Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
What it's that time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Berry Show is on the air. Good morning, Michael Berry,
but no you cannot use my bathroom. Hello, good ever, Bunny.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is mile Old Hamilton Astros win again and a
good morning to the TZAR. Good morning, Michael Berry. It's
Sean Connery. But you had a little radio show. Pity,
I wash it and to find it. Good morning, Michael Berry.
I'm all jaked up on Mountain Dew. This is the
Thornton Finch wishing you a good morning. Good morning, Michael Berry.
(00:50):
Good morning, Michael Berry. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Michael.
Good morning, Zar, Good morning, Michael, Zay Sailor. Good morning,
at Asina, Good morning, Michael. Hello, Hello are you there?
Good morn you Michael Bear. How you learned that? I
read it tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Mone Good morning, Texas, listen to this.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Good morning Texas in your car, Good morning, Texas.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Bon is on day.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We're happy to be here to talk about everything. Good morning,
We're not wearing pants.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Good morning, Texes, Good morning, Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good bring Texas, Good morning. Wake God. Let's be goddamn
all right. I need something. We got to crowdsource something here.
(02:02):
Good morning, We got a crowdsource something. I don't know
the answer to this, but if you can email me
through the website Michael Berryshow dot com, somebody out there
will know this. Apparently it's illegal to kill a seagull.
I don't know if that's a federal statute, so that
would be across I was talking to a friend of
mine who said he believes it's illegal to kill seagulls.
(02:22):
I don't know if that's in the state of Texas everywhere.
I don't know. I'm asking is that true. But the
question is my friend believes he heard somewhere that if
you kill a seagull, all the other seagulls will leave
and not come back. That's like a bad sign, bad juju.
(02:46):
I don't know, that's their self preservation. I don't know
if that is true. So somebody out there will know,
will has seagull knowledge, surprising seagull knowledge, And if you'll
email me and I will read that on the air,
it would. It was a long discussion about seagulls and
why it came up, But the reason was that my
friend had read that in the olden days, if you
(03:09):
didn't want the seagulls at your peer you'd take shovel
and kill one of them, leave it out there where
the others could see and kind of scarecrow effect, and
the other seagulls would go away, and then you wouldn't
have seagulls again after that. Don't know interested to know
you ever eat seagull ramon? Yeah, okay, that's your story,
and you're sticking to it. You're waiting for a joke.
(03:31):
There's no joke. There's no joke. Hey, you don't want
to anyway. The meat's not any good. Like the guy
that asked, you're really going to eat that endangered species? Yeah?
What does it taste like? All across between a whooping
crane and the California condor, those are other extinct species.
(03:53):
That joke required the listener to have some endangered species knowledge,
and you clearly didn't. We got rain coming today. For
those of you who are kind of easing into getting
a little older, or who have moved from the city,
or you've moved down here to the south and you're
easing into getting older and you kind of want to
(04:14):
get to the point where you're you're you you are
more natural with it, you wear it better, you know,
like if you've moved from the North or California down
here and now you're living out in Belleville. You know
you'll need to learn the little, the very natural flip
of your fingers as you drive past people on a
(04:34):
country road. You don't want to be you know, the
forest gump wave when he's you know, there on the pier.
But you want to be real natural about flicking your
finger up as a you know, as a greeting as
as people go by. It's little things like that you
want to learn. The other one is on a daylight today,
and we can practice. Somebody will say, uh, it's gonna
(04:58):
rain today, and your answer will always be, yeah, we
sure needed it, We sure needed it. I don't ever
think my grandmother. I don't think my grandmother ever heard
the phrase it's going to rain today and did not reply,
we sure needed it, as if we were going to,
you know, put the crops out. But she would sometimes
(05:20):
if nobody else would talk about the weather, she would
bring it up. She would do the call in response.
So she'd say, this is going to rain today. You
maybe look outside, this is going to rain today, And
then she paused, of course, we sure need it. Because
there was nobody else in the trailer to do the
call and response. So she'd do it all. She'd do
it all. One thing I wanted to clarify, but because
(05:42):
I got a lot of emails on the matter, I mean,
I don't care if people think I'm friends with Lance
mccollor or macau or I hate Lance micase. But apparently
people did not understand. I didn't wrap that discussion up yesterday.
There was no point to my pickleball discussion of the
Selarium pickleball place they're doing in Midtown. And as I said,
a friend of mine, Andy Awaita, is part of that deal.
(06:04):
I I like Andy. I got no I got nothing
bad to say about Andy or Selarium or that place
or the concept. I was just remarking because it was
on my screen and I saw it. But what I
was trying to say about that is there's a lot
of pickleball joints that are popping up in their their
pickleball clubs. And my point, yes, I do play pickleball.
(06:28):
I played last night, I'm playing again tonight. I love it.
But that this hasn't this has nothing to do with pickleball.
This is the point that people keep missing. Again, and
again and again. If you own a bar of any type,
I don't care what other activities you have there, you
are trying, you're competing with all the other bars to
(06:48):
get people to come to your house, to your place
and socialize and drink beer or drink drink and drink
alcohol because there's a very, very health the margin on alcohol.
Like poor Paul Jacob over at Jcob's Barbecue, he's got
no alcohol, so he's got to make all his money
on food costs. That is very hard to do. And
(07:11):
and people won't sit and eat, you know, keep eating
for three hours and keep ordering more food with alcohol
they do, and and you can, you can get some
really good margins out of that. So the trick is,
and this is what the consumer, A lot of consumers
don't notice, is you're always looking for a way to
create an experience for people that they come there. But oh,
(07:33):
you're really trying to do is sell them alcohol. So
one year it's axe throwing. Remember ax throwing was a
big deal. Actually, fancy bowling alleys, you know that was
the big What was the place that was a fansom
fancy bowling alley where the rapper got killed. It might
be defensive driving because your regular bar is not your
ice house, eat and pulling people. It might be live music,
(07:55):
that's what we did. Uh, it might be you mean it,
But all of those are reasons. That's all I was
saying is that a lot of these pickleball joints are
popping up, and I'm going to pray we might be
hitting the saturation here.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Pretty solliber glass hood with air grabbing.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Scoops mit the Michael Berry fucking hood Benssbill escaped from
the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Just a few years ago. I thought it was the
heart and so the hook. Chance mclin sings this song
in all of our events, and when he sings it,
he pronounces the word hook, And the first time I
heard it it was kind of jarring. So that's weird,
(08:38):
the heart that brings you back. So I have no ideas.
See sitting in a bar with buddy of mine the
other day and there was a guy a couple of
seats over and quietly under his breath he was saying, powell, Bam, kaboom.
(09:01):
My buddy was getting madder and madder, and I said,
what's wrong? He said, them's fighting words booms.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
How fIF bam. The guy told me the other day
that I have a face like a boat. I didn't
say anything.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I just gave him a stern look. There was a
(09:48):
fellow named Mike yesterday who called on the subject of Vietnam.
Was he a Vietnam veteran? Mike, my apologies. I kept
intending to get to you, and I had an interview
and I had something else. It was not my intention
to not put you on the air, if you will
call us or put you right on, because I actually
(10:10):
did want to get your perspective. I wanted to get
at least one Vietnam veterans perspective. Yesterday, as I mentioned,
yesterday was fifty years since the fall of Saigon. And
if you ever see that evacuation, there's a documentary on it,
and man it is powerful. I mean the they capture
(10:31):
one to one million of the intensity that people felt
as the walls were closing in and they're trying to
get They're up on the top of the building, they're
trying to get them out of there, and the Vietnamese
all won out and it reminds you of that scene
in Afghanistan where people were hanging on to the bottom
of the of the of the plane to get out
(10:52):
of there. Everybody's trying to get out. And I am
mindful as much as I can be at my age,
not having been in war, but having read, watched, talked
to so many things related to Vietnam. It was on
this day in nineteen seventy five that the Fall of
(11:15):
Saigon officially occurred. Communist forces took control of Saigon, and
Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South
Vietnamese President Blong Van men Dwong Van men.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
H.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That is that is a very very dark chapter in
American history, to Mama, very dark chapter. So many lives lost,
is the phone line open, so many lives lost, so
many lives torn apart, so many people who went on
(12:00):
to struggle for the rest of their lives with what
they endured in that horrible war. I just think there
is so much blame to go around. There is so
much harsh criticism to go around. There's so many people
who avoided that war because they were the fortunate son,
(12:23):
and so many people who went off and served, and
the children of World War Two heroes who came home heroes,
and then their sons following in Daddy's footsteps. Now it's
my turn. I will go and I will do this.
The way they were treated when they got home, it
(12:43):
just it's a very very bad deal all the way around.
And it is one of those things that bothers me
more than so many other things in American history, because
I don't think it's there's ever been a proper reckoning.
I don't think there's ever been a proper apology to
(13:06):
these guys. I don't think there's been a proper reconciliation.
I don't think there has been the national conversation that
there needs to be, And that bothers me, and I
don't think it's too late fifty years ago. So you know,
if a guy came back from fifty years ago and
he was twenty two at the time, he's seventy two today,
(13:30):
But you got you got a lot of loss of
life in sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy one, seventy
two in that period that those guys are now fifty five,
fifty seven plus eighteen seventy five to eighty. I know
because I know what age they were at the RCC
(13:52):
when we would call them forward. And then you can
add a few years to that because that's been a
few years. So anyway, I don't I want to hear
from if your father was there. I want to hear
from some Vietnam veterans today on the show. And if
you want to wait a minute to call, or you're
unable to call, but you can call later, just say
you serve to Vietnam when you call, and as we're
(14:15):
doing the show, we'll go back and forth to your calls. Yeah,
I would I would like to do that. Seven one
three nine nine one thousand, seven one three nine nine
nine one thousand. On this day. In eighteen oh three,
the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for
(14:36):
fifteen million dollars, which would be four hundred and fourteen
million dollars today. It more than doubled the size of
our at that point, very young country. In eighteen twelve,
the Territory of Orleans became the eighteenth US state under
(14:57):
the name Louisian. Michael, do you know what I struggled
to reconcile at this point in my life. I hate
(15:20):
the government, and I don't think it all of a
sudden got bad. I don't think it was always I
don't think it all of a sudden was occupied by
self serving, self dealing, opportunistic bastards. I think that's their
moths to the fire. This is the flame that draws
(15:43):
them and always has control and power and money. And
you know, I've always sort of viewed these these guys,
many of them were drafted, didn't even choose to go
into this. But whether you chose to serve or not,
it was a bad situation. And and so I always thought,
(16:05):
you know, I would have supported them, and I would,
but I always seen these long haired, dirty, smelly hippies
and their sit ins, and their festivals, and their filth,
and their their promiscuity and and their lifestyle, and so
I've always hated them, and i'm that's not that's not
(16:30):
my scene. But now I look at it and I go, well,
what would have been my position at that time? I
would have been against the war. I wouldn't be hanging
out with John Lennon and Yoko, but I would have
opposed the war. I like to think I would have,
knowing what I know now, I would have been able
(16:51):
to see that it's it's an interesting thing. I wouldn't
have been, you know, I wouldn't have been a hate Ashbury,
you know, as some Ashram But I I I don't know.
It's a it's a The war bothers me. It bothers
me a lot. And you know the the positions that
(17:18):
were staked and how they were presented. You know, I'm
on the Oki from Muskogee side, not the not the Peacenicks.
And isn't it interesting that the piece Nicks that crowd
ended up becoming the authoritarians of today. It's not lost
(17:41):
on me either. They became the very thing they claimed
to be protesting against Ram. What am I to do
with Mike? Bill and Ron do we just we wn't
know anything about him?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Is that what you did? Or don't get don't get touchy.
I don't know. I'm trying to figure out which to
take first. Huh. Well, but is that what they are?
The Vietnam folks?
Speaker 7 (18:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, then the start with Mike. Mike, you're on Michael
Berry Show. Are you the Mike they called yesterday?
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Mike?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Are you Mike Barnes? I didn't call you. I didn't
call yesterday.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, go ahead, are you black?
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Anyway, why come on man, I'm seventy five years old,
was drafted back in seventy served in the Vietnam. The
seventy mon came home early seventy two a nonticle coming home.
It was brought to San Francisco, San Mateo, of all places,
(18:48):
uh and we were called the uh son of San Mateo.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In case. Hey, hey, Mike, Mike, hold on a second, Mike,
if you're moving around it's causing your cell to go bad.
Or if you're on a bluetooth, can you get an
I can't hear you. Okay, go ahead, go ahead, okay.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Anyway, so if you yeah, I had a we were
you know, treated like heroes, arade and three days of
town and sat my tale.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
O Mike, Mike, we're skipping you every other I'm gonna
put you on hold for a second. And this is
a good reminder, folks. If you're on bluetooth, it doesn't
come through on the air. I want to hear what
you have to say. I'm looking forward to it, but
we're just it's as if you're not talking, or that
you're talking underwater. So if y'all would please take your
(19:43):
bluetooth off and speak directly into the phone, Bill, you're up.
We'll come back to Mike in just a moment. Bill,
You're up, Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Hey, Michael.
Speaker 7 (19:51):
Yeah, I'm seventy nine years old, and I avoided the
draft by joining the Navy, and I with the Vietnam
and I wanted to go. I always watched the Jane
John Wayne movies, and I just wanted to see if
I had what John Wayne had, even though he really
didn't serve in World War Two. So I went over
(20:12):
there and I found that I was good at war.
You know, War's just not you know, popping a gun
at somebody. There's a whole repertoire of stuff you have
to do and know before you go to war. And
I was good at that, and I really had It
was the best year of my life in Vietnam. I
(20:33):
really had a great time.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's interesting. You know, I suspect you are in the
distinct minority, but I suspect there are other people that
it awakens a certain skill and urge. And I don't
just mean the killing, I mean the intensity. You know.
I've spent a fair amount of time talking to veterans
with PTSD, and one of the things that I think
(20:59):
is not talking about enough and is not understood. Is
part of the PTSD experience is that there is no
longer intensity in your life. The adrenaline makes you alive,
and adrenaline is a drug, and it's a hormone, but
it's a drug. And that without that adrenaline, without the
(21:21):
intensity of protecting your brothers and risking your life, I
think it is such a crash that it's hard for
people to deal with that nothing seems to have meaning
in life. I've heard versions of that from a lot
of veterans who've seen combat and who struggled with with PTSD.
What about war, do you feel like you were good.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
At You know, I could anticipate needs, so I was
in small units and so we would have to provide everything.
And after ted, everybody gave up in Vietnam, right, they
just wanted to stay behind the wires with a wire.
So we were allowed to do just about anything we
(22:02):
wanted to do. And everybody else that'd stay behind the
wire and we would go out and patrol and do
all kinds of stuff, you know, play army, and it
was great. And they said, well, we're going to let
you go outside of the wire, but don't call us
if there's a need and the problem, just like you
were saying the problem with being in a combat situation.
It's addictive, you know, It's like that you crave it.
(22:26):
And I was lucky enough to be in and out
and stay it. And I got to also do the
war in Iraq, so in two thousand and two, so
that was really good. In two thousand and four, that
was really good for me. Even though I was fifty
six years old. I think I did okay then, not
like obviously when I was twenty, but at fifty six,
(22:48):
I was still okay.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Very interesting, Bill, thank you for the call. Very interesting.
That's a rare perspective, or rare that someone would hear that.
I'll just go ahead and say it. Sorry to Michael
very show. I got an email from a fellow named
Clint Ives while we were talking to Bill. Interesting story.
(23:13):
Who said I think I was good at war? Did
he say I liked war or just that he was
good at it? He was good at it? And Clint said, Bill,
who you were just speaking to, he's too humble to
tell you that he's a Navy seal. It also happens
to be the Victoria County Republican Party Chairman. Great Man
(23:37):
sounded like a very interesting cat. You would like to
sit down and have him tell you stories, because he
has seen some things. He has definitely seen some things.
If at fifty six, thirty years after Vietnam they were
sending him into Iraq. He's not the only fellow I've
(23:59):
ever heard that, but there aren't many. You got to
figure kind of like Liam Neeson telling those old boys
it took his daughter. Listen, I've got a special set
of skills. I will track you down.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
I don't know who you are, I don't know what
you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can
tell you I don't have money, but what I.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills
I've acquired her for a very long career, skills to
make me a nightmare for people like you. If you
let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it.
I will not look for you. I will not pursue you.
But if you don't, I will look for you. I
(24:44):
will find you, and I will kill you.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I saw a video of a guy in Florida and
an alligator was out on the the highway, but he'd
gotten over into the grass the ditch in between that
separated the two sides of the highway, and the Sheriff's
deputes didn't know what to do, and they've shut down
(25:12):
the highway and they don't want him getting back out
in the road and causing a crash. And here comes
on some old boy and he gets out and I
don't know if he was barefoot before or he was
just showing off. You've seen this. He gets out and
he's got what looks like a pool cleaning stick and
he goes up on this gator. Well first he gets it.
He just walks up on the gator and he kind
(25:34):
of like strikes like a python at him with his hands,
kind of Hong Kong fu. He kind of move and
the gator keeps flipping around and flipping around. And this
guy was built, I mean he was built. He looked
like he looked like one of the characters on that
TV show where they had lifeguards, the nine two to
(25:54):
one Oh or was that what that? What was the
one that had huh may watch. Yeah, he looked like
one of the eyes on there, so real fit, real tan,
a lot of tats because they all have that now,
and his hair was kind of a little fake blonde,
but there was. But this dude looked like a guy
that has some stories in his life. Anyway, he goes
(26:17):
up on him and he gets that gator spinning around
and spinning around like maybe he was wearing him out.
I don't know what he was doing. Then he went
back and got a tool that looked like a pool
cleaning thing, and he went in on that gator. And
he went in on that gator, and about the third
or four times, somehow he got the gator hooked up.
I don't think he plunged it in him. I think
(26:38):
it was like a wire or something that like he
spooled out of it. I have no idea. I'm probably
getting this part wrong, and I admitted I don't know
the lingo or the inside of what happened. But once
he got the gator like that, then he went in
behind him and he went broke back mountain on this gater.
He got back on the back behind of him, and
then he spun him over. I mean that's a he
(27:00):
was a good sized gator. He spun him over, and
then he had him by the throat and he's all right,
you will sit get over here. And so those other
deputies are maybe it was with state troopers. They come walking
up to help him, and I think they were thinking, well,
for me to help you, I have to trust that
you're not gonna let him go. And they get up
there and they're they're kind of half ass holding it,
(27:22):
you know, like oh, trying to keep back, and they
take it and they put it in the back of
the truck, and I don't he probably took him home
and ate him. I don't know. But anyway, I think
to myself, I'm going about my day and you going
about your day. Most of us have a similar set
of circumstances, fears, assets. You know, one guy can do
(27:44):
something a little better than the next guys and one
guy not as good as the next guy. And then
you got these outliers, right, you got these people like
Bill and thank God for it. Can you imagine? You know,
you see things that are done, you know, bomb texts,
I don't. I have a great admiration for guys that
(28:10):
go in and disable a bomb, disarm a bomb, Like
how do you learn to do that? You don't ever
get to mess up. You can't mess up even one time,
So you know, you think about okay, you understand that
you never get to learn from your mistake. And you
(28:31):
disable ninety nine successfully in the hundredth one and they're
having a funeral for you. Imagine the mindset to stay calm,
like that guys that walk on a high wire. You
know that guy that did it in New York that
met a movie on him man on wire, that's crazy.
(28:51):
They remind you of yourself. What exactly do you have
that be cool in the pocket. See the problem is,
I think the moment you say to yourself, be cool
in the pocket, the moment you start to panic. Right man,
my highlights like things that I go, you're a bad MF.
I managed to stop biting my fingernails. That's pretty much
(29:12):
where I am, you know what I mean. At some
point I in my twenties, I managed to stop biting
my fingernail. Now I still chew the cuticles. That's kind
of of while you know you did that. I lost
seventy pounds. Woo hoo. These people face death and deliver
death daily. I mean, man, that's a We will get
(29:39):
back to our seagull discussion in a moment. I got
a lot of comments on that that you're gonna want
to know about the Migratory Bird Treaty of nineteen eighteen.
I don't know if you know this, ramon, you know
why seagulls fly over the sea, because otherwise they'd be bagels. Yeah,
(30:02):
I don't want to be a bills. Did we get
Mike on a good line?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Mike, Hey, thank you sir for the other for the
next try.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, sorry, we got this joining, but go ahead, mom, okay.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
All right. Anyway, My story is I was drafted in
seventy served in seventy one, returned early seventy two. But
it was a non typical return story. My company, a
of one hundred fourth first Airborn was brought in and
we were known as the Sons of San Mateo. That
(30:42):
was in California, of course, and they gave us a parade,
treated us to the town for three days. I spent
the night at the home of a former mayor of
San Mateo. Everything was great. So this return formed my
perspective on things differently, maybe than others. So that's pretty
(31:03):
much a story.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's a great story. I'm glad you shared it. Yeah, wow,
I am. Thank you for calling, sir,
What it's that time, time, time, luck and load. The
Michael Berry Show is on the air. Good morning, Michael Berry,
but no you cannot use my bathroom. Hello, good ever, Bunny.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is mile Old Hamilton Astros win again and a
good morning to the TZAR. Good morning, Michael Berry. It's
Sean Connery. But you had a little radio show. Pity,
I wash it and to find it. Good morning, Michael Berry.
I'm all jaked up on Mountain Dew. This is the
Thornton Finch wishing you a good morning. Good morning, Michael Berry.
(00:50):
Good morning, Michael Berry. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Michael.
Good morning, Zar, Good morning, Michael, Zay Sailor. Good morning,
at Asina, Good morning, Michael. Hello, Hello are you there?
Good morn you Michael Bear. How you learned that? I
read it tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Mone Good morning, Texas, listen to this.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Good morning Texas in your car, Good morning, Texas.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Bon is on day.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
We're happy to be here to talk about everything. Good morning,
We're not wearing pants.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Good morning, Texes, Good morning, Texas.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Good bring Texas, Good morning. Wake God. Let's be goddamn
all right. I need something. We got to crowdsource something here.
(02:02):
Good morning, We got a crowdsource something. I don't know
the answer to this, but if you can email me
through the website Michael Berryshow dot com, somebody out there
will know this. Apparently it's illegal to kill a seagull.
I don't know if that's a federal statute, so that
would be across I was talking to a friend of
mine who said he believes it's illegal to kill seagulls.
(02:22):
I don't know if that's in the state of Texas everywhere.
I don't know. I'm asking is that true. But the
question is my friend believes he heard somewhere that if
you kill a seagull, all the other seagulls will leave
and not come back. That's like a bad sign, bad juju.
(02:46):
I don't know, that's their self preservation. I don't know
if that is true. So somebody out there will know,
will has seagull knowledge, surprising seagull knowledge, And if you'll
email me and I will read that on the air,
it would. It was a long discussion about seagulls and
why it came up, But the reason was that my
friend had read that in the olden days, if you
(03:09):
didn't want the seagulls at your peer you'd take shovel
and kill one of them, leave it out there where
the others could see and kind of scarecrow effect, and
the other seagulls would go away, and then you wouldn't
have seagulls again after that. Don't know interested to know
you ever eat seagull ramon? Yeah, okay, that's your story,
and you're sticking to it. You're waiting for a joke.
(03:31):
There's no joke. There's no joke. Hey, you don't want
to anyway. The meat's not any good. Like the guy
that asked, you're really going to eat that endangered species? Yeah?
What does it taste like? All across between a whooping
crane and the California condor, those are other extinct species.
(03:53):
That joke required the listener to have some endangered species knowledge,
and you clearly didn't. We got rain coming today. For
those of you who are kind of easing into getting
a little older, or who have moved from the city,
or you've moved down here to the south and you're
easing into getting older and you kind of want to
(04:14):
get to the point where you're you're you you are
more natural with it, you wear it better, you know,
like if you've moved from the North or California down
here and now you're living out in Belleville. You know
you'll need to learn the little, the very natural flip
of your fingers as you drive past people on a
(04:34):
country road. You don't want to be you know, the
forest gump wave when he's you know, there on the pier.
But you want to be real natural about flicking your
finger up as a you know, as a greeting as
as people go by. It's little things like that you
want to learn. The other one is on a daylight today,
and we can practice. Somebody will say, uh, it's gonna
(04:58):
rain today, and your answer will always be, yeah, we
sure needed it, We sure needed it. I don't ever
think my grandmother. I don't think my grandmother ever heard
the phrase it's going to rain today and did not reply,
we sure needed it, as if we were going to,
you know, put the crops out. But she would sometimes
(05:20):
if nobody else would talk about the weather, she would
bring it up. She would do the call in response.
So she'd say, this is going to rain today. You
maybe look outside, this is going to rain today, And
then she paused, of course, we sure need it. Because
there was nobody else in the trailer to do the
call and response. So she'd do it all. She'd do
it all. One thing I wanted to clarify, but because
(05:42):
I got a lot of emails on the matter, I mean,
I don't care if people think I'm friends with Lance
mccollor or macau or I hate Lance micase. But apparently
people did not understand. I didn't wrap that discussion up yesterday.
There was no point to my pickleball discussion of the
Selarium pickleball place they're doing in Midtown. And as I said,
a friend of mine, Andy Awaita, is part of that deal.
(06:04):
I I like Andy. I got no I got nothing
bad to say about Andy or Selarium or that place
or the concept. I was just remarking because it was
on my screen and I saw it. But what I
was trying to say about that is there's a lot
of pickleball joints that are popping up in their their
pickleball clubs. And my point, yes, I do play pickleball.
(06:28):
I played last night, I'm playing again tonight. I love it.
But that this hasn't this has nothing to do with pickleball.
This is the point that people keep missing. Again, and
again and again. If you own a bar of any type,
I don't care what other activities you have there, you
are trying, you're competing with all the other bars to
(06:48):
get people to come to your house, to your place
and socialize and drink beer or drink drink and drink
alcohol because there's a very, very health the margin on alcohol.
Like poor Paul Jacob over at Jcob's Barbecue, he's got
no alcohol, so he's got to make all his money
on food costs. That is very hard to do. And
(07:11):
and people won't sit and eat, you know, keep eating
for three hours and keep ordering more food with alcohol
they do, and and you can, you can get some
really good margins out of that. So the trick is,
and this is what the consumer, A lot of consumers
don't notice, is you're always looking for a way to
create an experience for people that they come there. But oh,
(07:33):
you're really trying to do is sell them alcohol. So
one year it's axe throwing. Remember ax throwing was a
big deal. Actually, fancy bowling alleys, you know that was
the big What was the place that was a fansom
fancy bowling alley where the rapper got killed. It might
be defensive driving because your regular bar is not your
ice house, eat and pulling people. It might be live music,
(07:55):
that's what we did. Uh, it might be you mean it,
But all of those are reasons. That's all I was
saying is that a lot of these pickleball joints are
popping up, and I'm going to pray we might be
hitting the saturation here.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Pretty solliber glass hood with air grabbing.
Speaker 5 (08:09):
Scoops mit the Michael Berry fucking hood Benssbill escaped from
the ordinary.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Just a few years ago. I thought it was the
heart and so the hook. Chance mclin sings this song
in all of our events, and when he sings it,
he pronounces the word hook, And the first time I
heard it it was kind of jarring. So that's weird,
(08:38):
the heart that brings you back. So I have no ideas.
See sitting in a bar with buddy of mine the
other day and there was a guy a couple of
seats over and quietly under his breath he was saying, powell, Bam, kaboom.
(09:01):
My buddy was getting madder and madder, and I said,
what's wrong? He said, them's fighting words booms.
Speaker 6 (09:12):
How fIF bam. The guy told me the other day
that I have a face like a boat. I didn't
say anything.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I just gave him a stern look. There was a
(09:48):
fellow named Mike yesterday who called on the subject of Vietnam.
Was he a Vietnam veteran? Mike, my apologies. I kept
intending to get to you, and I had an interview
and I had something else. It was not my intention
to not put you on the air, if you will
call us or put you right on, because I actually
(10:10):
did want to get your perspective. I wanted to get
at least one Vietnam veterans perspective. Yesterday, as I mentioned,
yesterday was fifty years since the fall of Saigon. And
if you ever see that evacuation, there's a documentary on it,
and man it is powerful. I mean the they capture
(10:31):
one to one million of the intensity that people felt
as the walls were closing in and they're trying to
get They're up on the top of the building, they're
trying to get them out of there, and the Vietnamese
all won out and it reminds you of that scene
in Afghanistan where people were hanging on to the bottom
of the of the of the plane to get out
(10:52):
of there. Everybody's trying to get out. And I am
mindful as much as I can be at my age,
not having been in war, but having read, watched, talked
to so many things related to Vietnam. It was on
this day in nineteen seventy five that the Fall of
(11:15):
Saigon officially occurred. Communist forces took control of Saigon, and
Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South
Vietnamese President Blong Van men Dwong Van men.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
H.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
That is that is a very very dark chapter in
American history, to Mama, very dark chapter. So many lives lost,
is the phone line open, so many lives lost, so
many lives torn apart, so many people who went on
(12:00):
to struggle for the rest of their lives with what
they endured in that horrible war. I just think there
is so much blame to go around. There is so
much harsh criticism to go around. There's so many people
who avoided that war because they were the fortunate son,
(12:23):
and so many people who went off and served, and
the children of World War Two heroes who came home heroes,
and then their sons following in Daddy's footsteps. Now it's
my turn. I will go and I will do this.
The way they were treated when they got home, it
(12:43):
just it's a very very bad deal all the way around.
And it is one of those things that bothers me
more than so many other things in American history, because
I don't think it's there's ever been a proper reckoning.
I don't think there's ever been a proper apology to
(13:06):
these guys. I don't think there's been a proper reconciliation.
I don't think there has been the national conversation that
there needs to be, And that bothers me, and I
don't think it's too late fifty years ago. So you know,
if a guy came back from fifty years ago and
he was twenty two at the time, he's seventy two today,
(13:30):
But you got you got a lot of loss of
life in sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy seventy one, seventy
two in that period that those guys are now fifty five,
fifty seven plus eighteen seventy five to eighty. I know
because I know what age they were at the RCC
(13:52):
when we would call them forward. And then you can
add a few years to that because that's been a
few years. So anyway, I don't I want to hear
from if your father was there. I want to hear
from some Vietnam veterans today on the show. And if
you want to wait a minute to call, or you're
unable to call, but you can call later, just say
you serve to Vietnam when you call, and as we're
(14:15):
doing the show, we'll go back and forth to your calls. Yeah,
I would I would like to do that. Seven one
three nine nine one thousand, seven one three nine nine
nine one thousand. On this day. In eighteen oh three,
the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for
(14:36):
fifteen million dollars, which would be four hundred and fourteen
million dollars today. It more than doubled the size of
our at that point, very young country. In eighteen twelve,
the Territory of Orleans became the eighteenth US state under
(14:57):
the name Louisian. Michael, do you know what I struggled
to reconcile at this point in my life. I hate
(15:20):
the government, and I don't think it all of a
sudden got bad. I don't think it was always I
don't think it all of a sudden was occupied by
self serving, self dealing, opportunistic bastards. I think that's their
moths to the fire. This is the flame that draws
(15:43):
them and always has control and power and money. And
you know, I've always sort of viewed these these guys,
many of them were drafted, didn't even choose to go
into this. But whether you chose to serve or not,
it was a bad situation. And and so I always thought,
(16:05):
you know, I would have supported them, and I would,
but I always seen these long haired, dirty, smelly hippies
and their sit ins, and their festivals, and their filth,
and their their promiscuity and and their lifestyle, and so
I've always hated them, and i'm that's not that's not
(16:30):
my scene. But now I look at it and I go, well,
what would have been my position at that time? I
would have been against the war. I wouldn't be hanging
out with John Lennon and Yoko, but I would have
opposed the war. I like to think I would have,
knowing what I know now, I would have been able
(16:51):
to see that it's it's an interesting thing. I wouldn't
have been, you know, I wouldn't have been a hate Ashbury,
you know, as some Ashram But I I I don't know.
It's a it's a The war bothers me. It bothers
me a lot. And you know the the positions that
(17:18):
were staked and how they were presented. You know, I'm
on the Oki from Muskogee side, not the not the Peacenicks.
And isn't it interesting that the piece Nicks that crowd
ended up becoming the authoritarians of today. It's not lost
(17:41):
on me either. They became the very thing they claimed
to be protesting against Ram. What am I to do
with Mike? Bill and Ron do we just we wn't
know anything about him?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Is that what you did? Or don't get don't get touchy.
I don't know. I'm trying to figure out which to
take first. Huh. Well, but is that what they are?
The Vietnam folks?
Speaker 7 (18:07):
All right?
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, then the start with Mike. Mike, you're on Michael
Berry Show. Are you the Mike they called yesterday?
Speaker 7 (18:14):
Mike?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Are you Mike Barnes? I didn't call you. I didn't
call yesterday.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Okay, go ahead, are you black?
Speaker 4 (18:21):
I'm uh.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Anyway, why come on man, I'm seventy five years old,
was drafted back in seventy served in the Vietnam. The
seventy mon came home early seventy two a nonticle coming home.
It was brought to San Francisco, San Mateo, of all places,
(18:48):
uh and we were called the uh son of San Mateo.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
In case. Hey, hey, Mike, Mike, hold on a second, Mike,
if you're moving around it's causing your cell to go bad.
Or if you're on a bluetooth, can you get an
I can't hear you. Okay, go ahead, go ahead, okay.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Anyway, so if you yeah, I had a we were
you know, treated like heroes, arade and three days of
town and sat my tale.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
O Mike, Mike, we're skipping you every other I'm gonna
put you on hold for a second. And this is
a good reminder, folks. If you're on bluetooth, it doesn't
come through on the air. I want to hear what
you have to say. I'm looking forward to it, but
we're just it's as if you're not talking, or that
you're talking underwater. So if y'all would please take your
(19:43):
bluetooth off and speak directly into the phone, Bill, you're up.
We'll come back to Mike in just a moment. Bill,
You're up, Go ahead.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Hey, Michael.
Speaker 7 (19:51):
Yeah, I'm seventy nine years old, and I avoided the
draft by joining the Navy, and I with the Vietnam
and I wanted to go. I always watched the Jane
John Wayne movies, and I just wanted to see if
I had what John Wayne had, even though he really
didn't serve in World War Two. So I went over
(20:12):
there and I found that I was good at war.
You know, War's just not you know, popping a gun
at somebody. There's a whole repertoire of stuff you have
to do and know before you go to war. And
I was good at that, and I really had It
was the best year of my life in Vietnam. I
(20:33):
really had a great time.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That's interesting. You know, I suspect you are in the
distinct minority, but I suspect there are other people that
it awakens a certain skill and urge. And I don't
just mean the killing, I mean the intensity. You know.
I've spent a fair amount of time talking to veterans
with PTSD, and one of the things that I think
(20:59):
is not talking about enough and is not understood. Is
part of the PTSD experience is that there is no
longer intensity in your life. The adrenaline makes you alive,
and adrenaline is a drug, and it's a hormone, but
it's a drug. And that without that adrenaline, without the
(21:21):
intensity of protecting your brothers and risking your life, I
think it is such a crash that it's hard for
people to deal with that nothing seems to have meaning
in life. I've heard versions of that from a lot
of veterans who've seen combat and who struggled with with PTSD.
What about war, do you feel like you were good.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
At You know, I could anticipate needs, so I was
in small units and so we would have to provide everything.
And after ted, everybody gave up in Vietnam, right, they
just wanted to stay behind the wires with a wire.
So we were allowed to do just about anything we
(22:02):
wanted to do. And everybody else that'd stay behind the
wire and we would go out and patrol and do
all kinds of stuff, you know, play army, and it
was great. And they said, well, we're going to let
you go outside of the wire, but don't call us
if there's a need and the problem, just like you
were saying the problem with being in a combat situation.
It's addictive, you know, It's like that you crave it.
(22:26):
And I was lucky enough to be in and out
and stay it. And I got to also do the
war in Iraq, so in two thousand and two, so
that was really good. In two thousand and four, that
was really good for me. Even though I was fifty
six years old. I think I did okay then, not
like obviously when I was twenty, but at fifty six,
(22:48):
I was still okay.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Very interesting, Bill, thank you for the call. Very interesting.
That's a rare perspective, or rare that someone would hear that.
I'll just go ahead and say it. Sorry to Michael
very show. I got an email from a fellow named
Clint Ives while we were talking to Bill. Interesting story.
(23:13):
Who said I think I was good at war? Did
he say I liked war or just that he was
good at it? He was good at it? And Clint said, Bill,
who you were just speaking to, he's too humble to
tell you that he's a Navy seal. It also happens
to be the Victoria County Republican Party Chairman. Great Man
(23:37):
sounded like a very interesting cat. You would like to
sit down and have him tell you stories, because he
has seen some things. He has definitely seen some things.
If at fifty six, thirty years after Vietnam they were
sending him into Iraq. He's not the only fellow I've
(23:59):
ever heard that, but there aren't many. You got to
figure kind of like Liam Neeson telling those old boys
it took his daughter. Listen, I've got a special set
of skills. I will track you down.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
I don't know who you are, I don't know what
you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can
tell you I don't have money, but what I.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills
I've acquired her for a very long career, skills to
make me a nightmare for people like you. If you
let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it.
I will not look for you. I will not pursue you.
But if you don't, I will look for you. I
(24:44):
will find you, and I will kill you.
Speaker 6 (24:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I saw a video of a guy in Florida and
an alligator was out on the the highway, but he'd
gotten over into the grass the ditch in between that
separated the two sides of the highway, and the Sheriff's
deputes didn't know what to do, and they've shut down
(25:12):
the highway and they don't want him getting back out
in the road and causing a crash. And here comes
on some old boy and he gets out and I
don't know if he was barefoot before or he was
just showing off. You've seen this. He gets out and
he's got what looks like a pool cleaning stick and
he goes up on this gator. Well first he gets it.
He just walks up on the gator and he kind
(25:34):
of like strikes like a python at him with his hands,
kind of Hong Kong fu. He kind of move and
the gator keeps flipping around and flipping around. And this
guy was built, I mean he was built. He looked
like he looked like one of the characters on that
TV show where they had lifeguards, the nine two to
(25:54):
one Oh or was that what that? What was the
one that had huh may watch. Yeah, he looked like
one of the eyes on there, so real fit, real tan,
a lot of tats because they all have that now,
and his hair was kind of a little fake blonde,
but there was. But this dude looked like a guy
that has some stories in his life. Anyway, he goes
(26:17):
up on him and he gets that gator spinning around
and spinning around like maybe he was wearing him out.
I don't know what he was doing. Then he went
back and got a tool that looked like a pool
cleaning thing, and he went in on that gator. And
he went in on that gator, and about the third
or four times, somehow he got the gator hooked up.
I don't think he plunged it in him. I think
(26:38):
it was like a wire or something that like he
spooled out of it. I have no idea. I'm probably
getting this part wrong, and I admitted I don't know
the lingo or the inside of what happened. But once
he got the gator like that, then he went in
behind him and he went broke back mountain on this gater.
He got back on the back behind of him, and
then he spun him over. I mean that's a he
(27:00):
was a good sized gator. He spun him over, and
then he had him by the throat and he's all right,
you will sit get over here. And so those other
deputies are maybe it was with state troopers. They come walking
up to help him, and I think they were thinking, well,
for me to help you, I have to trust that
you're not gonna let him go. And they get up
there and they're they're kind of half ass holding it,
(27:22):
you know, like oh, trying to keep back, and they
take it and they put it in the back of
the truck, and I don't he probably took him home
and ate him. I don't know. But anyway, I think
to myself, I'm going about my day and you going
about your day. Most of us have a similar set
of circumstances, fears, assets. You know, one guy can do
(27:44):
something a little better than the next guys and one
guy not as good as the next guy. And then
you got these outliers, right, you got these people like
Bill and thank God for it. Can you imagine? You know,
you see things that are done, you know, bomb texts,
I don't. I have a great admiration for guys that
(28:10):
go in and disable a bomb, disarm a bomb, Like
how do you learn to do that? You don't ever
get to mess up. You can't mess up even one time,
So you know, you think about okay, you understand that
you never get to learn from your mistake. And you
(28:31):
disable ninety nine successfully in the hundredth one and they're
having a funeral for you. Imagine the mindset to stay calm,
like that guys that walk on a high wire. You
know that guy that did it in New York that
met a movie on him man on wire, that's crazy.
(28:51):
They remind you of yourself. What exactly do you have
that be cool in the pocket. See the problem is,
I think the moment you say to yourself, be cool
in the pocket, the moment you start to panic. Right man,
my highlights like things that I go, you're a bad MF.
I managed to stop biting my fingernails. That's pretty much
(29:12):
where I am, you know what I mean. At some
point I in my twenties, I managed to stop biting
my fingernail. Now I still chew the cuticles. That's kind
of of while you know you did that. I lost
seventy pounds. Woo hoo. These people face death and deliver
death daily. I mean, man, that's a We will get
(29:39):
back to our seagull discussion in a moment. I got
a lot of comments on that that you're gonna want
to know about the Migratory Bird Treaty of nineteen eighteen.
I don't know if you know this, ramon, you know
why seagulls fly over the sea, because otherwise they'd be bagels. Yeah,
(30:02):
I don't want to be a bills. Did we get
Mike on a good line?
Speaker 4 (30:09):
Mike, Hey, thank you sir for the other for the
next try.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Yeah, sorry, we got this joining, but go ahead, mom, okay.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
All right. Anyway, My story is I was drafted in
seventy served in seventy one, returned early seventy two. But
it was a non typical return story. My company, a
of one hundred fourth first Airborn was brought in and
we were known as the Sons of San Mateo. That
(30:42):
was in California, of course, and they gave us a parade,
treated us to the town for three days. I spent
the night at the home of a former mayor of
San Mateo. Everything was great. So this return formed my
perspective on things differently, maybe than others. So that's pretty
(31:03):
much a story.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
That's a great story. I'm glad you shared it. Yeah, wow,
I am. Thank you for calling, sir,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!