten to where he couldn't really walk,
and so he wasn't using his truck much.

Speaker 11 (12:43):
And so, yeah, it's a nice truck. I still have it.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yep, yep, digging in Chester, let's go.

Speaker 6 (12:51):
So I took my sister's truck from her senior year
of high school. The day I graduated from high school,
I took her truck out to Montana. I drove it
all the way out because I wanted to be a
fishing guide. The truck that I had in high school
was not going to make it kind of out west,
make the big trip.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
So my parents, did you let her know what you
were gonna take it?

Speaker 6 (13:15):
I let her know, Well, my parents basically let her
know that that's kind of how it was going to work.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
So young Chester is flying the coop and it will
be in your truck.

Speaker 6 (13:28):
Basically, it was more of like the family truck, right,
But she drove it. Yeah, So I took that out
west the day after I graduated, just like super excited
to kind of start my own life. So I drove
it across the country and I got a job working

(13:49):
at a drift boat shop, and I wanted to become
a fly fishing guide. So that was like the job.
I was like, I can work at this drift boat shop.
This truck can handle, it handle pulling a light drift boat.
I'm gonna work my way up and buy a drift boat.
So I did that and got a drift boat and
was kind of eager to fish as much as I

(14:11):
possibly could. So I would work and or I'd get
up real early, fish then go work or fish after work.
And I was fishing with my buddy Steven Smith. It
was in Yeah, it was real high water year twenty eleven.
I remember, great hopper fishing. So we were it was
like late July. We were literally going burning the candle

(14:34):
on both ends, getting up before the sun comes up,
and driving out to the Yellowstone and we had a
pretty phenomenal day of fishing hopper fishing, and the wind
was blowing and it was blowing all these hoppers in
the water, I remember, and grasshoppers. Yeah, we were on

(14:56):
like you know, cloud nine, two young kids. I've got
a drift boat. I moved out from Wisconsin. You know.
It was like the as good of memory as anyone
could have. Meet some buddies at the boat ramp talking
about our day and we get in the truck and
I turned the AC on and we're cruising down I ninety,

(15:19):
just feeling great about life. And my buddy's sitting there
in the passenger seat and he said the next thing.
He looks over at me, and I got my eyes shut,
which is never good, man, never good. We got that
AC going, we got music going, and I was tired.

(15:40):
And you know, if we were in like today's trucks,
this probably wouldn't have happen because there's all these alarms
and safety things that are in him. But I hit
the rumble strips and I was out cold sleeping, and
I woke up and kind of from a dead sleep
and over corrected.

Speaker 8 (16:00):
Ooh.

Speaker 6 (16:01):
We had the drift boat on the back. And at
any moment I was like, it's one of those slow
motion things in life that you're like, we're going to go,
We're going to start rolling. Well we didn't. We like
slid sideways on going eighty miles an hour, which is
the speed limit out here on cruise control. Slid sideways

(16:24):
and launched the truck off the side of the road
airborne for like sixty feet. Whoa with a drift boat
on the back and we land in a farmer's field.
There's cattle around us, and they're like, what's that happening?
And I'm just as surprised as the cows because I

(16:45):
had just waken up from a nap, and you know,
my buddy is like, you know, like shaken, and we
did not have a scratch on us, So like, how
was the boat? The boat was completely fine. It was
an aluminum drift boat, just a burly boat and uh,

(17:05):
but the trailer was kind of messed up. But yeah,
I remember old rancher coming and looking over the side
and being like, you boys are lucky.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
Why is it always an old rancher? There's ever a
young rancher?

Speaker 1 (17:23):
There is ny no nervous isn't a young rancher came
up to me.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
He might not have been a rancher either, he.

Speaker 6 (17:35):
I didn't ask him at the time, but dude, we yeah,
I mean we drove that truck back home that night.
My buddy brought a subway sandwiches, and we went and
went to the drift boat shop and got a flatbed
trailer and drove right back out there and went back

(17:55):
whinch the trailer in the drift boat back on the
the flatbed and we were out there fishing that day. No, no, no,
we were out there fishing a couple of days later.

Speaker 8 (18:06):
But then was your sister mad?

Speaker 4 (18:08):
Was my sister mad?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Nothing to be mad about.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Man, The truck just ramped her truck sixty feet.

Speaker 6 (18:15):
It just but I think what happened there was what
saved us was the boat trailer. I think because when
we turned, it stayed, you know, parallel to the road.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Like a rudder.

Speaker 6 (18:27):
And I think that exactly. Yeah, I think that's what
kept us in there. But man, that was, like, you know,
one of those life lessons that like, you do not
drive tired.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
We all learned that young man, like around twenty.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
It's it's something.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
It's such a thing when with young I don't know
if it will be in future generations, but it just
that I am so far away from that now, but
it was just a real thing. Yeah, I gotta pull over,
you gotta drive. And like ten minutes later I got
pulled over.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
You were so tired. We didn't stop and jumping jacks
together a whole bunch. Man. My buddy hit on this strategy.
He would get it.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
He would stop at a gas station, get a cup
full of ice and I'm not joking. We'll just drop
ice keeps down his back of his T shirt and
then lean into the ice cube against the seat and
now it was his whole like, well, I know how
to get a long ways.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (19:25):
But man, lucky to be fishing, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Here you are now.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Didn't hurt the truck much?

Speaker 6 (19:32):
No, didn't hurt drove it out of the field. Didn't
hurt the truck at all? Man.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Yeah, did you go through any fences or did you
ramp the fence?

Speaker 6 (19:38):
One?

Speaker 3 (19:38):
One fence?

Speaker 6 (19:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (19:39):
How did you have to fix it?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
No?

Speaker 6 (19:41):
That we the guy said we were good.

Speaker 11 (19:45):
We were good.

Speaker 6 (19:45):
When we talked to him, he'd fix it.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
You know what I like about Chester's little Genesis story
about a fishing guide is he had no idea what
he's doing or talking about, but he actually did it, just.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Drove away from home mm hmm and became fishing guide.

Speaker 6 (20:00):
Yeah, that's what I wanted. My guidance counselor in high
school asked everybody, like, they want to kind of help
you with your career goal in college, and I said
I didn't. I don't want to go to college. I
want to be a fishing guide. And saying that in Wisconsin,
in the Holy Land of Dairy Country. She's like, you know,
like you're not you can't catch.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
They were like cheez and fish don't go together, right, So.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
When I I went down, this would never happen anymore.
I went down to my guidance counselor. In fact, people
don't believe that I'm telling the truth that this happened.
I went to my guidance counselor in high school and
I had I signed up for a zero hour so
you started like seven in the morning and I and
I had to do a gym credit. Still, I went

(20:49):
down to the guidance counselor and said, listen, when I
get out of school, I'm going check on my traps.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
So I'm gonna be active. And if I didn't have
to go to gym, I could get out an hour earlier.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
And that's what I'm going to be doing anyways, is
out canoeing and all that.

Speaker 6 (21:04):
They're like, okay, really, you got a credit they for trapping.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
They let me leave, so I was leaving at noon
or whatever, and no one would ever be able to
do that anymore.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Now that just goes to show what's happened in this country.

Speaker 8 (21:18):
Something wrong.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Dude, that's great. Oh yeah, just excuse me, my pe
credit sweet man. That's a good guy. I should find
that guy.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
Make a little side money, you know, trapping krin. Do
you want me to mention the other quick story I have? Okay,
I'll make this brief. This is about a truck that
is like larger than life. You know, everyone like maybe
knew a guy that he had a truck, and you'd

(21:48):
see that guy and be like, oh, there's old old Bob,
you know, doing something, and like the truck has its
own careacter.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Yeah, the truck is the person.

Speaker 6 (21:57):
Yeah, so my my grandfathers.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
It is an accessory to the truck.

Speaker 6 (22:01):
The person's an accescerated truck. And yeah, this person was
my grandfather and uh he was a great, great man.
He raised seven girls, my mom being one of them.

Speaker 11 (22:15):
And baby truck it.

Speaker 6 (22:17):
Was a it was a it was a half This
one was a half ton. Yeah, Scotch bigger than the
truck I drove out west.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Is that a mom joke?

Speaker 4 (22:28):
No, just saying seven kids, But it was a truck.

Speaker 6 (22:32):
It was a fifty three to fifty five I don't
know the exact year, like a blue truck just like that,
like that truck right here, right here. Yeah, I have
I have some pictures that I want to show you.
I'll pass my computer around. Oh wow, he's got this
is This is a truck. This is a picture with

(22:54):
my dad, his brothers and his father with some deer
in the back of the truck, with some foxes on
the ground in a coyote. There were more trappers than hunting,
real mixed bag the Chikowski family. And he bought this
truck new, which was like one of the only things
he bought new ever for a farm truck. And he

(23:20):
you know, the neighbors would see this truck coming down
the road and they'd be like, oh, there's John Chikowski
coming to help out, or you know. It was just
that kind of character of truck. Anyways, he's ninety six
years old right now.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Wow, and he still Yeah.

Speaker 6 (23:37):
His sister lived to be like one hundred and seven
and his grandma was like one hundred and nine. Anyways,
my mother is right now getting this truck fixed and refers.
So I'll show you these photos.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
Really wow, this should have been well.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah, next time Chester, we can put them up on
the TV and have everyone.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
Oh see them, but this is big.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
Yeah, let me find these real quick. Sorry, I didn't
have them pulled up. So here's a little text from
my brother in law who's fixing them, fixing it up.
Just waiting on a little of everything for parts because
you cannot find it. Wasn't It's not like one of
those trucks where people want to fix up nowadays because
it will have no value. But it's just sentimental value

(24:23):
to the family. He's waiting on some clutch parts, transmission parts,
parts for the steering box, seals for the rear axle,
some brake parts, some.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Interior parts, parts parts.

Speaker 6 (24:34):
Yeah, the engine was completely rebuilt with possibly the last
set of pistons that were ever made in the factory.
He got all the six pistons from a different store
in different states. Really, so here's here's the color of it.

(24:55):
But so my mom's getting it redone and my grandfather
is not doing great right now, and the plan was
to have my grandfather surprise him with this truck and
then take him to the local warehouser parade and he
would ride in that with my mother or whoever, and

(25:17):
all the people like his nieces and stuff that are
still around there would be surprised and see my grandfather
in the truck at the parade like he was meant
to be, like he was meant to be, and they would,
you know, see that, and it would just so hopefully
this can happen.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
God puts my faith back in America.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
I lost my faith thinking about counselors these days and
not letting kids out.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
Of good story.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yea so good story.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
Yeah, Grandpa Chicklsi, good Man, good truck America, the story,
last name Chaikowski, Chikolski.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Yeah, think a one or too long? Where that guy
come out of?

Speaker 6 (26:02):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Holding, all right, who's up? I'll go okay, okay.

Speaker 9 (26:16):
Twenty fourteen, I trade into my fresh store, my half
ton gas rig for a three quarter ton diesel. And
this is this will be important later. I'm not just
showing off. It's a beautiful truck. Eight inch lift, thirty
seven inch tires, just an eight inch lift, just a
nice truck, truck fourteen.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
It's a humble brag like a monster truck.

Speaker 9 (26:35):
Yeah, but this is gonna be important detail later when
we get to something trying to get in it. So
twenty fourteen, my my Hunt and buddy Charlie Smith's wife
draws a coveted bluestag there in our state of Washington,
so it screws up our whole plans. We gotta go
film that. I'm gonna run camera. He's gonna call. We
go get that one out of the way. She kills
a great bull. On September fourteenth, when me and Charlie, like,
our plan was to still go to Idaho. That was

(26:57):
back in the good days when you could buy a
tag over the counter. We go home because we had
all of September off, wash our clothes, and then we
take off Rida home and this is really twenty fourteen,
my first time really hunting out of state for ELK.
You know, I'd hunt a deer in Montana and stuff,
but this is like my first on my own, no
dad uncles around, I'm gonna go go out of state.
So we leaving the brand new truck the night before

(27:19):
and so we get to nowhere, Idaho at three am
in the morning, just waiting for the gas station to
open up.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
We're gonna buy one tag.

Speaker 9 (27:25):
We're gonna be real thrifty, buy one tag in case
we you know, don't need the other one. And so
we go up look at the spot we intended to
go a few elk tracks. Nothing we get we get
up there and hunt. So it's about two o'clock we're
coming out. I remember, like vividly, he's chewing on a
purple bag of skittles, and I bugle out the window
like this is how this is how like exhausted I am.

(27:47):
We just did like five miles in, five miles out,
no elk a little bit like maybe our spot we
pick sucks. Begle out the window and I'm like, will
you stop chewing on your damn skittles. I just heard
a bugle and he didn't believe me. So he's over there,
still rattling the bag, and I'm like, Charlie, stop with
the skittles.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
I said, I want to hear this bull. Be there't
a bull out there.

Speaker 9 (28:05):
So we get out and listen again, and there's a
bull answers and it's like, well, it's getting pretty late.
It's like kind of a one track road. Let's fly
up here. We have a fourler trailer on the back
on a one track road. Let's go cut it and
then we'll get on the fourll or drive back to
this point and drop in.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Successfully.

Speaker 9 (28:22):
Fortunately, my first day in Idaho, Like kill a bull
and then we're kind of yet the bull, doub bull
cut the distance, no pun intended cut the distance, got
him killed. And I'm like, first thing, You're like, nobody's ever,
Like we did nothing wrong, but this looks real fishy,
Like we bought the tag three o'clock this morning.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
We got a bull in the truck this night.

Speaker 9 (28:41):
Like it's just not exactly but everything was legit, and uh,
get it to the truck and uh like it's hot,
it's real hot. We got to get to a cooler,
so we drive to a town later and then we
go buy his tag the next day. Very fortunate get
into bulls that morning. Can't make it work that evening
he kills his bull well a little bit of a

(29:01):
tough shot. We watched it through our binocular state on
its feet, so we had to go camp in the truck.
At this point, I had kept my head in the truck.
The guy the cooler didn't want us to keep the head,
and I'm like, well, I'm just gonna do a euro
so I'll skin it out. But like we were just
tossing it in the brush. And I'm always like man
predators around here, like it's a little iffy, it's warm,
it's gonna get stinky. But we're we're making it work.

(29:23):
So we're we got to sleep in the truck. Now,
we throw it off and pack it. We go find
his bowl next morning, get it all broken down, get
it out. So now normally we would just like bomb home,
but my meat's in a cooler. I can't get to
cause it's five o'clock at night. So I'm like, well,
what are we gonna do? Like he's like, oh my,
my childhood cousin I grew up, who lives up here
at the ski resort. We're gonna go. I'm gonna give

(29:44):
her a call, calls her up. She's like, yeah, come
on over, blah blah blah. My, you know, the the
in laws are over and come hang out. You guys
can shower up. So we I mean, it's nice. You know,
you've been living like dirt bags for the last last
three days, all sweaty, so you get to go take
a shower. We drink, you know, have a few drinks,
eat some pizza, and just kind of refresh.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
But there were some bad decisions made along the way.

Speaker 9 (30:09):
You know, Normally people would say like, why is your
meat in the back of your truck? Why are the
heads in the back of the truck. Charlie's attacks a
drymas so he wanted to save his cape. We were
able to save it and get it out, and you know,
you're always like, well, there's houses everywhere. You're in a
ski resort, like we should be fine. So we get
my bedroom, you know, a bonus room kind of over
the top of the garage which directs directly overlooks the trucks,

(30:31):
and Charlie's down the hallway and so it's a I
don't know somewhere in the middle of two am, and
Charlie comes sprinting into my room like wakes me up
out of a like middle sum's.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
In your truck? I'm like, how did you hear that?

Speaker 9 (30:44):
Way down the hall But so we kind of peek
out my blinds and you can see something like in
some some sort of light out there, you can see
that there's a bear in the back of my truck.
And in the short five seconds, like I don't know
how it'llked out, but you could see that he's also
trying to get on your bumper and he's coming up
like the side of the tire and like trying to

(31:05):
get Charlie's cape out right at this point, so.

Speaker 6 (31:09):
Me, good, think you got that lift?

Speaker 9 (31:11):
Yeah, so I know he's working hard, right and you
can you can hear horns banging and this is my
brand nude truck and all right, we gotta get down
there quick. Well I had to wherewithal to put my
pants on. Charlie is in a hurry. So Charlie flies
down to the garage. Well, my pistols and like, we're
not too worried, but he was like, there's a bear

(31:31):
and once he's decided he wants to eat, Like who
knows what we're dealing with. So we get down to
the garage and it's this point I realized Charlie is
still in his whitey tidies and I have to paint
the picture of Charlie for you, and I paint it
with a white brush because he is an Italian ger
or no, an Irish ginger. He's about five foot seven
pere redhead and he's in tidy whities, but you really

(31:53):
can't tell where the lion's at. So it's at that
point where we turn the garage light on and I'm like, well,
you didn't evident'ly hit your cousin and her family.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
I'm like, why at least put my pants on him?
You get down there.

Speaker 9 (32:05):
And so we're sitting in the garage kind of trying
to peek out the glass line of windows, like is
he still in there?

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah? And then you could just hear him just beating
the piss out of my truck. So what do we do?

Speaker 9 (32:16):
And these people live on the ski resort, well, skis
and ski poles are available, So before I could like
think of any good sense, Charlie has a ski pole
in his hand and is running out the side door
at the bear with his ski pole like a joust.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah he was.

Speaker 9 (32:32):
I don't know if he's braver than I am or
just less, like it doesn't take the time to put
all of the things together. But I'm like, I just
don't know. He's got meat, he's got hide, He's already
on it. And Charlie runs at this bear and gets
about two feet from its butt with a with a
ski pole before it decides to take off. And then
instead of I mean he didn't have any way to

(32:54):
tell where it was gonna go, it runs up a
dang tree ten feet away from my truck. Like that
was okay, he's not in my truck anymore, but we're
not gonna be able to go back to sleep now
until we go back in. I'm at this time, everybody
else is awake and Charlie's now just in his underwear
talking to everybody. So we kind of evaluate the situation

(33:14):
and sure is I mean five minutes later, that bear's
coming back down the tree and he doesn't run away,
he goes back for the truck, and so we have
to basically load up and leave at two am, get
out of that country. Go down well, evidently when you
park with elkheads in the back at a gas station.
So we had sheriff stop us at three point thirty,
woke us up, tapped on our window like what's going on.

(33:34):
At five o'clock, a different game warden pulls in, asks
us what's going on, and it's just starting to get daylight.
And it was at that point when the game warden
tapped on the window with his flashlight that I was
able to evaluate the damage. Yeah, I had my brand
new truck had bear scratches down all three corners of
the truck bed.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
It is. It was cool, that's like a sticker.

Speaker 9 (33:59):
The punchline that story was just Charlie like I could
never remember, like he was.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
I think he was more.

Speaker 9 (34:05):
Interested in protecting his cape than he was protecting my truck.
But he just ran around the corner ski pole in hand,
was gonna joust that bear. And yeah, I've had bad
luck with bears. Two years ago, we were in Colorado,
frozen cold. I lay a four x four post across
the bed brails right from side to side and just
try to get my wife's meal deer up off of

(34:26):
and that bear decided he was going to lift the
entire deer hanging on the post out in it like
wrapped the side of my truck and smashed that four
by four post, scratched it. Bear scratches all over my
brand new pickup truck on that that time. But yeah,
I've had I'm not keeping meat in the back of
my truck anymore. You have a topper, now I do
have a ton but that I had a topper. Then

(34:46):
I had the tunnel cover, but I rolled it up
so that I can kind of seem I hang the meat.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
I bet your insurance guy's like, come on, yeah, another bear.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Listen the first time the whole bear thing. Yeah, the
first time I was going to roll it. Second some
of them up buying it.

Speaker 9 (35:01):
We followed that second bear down to the creek where
you'd try. We could see the drag marks in the snow,
and that bear was just I thought it was late
in November or middle of November, cold as heck, like
that bear be gone. He was down there by a
big old oak tree or cottonwood or something whatever Colorado
grows along the rivers, and I think he was just
sitting there picking at some of the front quarters. Fortunately
he didn't touch the back quarters or the backstrap, but yeah,
he was just down there munch and we scared him

(35:23):
off and got the meat back, and oh did Yeah
that's cool.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah, yeah, I got.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
A topper on my truck. Yeah, you know, it's like
a hunter thing, you know. Apparently for sure we got
told or comment on a video. Somebody's like, people can
tell you're from out of state because you got a topper.
I'm like, you get you instators, get your stuff wet.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, we like our stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
So Tyler not traveled the country hunting deers kind of
what we do. You know, you heard historical bombs. He
has the topper, had toppers on both of those trucks.
You know, you can sleep in the back of it,
like he was saying. You know, and I in particularly
got the six and a half foot bed because of that,
you know, and make sure you can sleep back there.
The five and a half foot bed doesn't really work
for me very good. Yeah, you definitely. Yeah, So I

(36:06):
got a it's not an old Drugs twenty sixteen a
half ton, you know, four world drive. But it's like
you gotta be comfortable for the road, you know what
I mean, Like, uh, we don't do the lift thing,
not the big tires, but just like some good smooth
all terrains, you know. And and we we just like
spend a ton of time trucks scouting. It's like a
thing we do. So you drive, you know, you go
to said state and you just drive around, get a

(36:28):
feel for the land. Elk is a lot like that, right,
Like you're bugling out the window, you know, it's cool,
so like.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
You're just one out the window, like Jason, did I.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Have not you know, I just might have to, you know,
be an experiment.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
He usually takes his have Alina call and it's right
and it gets him to stop out.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
You do a quite loud call to make an animal.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Like should have Oh yeah, you were saying about this sound.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, he has to sound again.

Speaker 11 (36:54):
Well, it's very loud.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
It's very loud.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Should a back up from the mic and do the thing?

Speaker 3 (36:58):
I want to hear this? So this is your universal
animal stop? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (37:01):
This yeah, this, this, this makes sense in the story
right now because he does this from his truck like
a deer jumps across the road, running across the field.
Roll down the window and.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
And you make the noise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why
it's I got this from the old days as being
a government trapper, like you got to stop the coyote
and shoot it. So you got to figure out the
sound that makes things stop.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
So he's gearing up for the sound I didn't do right.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Hold on, I can't do it.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
I don't know if have I lost my call.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Once more?

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Heard it first, I believe somewhere.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
I don't know if I can do it.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
Try it again?

Speaker 2 (37:44):
You got it?

Speaker 3 (37:44):
Come on? What it?

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Sometimes when people put you on the spot, barred out.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
Literally, you know how when a grenade goes off in
a war movie and everything goes like, oh, put you.

Speaker 11 (38:00):
He did that one time.

Speaker 5 (38:01):
We're looking at have Alena's in the HeLa actually, and
he did that to the back of my head and
that happened.

Speaker 11 (38:07):
I had the high pitched grenade sound.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
It was like, try, but it just might be an
outdoors thing. You know. There's thing.

Speaker 11 (38:17):
Diaphragm.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
I can't do it, guys, I can't do it. It
doesn't it doesn't work in uh.

Speaker 11 (38:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Anyways, there's nothing to do with my story. So sorry, but.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
The story.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
It doesn't roll the story at all, but it may.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
I tend to use it.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Did you hear it in Arkansas?

Speaker 6 (38:34):
I do it?

Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, so it is impressive.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Did he stop an animal with the universal animal stop call?

Speaker 7 (38:40):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (38:40):
I think we were talking about the universal animal stop call,
and I said, let me do it, you know, show
it to me, and he did it.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
It will yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
So anyways, we're driving around trucks out and doing the thing,
and I'm a public land deer hunter. I always have men.
Tyler kills a awesome buck. This is all on film.
We produced a series called buck Truck that's on meat Eater,
you know, And so he killed an awesome dear early
and that kind of puts me in a pickle because
I'm like, my buddy's waiting on me to kill.

Speaker 11 (39:05):
A deer the first of November.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah, you killed a deer on November one, and it's
the best week of the year, and you're like sitting
around being the best buddy ever camp chef, you know,
like just making breakfast and stuff, and I'm just struggling
so bad. And we decide, all right, we cannot find
a deer on public land. We're gonna get on the phones.

(39:27):
Get on the phones, do some calling. Tyler somehow, some
way gets a hold of this guy, remembers this guy's
dad's name from like six years ago when he talked
to him and like had that personal connection thing, and
gets us permission to go hunt. Like it four thousand
acre place, except there's no trees on the property. It
is like rolling hills nothing. So we drive the truck

(39:47):
out there. We're driving through. You got to go through
like another property, gonna easement.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Go out.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
We scout the place. Looks great, see a giant buck run,
get glass on that thing, and decide, Okay, tomorrow morning's
the push. We're gonna go out there and we're gonna
find a deer to shoot like I'm gonna get it done. Well,
just so happens that, I don't know. Three days before this, Uh,
one of the other guys that travels with us got

(40:13):
sick in the back of my truck. And uh, he's
a young lad, and I guess he doesn't have as
much experience with the you know, feeling it coming on,
so he has a hard time getting the window down
in time. So the sickness then perforates throughout the vehicle.

Speaker 7 (40:28):
Of course, look, he puked back, he up chucked the
back of the truck, hits the back of the hits
the back of the headrest, you know, and all down
the side. Ye doesn't have the wherewithal to clean it
up off the truck, so I have to do all that.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
And then he's gonna be mad that I'm telling that part,
but whatever. And so we're out scouting this bad to
the bone property, like just the private land thing. Being
able to drive around a property is not a thing
I'm used to, right, And so I get a rumble
down deep while we're out scouting, like this ain't good.
I have to go find a bush and I'm like, okay,

(41:01):
well that's over. Well, no, for the next ten hours.
I have the most violent sickness that I've probably ever
had in my life. And I'm thinking, like, this is
the baddest opportunity I've ever had at hunting, whitetail, deer,
private ground, Giant Bucks, some of the best dates. And
I'm sick and I just can't do anything right. I

(41:25):
can't even get out of bed, which is not like
a me thing to do. I'm a high energy guy.
And so about like three point thirty, I finally get
everything worked out or something I don't know, and I
get an hour of sleep, get up the next morning,
go up, make coffee, and I'm like, huh, all right,
I can do this. Tyler actually woke Tyler up and
he could not believe that I was moving. It was

(41:45):
a weird thing. And go out to that property. Run
a little bit late. Tyler drops me off. He's gonna
go do some more scouting for me while I am
gonna go on a hunt at least try, you know,
like you got to give it a go. It's like
November fifth, It's the the best day of the year,
probably one of the best. It's a cold front, and uh,
go out just kind of like have a beautiful morning sunrise.

(42:07):
You know, it's just frosty. We're on the planes glass
and it's just it's just enjoyable. I'm just thankful to
be there. And all of a sudden, I see a
giant buck at like five hundred yards and thinking, well,
I don't know if I can do anything about this,
but these deer are amped up. I'm gonna rattle with
this deer, and uh, I get my antlers, and just

(42:29):
if you've a hundred whitetails, you know that, like sometimes
the things you do with antlers actually isn't realistic, but
you're playing on their instincts, right, So I'm just cracking
these things as hard as I can. It's five hundred
yards away, right, and I this thing isn't gonna hear me.
Sure enough, whips his head up and looks, and this
thing just makes a bee line straight to He's trying
to get down wind of us, five hundred yards away.

(42:49):
I run down the hill, sickness and all about to
pass out, and uh get to where I'm gonna be
able to make a shot on this deer, and long
story short, I uh get an opportunity at thirty two
yards and shoot this deer. It's the biggest deer of
my life. And I'm just recovered after being like death sick,
and it's just one of those moments where we've all

(43:10):
had them, you know, out in the outdoors, where you
just kind of in awe of just the situation. It's
it's a bigger thing than what you are, you know,
and you you have to like kind of step back
and be like, Okay, I didn't really accomplish this. This
just happened to me, and I was blessed to be
a part.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
You were the recipe.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
That's exactly right, man. And so I'm so pumped about
all this. Right, well, Tyler's out scouting and I want
to share this with my best bud. Well ends up,
he gets a flat tire in the truck while while
I'm waiting on him to get there, and it's like
an hour and a half before and I'm just like
sitting out on the planes, just out here with this deer,
you know, just hanging out. And we get to back

(43:45):
the truck up, put the deer in the back of
the truck and just do the thing as opposed to
like what we're used to, you know, with just packing
stuff out and you know, cutting it up or whatever.
Just kind of a neat different experience to be able
to kind of like what that pictures showed that you showed.
You know, it's of like what people have been doing
for a long time, loading de arup in the back
of the truck.

Speaker 11 (44:02):
Yep. I could work for NASCAR. By the way, changed
a lot of tires. I've changed a.

Speaker 5 (44:07):
Lot of tires turning around the country with trailers and stuff.

Speaker 11 (44:10):
We're buying the cheapest tires we could we could find.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Oh yeah, keep the used time places.

Speaker 11 (44:15):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
But yeah, that's my truck story.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
Excellent nks. Who's next, I'll go dirt hit them. So.

Speaker 8 (44:24):
I don't know about you guys, but in my twenties
I had a lot of really good opportunity to learn
life lessons.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
And I continue to do that.

Speaker 8 (44:32):
But in my twenties it seemed like they're really a
lot of times where I, you know, maybe made the
wrong choice. So, uh, picture this North Idaho. It's nineteen
ninety seven, and my best friend and my brother in law.
We grew up hunting together and he married my wife's sister,
and so we're brother in laws. And it's February and

(44:54):
on back up, your best friend married my wife's sid.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
They married sisters.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Wow, so we're.

Speaker 8 (45:02):
Brother in law.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
She told me that before, and I was equally surprised.
Wait a minute, that's great.

Speaker 8 (45:08):
So yeah, so we we went out to our old
Elk Hunton's spot right out of town in North Idaho
in the winter time and especially in February. So by
this time, we've had quite a bit of snow on
the ground and it's in its thawed and we've got
more snow and then it's it's frozen, and it's been
in the below zero you know, probably five ten blow

(45:29):
zero at this point. Beautiful crystal clear days, but it's
ice cold out and the snow has a crust like
you can't believe. I mean, you can walk around on
without falling through. Well, we're out on this old road
and he has a quarter Ton pickup if you will.
It's a compact quarter Ton pickup and we're driving on

(45:52):
top of the snow and it's beautiful sun. It's yes, yeah,
and it's like a you know, standard cab, little light
truck and piece of junk. You know, this is so.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Hard to picture, the floating on the floating on the
crust on snow.

Speaker 8 (46:06):
Yeah no, no, no factory and they were worn out
as good. There's a coar toime, yeah yeah. And I'm
looking out the window and the sun is starting to shine.
It's about seven o'clock in the morning. And I tell
I look over her handy and I said, you know,
you might want to And about that time it fell
through the snow.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
I'm like, oh no.

Speaker 8 (46:28):
So we get out. And of course the young men
we were we weren't prepared. We didn't have a shovel,
we didn't have a come along, we didn't have anything.
There was a handyman jack in the back of the truck,
so handyman Jack's. I don't know if you're familiar with those,
but they're really good for a lot of things, you know,
jacking up your truck. I mean, you can put chains

(46:48):
on them and use them for like a come along.
You can, uh, but they're dangerous. You gotta be careful
because if you're not, if you don't have a real
good grip on that handle, it'll it'll come loose and
whack you in the chin and then go and ratchet
back down and let the truck down. Widow Maker, I've
got to if I didn't have my beard. You'd see
a scar on my chin from another time.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (47:11):
But anyhow, so we get and we're facing the wrong way.
We're faced away from where we want to be. So
we get the old handyman jack and jack it up
and then push it off, and we're going to try
to turn this truck around so we can maybe get.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
By jacking it and pushing it over. Yeah, yep, so
ten inches over yep.

Speaker 8 (47:30):
An hour later we got it turned around.

Speaker 11 (47:34):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (47:36):
And mind you, we're not prepared. We don't have what
we're in tennis shoes. You know, this is usually always
if I get stuck or have some bad decision made
in a truck, it's always wearing tennis shoes or loafers
or something. I'm not prepared. So we get this thing
turned around and we're just not going to get out.
So we're in the middle of this old logging road.

(47:57):
There's probably three feet of snow there, and I'm like, well,
we better walk back to town. So it's six miles
back to town. We walked back to town. It's the
end of the day. It's like, all right, tomorrow we're
gonna get reinforcements. We're gonna come out. We're gonna get
this truck. So my dad's got this old wood truck.
It's like a nineteen fifty eight that he's kind of
that he's had refurbished and he cuts a lot of

(48:19):
firewood with. It's got a winch, it's got positive traction
rear in. This thing's a bad mambajamba. So we drive
back out there the next day. But it's an automatic
and we're going up up this little hill and the
snow is deep and the truck's working hard, and I'm like, man,
something's getting hot. Well I get out and that truck
is just bleeding automatic transmission fluid underneath. It over overheated,

(48:43):
the transmission boiled, all the automatic transmission fluid out, and
now we got to walk back not six miles. We
have another We have another truck parked back on the
on the gravel where it's plowed. So we walk back,
getting the other truck, drive to town. And this is
a small town of five hundred pe right, So a
local convenience store. They've got like four quartz of automatic

(49:06):
transmission from ATF. So we buy everything they got, take
it back out there, pour it in there, and then
get the old truck out of there. Well, we got
to do something else. So the next day, my wife's uncle.
He's got the ultimate hunting rig. You know, it's got
a bit of a lift. Kid's got big tall mud tires,
it's got a winch. It's like, oh yeah, this thing'll

(49:27):
get up there. It's got posic, it's got a rear
locker in that. This thing's gonna get up there and
get this truck out. So we get up there and
we make it past where my dad's truck boiled over. Well,
he had an automatic transmission too, and it's boiled over
as well. You're just like he was working so hard
it just overheated the transmission. So well, we bought all

(49:50):
the atf in town the day before, so we'd walk
back to the other truck, drive all the way to
the next town over that have six hundred people in
it by a little more at okay, drive back out there,
rescue that thing, and he's like, yeah, you're on your own, guys,
I'm out of here. So well, I grew up my

(50:10):
first car or my first vehicle, I can't It was
a a nineteen sixty nine four wheel drive, so it
was basically kind of a kind of an antique almost,
And then this thing is a brute, but it's not
the most you know, roadworthy machine. Right, you don't run
that gray, but man, that thing will wheel. But I
didn't really want to take it up there because who

(50:31):
knows it may breakdown to So I get this old
machine out there. We start going up there. I go
right past where everybody else went, and it's just going
great through the snow, like like nothing, and it's just
cutting and it's got real skinny mud tires on it.
It's just digging and it's going. And we get to
the we get almost to Randy's truck, the freaking gas

(50:53):
pedal breaks off.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
It breaks off on the floor.

Speaker 8 (50:58):
I'm what the hell, So now what do we do? Well?
This thing had kind of like a manual cruise control
up on the dash. You have this knob you pull,
and this little knob has a little cable that reaches
in to the carburetor and will operate the throttle. So
kind of like an old school huh h, old school.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (51:20):
So I'm like, and I'd never used it, but I
knew what it was. I'm like, man, I got to
get this thing working. So I jerked on that thing
and finally got it moving to where I read the
motor up enough where we could get that thing kind
of turned around and we got out of there. I said,
I don't know, Randy, I don't know what you're gonna do.
So we had to leave that thing literally for a month.
We had to leave it for a month in the wood,

(51:43):
and I said, you know, maybe we can get it
off the road. At least we had some shovels, so
we dug a trench to where we could get it
off throw jumped it up on the on the bank
next to the road out of the way, because who knows,
a road grader may come through, or people on snowmobiles,
or you know, just hooligans in general, they may you know,
vane it. It's kind of a piece of junk truck anyway.
But anyway, we had to leave that thing for a

(52:04):
month and UH in March we went back and UH
was able to drive it most of the way out.
We had to shovel a little bit in a couple
of places, but we're able to get it out.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
But a lot of casualties.

Speaker 8 (52:15):
Yeah, yeah, that was like, that's that's my worst. I
think my worst trucks do. Oh no, no, we were
both poorous could be. You know, we're dumb kids in
our twenties. We didn't have any money to pay you know. Fortunately,
you know the old timers, they had money.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
To pay for stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
So that's good.

Speaker 8 (52:33):
It was good. But yeah, life lessons, you know, it
seems like I've I keep learning my Even last fall,
my wife and I were out there hunting and we
were driving along like I'm gonna pull into this landing
here with my pickup in the snow and and and
do some glass. And I pulled over there. It was
pretty deep, you know, about a foot of snow. Well
I couldn't tell because it drifted, but the landing had

(52:56):
kind of sloped. As soon as I pulled over there,
I started sliding over towards this little cliff and have
to stop. So I'm prepared. I'm prepared now because you
know I'm forty nine years old.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Were prepared by your twenties, man.

Speaker 8 (53:10):
That's right. So I've got to come along. And I
got lots of cable and chains, you name it. So
I sat there for an hour and demonstrate and showed
to my wife out how prepared I was, and how
you you know, recover a vehicle with a come along
and lots of chains, and about an hour of that
moving that come along and getting my truck out inch
by inch, But we made it out, didn't have to walk.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
And didn't nothing to drive by transmission fluid.

Speaker 8 (53:31):
No, no transmission fluid perfect. Yeah, and I shot a
buck about an hour later. No man, Yeah, timey, hell
of the day.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
It was.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
My turn, Clay, Yeah, bring the inferno.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
This is our number seven story.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Well, I don't want to give it a seven? Did
I say that earlier? You did? I'm not in the story.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
So long ago, way back in history, they introduced a
fish called a rainbow smelt into the Great Lakes and
you go smelt dipping after dark. So when you're talking
about driving real tired, that was a trademark of smelt dipping.
And thinking about my favorite truck story, which now I'm

(54:24):
not even in, I called my buddy from high school
who I'm still friends with, Craig Christensen, today, to say, hey,
remember that story about your truck smelt dipping, and he said,
we wasn't smell dipping. I'm like, oh, I've been telling
that story wrong for a long time. So he retells
me the story. The first part of the story is

(54:45):
this Craig wrestled in our high school wrestling team.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Okay, he.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Had a pair of shoes that he wrestled in all
through his high school wrestling career, and he got up
to where he was gonna. He got up to where
he said, when I get my when I win my
one hundredth match, I'm going to retire my wrestling shoes. Okay,
red wrestling shoes. He goes on to have a thirty

(55:13):
six wrestling match winning streak and hits his one hundredth
win on his thirty sixth his one hundredth career win
high school career win. He was good on his thirty
sixth match in a row that he won, so his
hundredth win was his thirty sixth consecutive win.

Speaker 6 (55:32):
I imagine he was a state champion.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
He had all that kind of stuff going on.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
So he then says he's going to retire his shoes,
and he borrows a pair of shoes from another buddy
of ours, John Merchant, puts on John Merchant's wrestling shoes
and goes out and gets pinned by a guy who
for that who had a thirteen loss eleven win record

(56:00):
declares these shoes to be cursed.

Speaker 11 (56:05):
What does the wrestling shoe look like? I've never very.

Speaker 6 (56:07):
Minimalist converse like boxing shoes like they're kind of yeah, okay, so.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Yeah, minimalist, like a minimalist, a little high topper ankle support.
So hold that in the back of your head. That
little wrestling shoe deal.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Craig's he he had an eighty four three quarter ton
truck and his dad had a much newer half ton truck.
But Craig's ice shanny won't fit in Craig's dad's truck.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Dude, I love this story already. Wrestling It's very common, man.

Speaker 11 (56:49):
I have no clue what's going on here.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
It's listen.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Craig is now so that that Hunters match when the
wrestling shoes were in he he's a senior in high school.
He's now at Skiing Community College. I went there, Merchant
went there, Craig went there, everyone went to the Skiing
Community College. He's at with Skiing Community College and his
dad wants to go ice fishing, and his dad goes
ice fishing. It's Craig's dad, Craig's grandfather and Craig's wrestling

(57:16):
coach want to go ice fishing, but they can't fit
the shanny in.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Craig's dad's truck. So they take Craig's truck. And there's a.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Real heinous corner as you're approaching White Lake where we
grew up, and it's icy on the way to ice fish,
and they blast off the corner off into the woods
and hit the guy that just blasted off.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
The road prior to that.

Speaker 8 (57:42):
Oh man, gosh.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Somehow when they hit, Craig's truck is racing and won't
shut off.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
So his dad, Craig I even pressed him on this.
He doesn't understand.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Why or what, but his dad's idea is to pop
the hood and cut the battery cable.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Not unhook it cuts the battery cable.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Okay, I mean it's probably quicker than getting out of
Criss Ranch because he desperately wants to get the truck
turned off. Now they a week later fixed, the truck appears.
The truck appears to be fixed. Craig drives the truck
to the Skidon Community College and parks truck under an

(58:28):
oak tree. Okay, does his classes and everything, and at
the end of school comes out and goes to start
the truck and turns it and just clicks like a
dead battery. He thinks, whatever, I don't know, click dead
battery something or another. He's got all his stuff and
in another friend is going to drive him home. He

(58:49):
happens to have John merchants losing wrestling shoes, okay, the
pair he lost in the year prior. He has those
wrestling shoes and he also has a dual cassette tape
boombox belonging to John Merchant. Places the cursed wrestling shoes
in the truck with the boombox, a box of twenty

(59:11):
two AMMO, a box of twenty gage shotgun shells, and
half of his clothes. Goes about his evening. They go out,
they go to some bars and whatnot. Craig gets home
to his mom's house late at night and the phone
is just ringing up a storm at night. He never
picks it up. Later realizes that was the fire department.

(59:36):
He gets a ride to school and still unbeknownst to him,
unbeknownst to him until later, his truck has melted into
the ground. Everything in the truck is gone. He said,
the steering wheel is laying on the ground. Everything is melted.
Glass is gone. It burned up a oak tree. It

(59:58):
defoliated oak tree he was parked underneath. Okay, burned up.
The cursed wrestling shoes, which he blames this whole thing,
are gone. The dual cassette tape, boombox gone. Oh, his
term paper is gone.

Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
Oh no.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
He goes to a teacher and says, I don't have
my turn paper. It was destroyed in a fire. And
she's like, come on, Craig.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Heys no, it was burned up right out in this
parking lot and she goes, oh, that was your truck.
So he then goes to a wrestling match after all
this happened. He has a wrestling match to go to.
Goes to a wrestling match and he's telling a buddy

(01:00:47):
of his this story. At the wrestling match. Behind him,
he hears a girl laughing, turns around, doesn't know her,
and says, what are you laughing at? And she said,
that's a pretty funny story about your truck. This year
they're married twenty five years. Wow, you catch that, Phil,

(01:01:11):
It's a love story.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Wow about the love story.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
It's a love story that's better than.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
I tell that story all the time, but I tell it,
uh that he was coming back from smelt dipping, not
ice fishing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Did it kill that oak tree no more?

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Acres Cerig said, it defoliated it. But I haven't heard
the oak trees dead. My favorite.

Speaker 6 (01:01:35):
Those oaks are tough.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Story.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
That's how, that's how his that's how your wife has
met his wife, Brittany.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
That's good, beautiful children.

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
So the s so going from what seemed like something
so negative, these cursed shoes to a burn up truck.
That leads to.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
When I was talking.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
I was talking to him today, he says, I like
to blame those shoes for losing that truck, but considering
that halving my wife is a good thing, I suppose
it was all good in the end.

Speaker 11 (01:02:09):
That's no, it's a great story.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
It's like a it's a love story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Good story. Should things go well for him throughout life after.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
The shoes are always once the shoes were gone, everything
picked right up.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
About that, he sounds like a heck of a wrestler.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Things picked right up.

Speaker 6 (01:02:27):
What if the truck burnt and the shoes were just still.

Speaker 10 (01:02:36):
There.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
Hey, I've got so I've got a couple of just
like machine gun stories, yeah. So once me and my
buddy Nick Cunningham were coon hunting in his dad's hunting truck,
which was a half ton four wheel drive pick up,
and we called it Old Gray. It was as gray
as it called it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Old Gray. Yeah, I knew where this is going.

Speaker 4 (01:03:03):
So we went. We went coon hunting one night. It
was in the wintertime and it was cold. It was
just him and I we were both about sixteen. And
we got way back into an area we called wolf
Pen Gap and uh, and we had two dogs named
and Macy and Maddie, my first blue Tick registered blue

(01:03:25):
Tick coonhounds. And we got way back in the mountains.
Don't remember anything about the hunt, but we went to
the dogs, got back in the truck and the truck
wouldn't drive forward, but the truck would drive in reverse,
and so we drove nine miles home in reverse. We
took turns because our next week get a crick. We

(01:03:48):
it was so late at night and it was just
back roads the whole way, and so we drove nine
miles all the way home.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Was that a parking break issue?

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
It was the transmission went out, a transmission dial transmit.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
We had this meme my dad did duck hunt.

Speaker 11 (01:04:01):
When I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
The parking break froze in place, but it would go
in reverse, so went reverse in circles in the pasture
till it warmed up enough to thow the parking break down.
That's my first story.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
I just remember that short me and had some pretty
good some pretty good times coon utting. His dad also
had another truck that was a long bed extended cab,
full size three quarter ton pick up. Huge. It was
like a boat. I mean it was like eighteen feet long,
you know. And we're sixteen year olds and at this

(01:04:34):
time we were at a place called two Mile Motorway,
which was a long stretch that went through national forests. Basically,
basically it's like a one way road and the way
you hunt two mile Motorway is you start at this
end and you road hunt your dogs all the way
to the other end, which the other end of two
mile Motorway ends up in a really small rural community

(01:04:57):
outside of the bigger town we lived in. Which town
we lived in was like five thousand people, but this
was like a community way out.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
That community was called hell Fire Wolf Can.

Speaker 4 (01:05:06):
Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Look it up on
a X. Well, we get out there and and and
it's cold. And I remember we'd played basketball against a
Catholic high school that night and afterwards we went counhuting Subiaco.
Now they always beat us, man, Catholics are good at basketball.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Not this one.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
We got the truck. This story and this is a
machine gun story, so there's not there's no this is
not a love story. But we we tried to do
the eighteen point turnaround in this one way road and
turned this eighteen foot truck around and it didn't work.
And you along, we we banked it like the front
bumper was embedded in the bank on the back, and

(01:05:47):
the in the in the back bumper was embedded on
the bank of the road in the back of the truck.
And basically we got the truck just dead stuck across
the middle of this one lane road. And I mean
we dug and tried to do everything we could and
could not get the truck on stuck. And it was
one o'clock in the morning, and we walked. The story

(01:06:09):
we tells we walked five miles. I could probably go
on on X and actually find out it was, you know,
like three and a half. We claimed we walked five
miles to the nearest house, which happened to be our
English teacher's house. A man named Mike McMaster was an
incredible man. Yeah rarely, and he was known for being

(01:06:32):
the nicest guy in the world. And we were nervous
as we could be, but we went up to his
house in the middle of the night before cell phones
and knock on his door. Nothing, knock on his door,
and finally his wife. We hear his wife like, who's there,
and we're like, it's Clay and Nick. We're mister Master's students.

(01:06:52):
And we got our truck stuck, and she was like okay,
And like ten seconds later, here comes mister McMasters. And
he was always just energetic and just the greatest guy
in the world. And he literally pops out of the door.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Hey boys, Oh, it's great to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Oh you got your truck stuck.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Well, hop in mind, we'll take care of you. I mean,
it's like out of a movie. And he goes and
pulls us out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Gotta tell you quick, rapid fire because that brings it
to mind. Uh, Michigan Dear. Season one was November fifteenth,
and back then, the way you would do things you'd
make your ground blind late at night November fourteenth, just
just not thinking clear anyways, get real stuck out at

(01:07:36):
the Zeldnros Farm like buried up to the frame in
my truck. I can't remember how we went about it,
but somehow got word or got a ride to my
friend Matt Jones. He comes out in his truck and
blows the engine out in his truck. At this point,
we got no recourse and I had my then girlfriend

(01:08:00):
Kelly with me. Me and Matt Jones and Kelly then
walk to the nearest house and it is a blizzard
at this point. Bang on the door and this woman
is no way know how gonna let us come into
her house, but she's like, I'll make a phone call
for you. So she makes a phone call and we're

(01:08:22):
within forty yards of her front door in a snowstorm,
laying in a drainage ditch to get out of the wind,
Me and Matt Jones laying on top of Kelly to
try to keep her warm, while this person stares at
us out of window, waiting for a rescue to come.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
M M.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
Yeah, it's that Michigan hospitality.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
That never happen. They would never do that to you
in the South, Well, it wouldn't be cold. They wouldn't
need to.

Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
Explains the Michigan Hello.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Yeah, I could take it. I don't know who lives
there now. I can take you and show you that
house right now.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Probably the same woman lives there.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
I don't know. You know, I should step in there
and say, you know what one time? You know what
happened to that ditch in front of your house? One time?

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
Do we need a closer?

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Do we have? Well? That was I thought that was
the rapid fire.

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
I mean I got another rapid fire. I mean you sure? Yeah,
when I was landscaping one time.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
So these are all rapid fires.

Speaker 4 (01:09:31):
I Well, my long story is that my twenty fourteen
Chevy Silverado pickup that I bought brand new in twenty
twenty fourteen V six. I have carried my mules literally
all over America in that V six pickup. And when
I got it, people were like, man, you can't haul
those trucks not made for pulling. You can't, I mean

(01:09:54):
for real, like guys that haul livestock and trailers, and
they're like, man, you're gonna burn the training out of
that truck. It has two hundred and twenty two thousand miles.
And I have hauled my mules from Arkansas to Montana
at least three times, to Colorado, once to New Mexico,
all over the country and it's still still rolling. That's

(01:10:14):
my long story. That's no fun though. That was yeah,
I mean for it's an incredible I've got the truck
to this day. I drove it to the airport this morning.
But I also had Okay three quarter ton single cab
nineteen ninety four model three quarter ton truck. I had

(01:10:36):
my trailer on and had my Caboa tractor on the
trailer in Fadville, Arkansas. Very hilly. Do you know the story?
Have I told it before?

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
He told me the.

Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
Fade was really hilly, and I was commercial landscaper is
my job. It's working by myself. I had backed my
trailer way down this steep driveway, and the steep driveway
ended on a concrete landing, and on the back side
of the concrete landing was a very steep and severe
drop off. Like these people had this beautiful view at

(01:11:11):
the back of their house. My truck is up on
the main part of the driveway. The trailer is on
the concrete pad, and fifteen feet behind the end of
the trailer is the drop off. This I was young
and dumb like Dirk was at one time, and I
didn't realize that when you're backing up heavy equipment off

(01:11:33):
a trailer on an endcline, that something very special happens.
So I'm I had to park break on the truck,
and I got on the tractor and start backing the
tractor off. And there comes a point it's all physics,
when the weight that's exerted as you back the equipment
off the trailer lifts the ball and tongue of the

(01:11:57):
trailer up, taking the pressure off the black wheels of
your truck. And I'm on which is holding in the
back you know, the truck is is the parking brakes on.
And so I'm on the tractor on the trailer. The
truck's up above me. Uphill behind me is a drop off.
And I mean that truck starts moving, I mean not

(01:12:20):
just not just like creeping moving, and and and that
the the your instinct is to jump off. Well, my
instinct was to jump off the trailer and the truck
continues to slide, is moving open the door while it's moving,
jumping the truck and slammed on the brake and skid

(01:12:41):
to a stop. And the and the tailgate of my
trailer was hanging out over the over the over the
drop off. The tractor is in gear, still running on
the trailer. Now what I should have done was kept
driving the tractor back, because if I had, if I
had driven the tractor back even while it was rolling.

Speaker 3 (01:13:01):
You put the weight back on it, it would have
just stopped. Like but it was.

Speaker 4 (01:13:05):
It's everything against your instinct and so.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
You have to make it worse for it gets better.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I jumping the pick up and
it just, you know, just slides. And we had flip
cell phones at that time. And I don't know how
I had a wrecker service or how I got the number.
I don't even remember, but I called a wrecker and
I mean, I'm just like cramming the brake, pedal in
and I'm like, man, how quick can you get here?

(01:13:34):
Like I am on the side of a mountain and
if I let my foot off this break this truck,
trailer and tractor is going over the edge. How quick
can you get here? And I think my my my
energy sped him up a little bit and he was like, man,
I can be there in thirty minutes.

Speaker 11 (01:13:50):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (01:13:50):
So I sat there for thirty minutes and this customer's
driveway they weren't home, tractor running, hanging off. And when
he came, I just I just you know, had the
window down. I was like, do what you can do, man,
I'm not getting I took my foot.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
Off the breaking with slot.

Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
So that was that was, That was the nail.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
Nail biters good.

Speaker 11 (01:14:14):
Must have some strong calves.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
Yeah, it's like doing three hundred Calfreys.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Oh everybody, thanks for joining. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 4 (01:14:31):
Ride on.

Speaker 10 (01:14:38):
Sealed gray shine like silver in the sun, right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Right on alone, sweetheart.

Speaker 10 (01:14:55):
We dun beat this dawn, of course, Dad taking a
new one and ride. We're done beat this damn Horsiday,
So take a new one and ride on. H