#4 Bible Camp Jailbreak
In this engaging conversation, hosts Dash and Beck explore their experiences growing up queer in Central Appalachia, touching on themes of food, driving culture, education, family dynamics, religion, and the impact of poverty. They share humorous anecdotes and personal stories that highlight the complexities of their upbringing, the challenges they faced, and the resilience they developed along the way. The discussion flows naturally from light-hearted banter about food cravings to deeper reflections on their childhood experiences and the societal influences that shaped their identities. In this engaging conversation, Dash and Beck share personal anecdotes about their driving experiences, family dynamics, and the challenges they faced growing up. They reflect on their friendship over the years, the humor found in cultural experiences, and delve into the significance of the pepperoni roll in Appalachian culture. The discussion is filled with laughter, insights, and a deep appreciation for their roots.
Takeaways
The conversation begins with a humorous take on food cravings and local dining experiences.
Driving culture in Central Appalachia is marked by aggression and a sense of urgency.
Local rivalries and redneck experiences are common themes in small-town life.
Education plays a significant role in shaping personal identities and overcoming challenges.
Family dynamics, including adoption, can profoundly impact one's life trajectory.
Religion often intersects with personal beliefs and identity, leading to conflict and self-discovery.
Navigating poverty and access to education is a recurring struggle for many in the region.
Life choices, such as pursuing higher education, can have lasting effects on family relationships.
Reflections on childhood experiences reveal the complexities of growing up in a unique cultural context.
Consequences of behavior in school can lead to significant life lessons and personal growth. Dash shares a humorous story about getting a speeding ticket as a teenager.
Beck recounts a family incident involving a psych hold and a blizzard.
The friends reflect on their long-lasting friendship and how they've changed over the years.
They discuss the cultural significance of the pepperoni roll in Appalachian cuisine.
Dash humorously describes the challenges of growing up in a rural area.
Beck shares a funny story about a neighbor helping with yard work.
The conversation touches on the bystander effect and personal responsibility.
They reflect on their childhood experiences with food and family dynamics.
Dash and Beck share their thoughts on the importance of community and humor.
The episode highlights the beauty and complexity of Appalachian culture.
tags:
queer culture, Central Appalachia, food, driving, education, family, religion, poverty, personal stories, humor, driving experiences, family dynamics, friendship, cultural reflections, pepperoni roll, Appalachian culture, personal struggles, humor, life changes, anecdotes
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Food Cravings
02:52 Driving and Aggression in Central Appalachia
05:41 Local Rivalries and Redneck Experiences
08:43 Education and Personal Struggles
11:37 Family Dynamics and Adoption
14:15 Religion and Personal Beliefs
17:27 Navigating Poverty and Education
20:11 Life Choices and Their Impact
23:10 Reflections on Childhood and School Experiences
25:56 Trouble and Consequences in School
33:21 Driving Experiences and Early Mistakes
37:35 Family Dynamics and Personal Struggles
40:19 Friendship and Life Changes
41:22 Cultural Reflections and Humor
54:01 Nouns of Interest
Transcript
it would get like this clipping effect and it sounds like distortion you know like an electric guitar run through an amplifier so I've been able to sort of edit it out but this should be we can come up from here it's easier than going down
Beck (:That's what she said.
Dash (he/him) (:god.
Beck (:It's gonna be that kind of day, folks.
Dash (he/him) (:I know it. All right, let's just let's kick this mule. Mark.
Beck (:Ahem.
Dash (he/him) (:All right, welcome back. are hanging out with Queernecks the show where we talk about what it's been like growing up queer from Central Appalachia. I am your host, Dash
Beck (:I am your other host, Beck.
Dash (he/him) (:Welcome to the show.
Beck (:Hey everybody!
Dash (he/him) (:What you been doing today? You said you went out and got something to eat.
Beck (:Yeah, we went to Bob Evans and got some breakfast. It was, it was got the farmer's market or whatever it was called. It was good. Their hash browns and their French toast are real good. Yeah, we were craving breakfast. We went to a little place called Dale's here in Waterville and they were so packed that we ended up leaving. So we were like, what's, we were going to go to the waffle house, but they were packed. So we went to Bob Evans. That's the trifecta of biscuits and gravy.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know.
The whole kitten caboodle.
Dash (he/him) (:you
Dash (he/him) (:God I miss I miss just food, you know They're like I said before there are a couple little they call them diners like home style home food style diners But they just don't do it It's Vince. There's not the kind of thing you can normally depend on here to do it There aren't waffle houses or Denny's or anything like that. I Was craving a fucking White Castle earlier
Beck (:That's something we disagree on. love White Castle. Shanna does not like it. She calls it Stinky Burger.
Dash (he/him) (:I mean it is fragrant.
Beck (:Yeah, but it's delicious. And it goes perfect. If you eat fries with ketchup with it, it is one of the most delicious things in the world. It really is.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. That's the that's the whole white trash fillet flavor palette right there It's all of it. If you speak especially we get it with a coke or sweet tea
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Did y'all make sweet tea? Did you make your own?
Beck (:That's something another thing Shanna is big on. She cracked McDonald's recipe. She can make sweet tea that tastes like McDonald's sweet tea. But she's always been a sweet tea drinker. I drink water pretty much 24-7. I'm not a big soda drinker unless I'm eating Taco Bell or Chipotle and then I need Mountain Dew, Fountain Mountain Dew. But it's very specific, you see. I always get water when I go out to eat. You know, I drink water constantly at home.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:I just don't like brown liquids unless it's chocolate milk. That's the only exception to the rule. I don't like whiskies. I don't like dark liquors at all. I don't like coffee. I don't like tea. I don't like any of those kinds of things. I'm boring, I know.
Dash (he/him) (:I drink flavored seltzer water constantly, just bubbly or La Croix or whatever I can find. And I don't know what that is. I heard it's common amongst recovering alcoholics though, actually. Yeah, just something, some of that scent, that muscle memory. All right.
Beck (:Gotcha.
Beck (:What about you, what have you been up to?
Dash (he/him) (:It's cold and raining here. I think that that's just what I don't know if summer happens in Minnesota necessarily. So the I've been sitting in here with the heat on and sweats on and it's just it's depressing.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of chilly here today too and raining. I hope it rains so hard. Tomorrow is, yeah, tomorrow is Friday the 14th, the day of the military parade and I hope DC freaking floods. I hope there's thunderstorms galore.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Hahaha
Dash (he/him) (:man, that would be so funny. Did you see the Kennedy Center thing, happened there? The drag performers, yeah. It was so kind.
Beck (:yeah, the line of drag queens that came in, they were perfect. They were perfect. Yes, that's why I love drag queens, because you can always count on them for the snark. Always.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. mean, yeah, snark and like, you know, shade, all of those things that are so central to queer culture, but, you know, drag culture in particular, they're art forms unto themselves. And I think too that like just Central Appalachian or Southern American dialects, they're also pretty shady. So people communicate here through passive aggression.
Beck (:Yeah, the Minnesota nice.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, yeah. And they're aware of it. You know, this is not, I'm not calling them. This isn't breaking news. And it's difficult for me to keep up with sometimes because passive aggression and shade are actually super different. Passive aggression is like, it's possible for everybody except the speaker to be totally clueless on what's going on. Shade only works if everybody's clear on what's being said or unsaid, you know.
Beck (:There's a situation going on in Toledo right now. So Toledo has this Facebook page called Nosy Asses of Toledo and basically all the gossip that goes down there. If there's a fight at McDonald's, somebody's posting about it. It's just all the drama that happens in Toledo. it's hilarious. Like so wrong sometimes. But there's a drag queen here that owns a food truck. It's a macaroni and cheese food truck.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:That is red as hell.
Beck (:And it's called, She's Born With It, Maybe Cheese Born With It. Yeah. And so this drag queen was out of drag. They were just in their normal boy drag, right? And they were at the gas station and they whipped in on this girl and stole her spot. And this girl came out and pepper sprayed her. And the girl got arrested and she got charged and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's really interesting to see it. Everybody taking the drag queen's side.
Dash (he/him) (:Hahahaha!
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:because it got caught on film. He was filming it the whole time that it happened. But it's honorary redneck, I think the whole situation is. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there's redneck shit everywhere. It's just they won't be aware of the fact that it's And that's what's funny about it. I would not have the wherewithal to start filming if some fucked up shit was happening to me. I just ball up and take it.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Yeah, I know.
I'm glad they did film it though, because it totally like proved that they were right. They were not in her face. Like they just had a disagreement over whose spot it was. You know, that does not give you the right to get out pepper-spraying. You know?
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Absolutely not. I mean, you know how often people who deserve to be punched don't get punched? You know, I mean, it's just we don't get to act like that.
Beck (:Yeah.
Yeah. I think you should get three horn part, horn honks per month. and use them wisely.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that's pretty aggressive too.
Beck (:Yeah, but I mean, but yeah, the people that drive crazy here, like I was almost in an accident today on our way back to the house. It was slow traffic and a car cut off in front of me and I slammed on my brakes and the car behind me had to slam on his brakes and he had to swerve around me and he started flipping me off like crazy. Like I was the one that caused it, you know? People here are aggressive when it comes to driving. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Really? People here drive like they have never had a place to be in their lives. It's...
Beck (:They drive like their hair is on fire here.
Dash (he/him) (:I mean there's something kind of red about that too. Like just driving like I drive like a redneck. I know that I want to get moving. I want to be I like my movements to be efficient. And unless I'm joyriding, which I don't really do that often here because it's not pretty. But yeah, they'll it's that thing where like you're behind them at a stop sign or a red light and it.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:it has been their turn to go and you're just like, okay, counting down like, okay, if they haven't moved by the next second, I'm going to hit the horn and then.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know. don't think they just never they've never had anywhere to go here.
Beck (:Yeah, Shanna is an aggressive horned anchor, so yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Not me, I hate to do it. Somebody did almost hit me yesterday though, leaving work and I, and I'm again, like not having the wherewithal to do it in the moment. I'll be like, I should have honked at him and then I'll do it.
Beck (:Yeah, I'm just afraid somebody's gonna go bat shit. like, yeah, we were driving down the road like a year ago and somebody, was a little longer than that. It was before we moved back home. Somebody threw a full water bottle out the window at my car as we were driving. I didn't let him over and he didn't like it. And so he got in front of me. He sped up and was dangerous, went around the truck and threw a whole water bottle at my windshield.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. It's a danger.
Dash (he/him) (:That just made me think of this time I was, you know how sports and like local hometown rivalries are such a thing. and I know that it is not exclusive to, you know, isolated areas of Appalachia, of Central Appalachia, but it is very much a small town thing, with these local rivalries. And one time, so I was a turncoat, right? Cause we were from Tennessee, but we went to school in Kentucky and anytime.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Anytime our Kentucky school played our old school at any sport, we felt like we really had to like, you know, prove that we were on our current side. Now we would all, we would like me and my brother and sister, we would go down to the game and be like, fuck Jaleco or whatever. But anyway, it was a basketball game and it was real close, right? It was a nail biters, a buzzer, buzzer beater. And we were standing right on court side.
down by the court and it was like this massive upset that, know, the like the Kentucky school we went to beat one at the last second and everybody was hooting and hollering and cheering like it actually fucking mattered or something. Cause it did, it mattered to us at the moment. And I suddenly feel something hit me really hard on the back of the head. Something, it was very heavy and I felt like wet. Like it splooshed on me, whatever it was.
Beck (:Yeah. Right.
Dash (he/him) (:And then I smelled it and it was, it had been a, I looked down and saw it and it was a Mountain Dew bottle full of dip spit.
Beck (:Dash (he/him) (11:18.612)
That has, that's never leaving my mind. Like, you know, if I could eternal sunshine myself, that's what I'd take out. And we were in Tennessee. We had to drive back home. had to drive myself and the kids and the friends that they had brought with them back home wearing this. I took my shirt off and just threw it away. And I had like, this is big when people would wear like, you know, those a shirts, we call them wife beaters, like.
Beck (:Ugh.
Beck (:Eww.
Beck (:God.
Beck (:I still wear those.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I did too, but you know, girls wear them like in public as clothes to school back in the day. But yeah, that was fucking foul. Like zero stars.
Beck (:Right, right.
Beck (:that's crazy. I'm sorry that happened.
Dash (he/him) (:That's kind of like, that is a redneck experience, though. It's like the weirdest shit will happen to you and you'll be telling your normal friends about it and they don't have a context for when something like that is even possible.
Beck (:right? You're like, haha isn't that hilarious? They're like, that is such trauma.
Dash (he/him) (:I mean, it's both, but...
Beck (:Yeah. Do you know how much trauma it took to be this funny?
Dash (he/him) (:significant amount. I think that's why gay people are funnier than straight people. I think that's why poor people are funnier than rich people. And and queer folks are are sorry, Appalachian folks are funnier than the general public. It's just nobody knows it.
Beck (:Yeah, I agree with that completely.
Beck (:Right. Yeah.
Beck (:I'm trying to think of an appropriate story to tell and everything I'm thinking of is inappropriate.
Like my cousin Dale. We don't need to talk about Dale.
Dash (he/him) (:Well...
Beck (:He was born with no neck. He had some kind of birth defect where he was like this. He had shoulders and no neck and he couldn't turn his neck whatsoever. And he was one of the biggest stoners in the area. And he had a real funny voice. He'd be like, come on, let's go get stoned. When I worked at the Briar Patch that summer, every night he would come in and try to get me to go out and smoke with all of them. He wasn't trying to be sexual or weird or anything.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:that kind of party guy. became, he was one of those popular guys out there.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm. It's always, sometimes there's just like a real weird looking stoner guy who has, is surrounded by like popular and beautiful women. Yeah, it was like that in my high school too. There was this like absolute fucking burner of a dude. And everybody loved him. And I was like, has he ever said a word? What was it?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:If your whole personality is failing all your classes, why do people want to hang out with that? the loser core thing was lost on me.
Beck (:Right? Well, I became that loser the first time I went to college and it wasn't about being a loser. was that I had a lot more interesting things to do with my time than and the school was not a priority. That's probably a little bit of that too. I was talking about my friend today. I have a friend who has adopted five children, all from one family, all from one mother. And there's four girls and one little boy. And the little boy...
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:She posts little different things about them and the little boy has some kind of degenerative eye issue and he had been having some trouble with school and my friend is a school teacher and she's an elementary school teacher and he had been having some trouble and it wasn't for a lack of trying and they took him to the doctor and checked his eyes and he was literally, he has something happening where it was really difficult to focus on paper with both eyes and he has to have a surgery and blah, blah, blah, blah.
If he had never been adopted, can you imagine the kind of life that he would have had where that would have led to doing poorly in school, which would have probably led to behavior issues, which probably would have led to dropping out or whatever and having no future or whatsoever. But by getting adopted, that has changed his whole future and getting something as simple as an eye exam.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. That, yeah, that kind of, I mean, and that, is something that happened when I was growing up. like we never knew that I couldn't, like that I had a dyslexia or that I had was hearing impaired or that, I had, audio processing disorder because I assumed that everybody
I assumed that my senses were working the same way everybody's were. and because you can kind of, and nobody noticed I couldn't hear very well, but you can tell when a kid is like squinting or something and they're having trouble seeing things, but, everybody just accuses kids of not paying attention or talking back or, know, the, and so they reached a point where I was like absolutely failing all my classes. went from straight a student to.
Beck (:right?
Dash (he/him) (:I could not comprehend what was being said. Cause as I got older, my like the dyslexia especially, and not being able to actually understand what was being said, they got so intense that I was so confused all the time in class. And then, so I think that people started to think I was stupid. And I went through a nonverbal period because I was so frustrated with communication. Cause I felt like the margin of error for what was
being said and what was being understood was so high. And I just was so stressed out all the time. I stopped talking. and then my dad, this is actually when we were homeless the first time when we were in that Tannery Hollow house, he was, he happened to be home. He wasn't home a lot of the time. And he was like, when did you like, I forget what he said, but he was just like, we really miss talking to you. Like we miss you talking.
And I just remember thinking like, this is negatively affecting people. Cause that wasn't my intention. I wasn't trying to punish anybody. I was just so done with not being able to understand things. And I was trying to like collect data, I guess. I thought maybe if I just am real quiet and pay very close attention, I'll be able to understand what's being said. and so I started talking again, but then they were like, okay, something's wrong. So they, they went to get some tests done and stuff.
But that was the like getting to do that like they went fucking broke trying to get me tested on shit Like they went into serious debt But then that's when they transferred us schools and that school like they noticed that I was failing spelling tests But if we did a spelling bee I would win it so they're like, okay, it's not that something's going on So, I don't know just like changing that circumstance
I wouldn't have been at college. I'd probably been dead too if we had not transferred schools. Because nobody at Jellicoe gave a fuck of what was going on with me, like what was causing it.
Beck (:Yeah, it's wild. Yeah.
We moved when I was in sixth grade. My brother got into a pretty big fight. He got jumped. He tried to sell fake drugs to the wrong person. And he was only three years older than me. So he was 14, 15 years old. And he was already trying to sell fake drugs to the wrong people. And he got his ass whipped and my mom got scared and said, you're moving to your auntie.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:God damn it, I was just about to do that too.
Beck (:So my mom got really scared because he got, did that. So we moved out to Lucasville. It was Halloween and I started school. That's why I started out there. And I think that that was really kismet too, because I got kind of bullied in Portsmouth. There was a, I remember very clearly they would have overnight stays at the YMCA and all the kids would come in and they would lock us in and we'd play basketball and do all the different things at the YMCA. One girl stole my underwear.
one night and put it up on the bulletin board. She had it out for me. She was always doing shit like that to me. And I was my brother's little, everybody knew my brother and sister. They were very well known. And plus my parents owned the porn shop, right? So I was, I had a lot of marks against me. Yeah. So we moved out to Lucasville. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody knew my family. Nobody knew my brother. It was fantastic. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:God. Oh, it's freedom. know. Hell yeah. That was the best. Like going somewhere like nobody knew what was wrong with me. Nobody knew that. And I went back in the closet. Like I started acting more feminine when we transferred schools. Just, and my mom actually, she said that she said, this is an opportunity for you to be normal.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:And I was like, I know I was like, this makes this feels really bad what you just said to me, but you're also correct. Like I can just simply lay low for the next five years. I was in eighth grade when we transferred and just get the fuck out of here. So I did, I kind of like, I dressed a lot more like a girl at the new school than I ever did at the old one. The damage was done at the old one though. But they also didn't know that we were.
know, trailer trash at the new school. They didn't have that there. It was a city school.
Beck (:Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. I had one other friend that lived in a trailer and he had a single mom and he still wows me to this day. He had a sister and his mom and the three of them lived in that trailer. The sister became a literal brain surgeon and he's an attorney. Yeah. Smartest kid, one of the smartest kids I've ever known in my life. And he worked his ass off and he's doing just fine now, you know? Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm. Damn.
Dash (he/him) (:awesome.
Yeah, I don't know the chips that had to fall into place for me to make it out. You have to like, it's a combination of grinding and luck to make it out of this like systematized quagmire of poverty in central Appalachia
Beck (:was the first one in my family to graduate from high school? In the Lord's year of 1996. You know, like we should have had a few generations of high school grads by that time. Like I had an uncle that graduated and that kind of thing, but my mom and dad, my adopted father, none of them graduated from high school. Mark, my adopted father, he had a scholarship to go to Northwestern and gave it up and dropped out of school the last couple of weeks.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:he was valedictorian of his class, his parents' house burned down and he decided instead of going to college he was going to stay home and help him raise money to rebuild the house. And it changed the entire trajectory of his life. Yeah. I wouldn't be who I am today if that he had gone through and gone to college, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:shit. Absolutely.
Beck (:It's so weird how little things like that, not little, those are big things, but they seem so...
Beck (:small sometimes when we're making those kinds of decisions.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, I'm sure he understood that it was a big decision, but it's also, I'm sure, yeah.
Beck (:He carried a chip on his shoulder the rest of his life. Yeah, I think that's why he couldn't handle me getting a PhD.
Dash (he/him) (:right. Literally getting above your raisin.
Beck (:Yep. I think if I had stopped a bachelor and maybe even the master's degree, it would have been fine, you know, but I had to go and try to be special.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:So I think that's why he felt the way he did. He said some pretty harsh things to me about all of it. And you can't take that shit back, you know, just can't.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-mm.
Beck (:But I've been through a lot of therapy and it's all good now, so.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, my parents knew that they wanted us to have access to college. And that's like talking about like those big things that may seem smaller, the frequency with which those appear to folks without access or resources or without like privileges or enough privileges and assemblage of privileges. You know, house burning down to somebody.
in a different tax bracket or part of the world is it's a tragedy. It sucks. yeah, but for folks without insurance or access to resources, like when our house burned down, the Red Cross offered us, I think three nights in a hotel. They would cover three nights in a hotel. And I was like, what for?
Beck (:Our house burned down when I was three.
Beck (:Wow.
Dash (he/him) (:We said no. We were like, I guess we'll just go ahead and set up whatever permanent thing. We gotta start working on where we're gonna be for the next who knows how long because I don't know what that's for. think it's so that you can rent somewhere as though there's a rental anywhere in the hills.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:So it was, and that's why I think people don't realize also that that's why poor people are dependent and indoctrinated by the church, because it's the church that has the resources.
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Yep. I grew up with a lot of religion in my family. My mother's father and my father's mother were both Pentecostal ministers.
A lot of holy rolling and casting out of demons and speaking in tongues and all those kinds of things.
I saw it when I was really little and was like, hell no. I remember very specifically, we were doing rounds in Sunday school and they were asking us questions to little kids and we all answered together in unison, like it was some kind of lesson. And they said, do animals have souls? And everybody else said no. And I was like, yes. And I was maybe not even five at that point, but I started disagreeing with church docrine at that early. And that was the basis of my fuck y'all. Like I just couldn't get into it.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Hahaha
Dash (he/him) (:Well, I not introduced to it until I was much older. again, we never went as a family. went in Brick Plant Haller. There was a church there that we went to. The people who had the farm, when we would stay with them, we had to go to church. And so that was, I was maybe like 11, 10 or 11 when I got introduced to it. And it never, it never,
entered my mind in a decision-making capacity, like in a way that would influence how I viewed myself or others or the world, until I started to realize there was something wrong with my gender.
And the message was very clear to me. It was very prevalent in the church. Like these are the ways that you do behave. And so was like, I started to think I was going crazy. was like, I was afraid the devil was just going to come up through the floor and get me. And so I did like go to a very restrictive church camp intentionally for a brief amount of time. And cause I thought maybe they can
get this out of me. But I got there and I was just talking with the kids and they were like, what, you know, what do you listen to? What kind of bands do you like? And I said, Alanis Morrisette And they said, you're going to go to hell to listen for listening to Alanis MOrrisette And that's when I realized like, this shit's all fucking fake. This is all made up. I was like, you're telling me that God cares what CD I'm listening to at, the same degree as he cares about this ultimate.
sin thing that the preacher told me about my gender, my sexuality, and who I wanna love. I was like, that don't make no sense. That ain't real. That's some made up human bullshit. So church camp cured me of being Christian. But that's also where I pretended to speak tongues, because I was determined to fuck with them the rest of the time I was there.
Beck (:Right? Right? Right?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:That's awesome. I wish I would have had the balls to do that. But I just I didn't want to go. Like I remember my brother getting baptized in the middle of one of those weeks and my brother was a badass kid. You know, he was mean. He was always getting suspended and trouble for fighting, selling drugs, like doing all kinds of stuff. And he went and got baptized in the middle of the church camp. It was like you are so full of shit.
Dash (he/him) (:It's like that scene in Brother, Where Art Thou? Where he says, well, the preacher says that that sin's been wiped away. You said you didn't do that. Well, I lied. And that one's been wiped away too. There's a cheat code that we're all looking for to excuse the bad shit we do just because we're bad people sometimes.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, maybe let's give the wheel of what have you a spin to see what it lands on. What if it's church?
Beck (:Okay?
Beck (:I got more.
Dash (he/him) (:That is a deep well. no, we landed on trouble. Trouble. Well, I suppose this can mean a variety of things.
Beck (:Yeah, it's a very deep well.
Beck (:trouble.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:I think I already told the story of me getting in trouble over the pizza, didn't I?
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, pizza, you talked about the pumpkins. Did you ever get paddled in school?
Beck (:Yeah, we were such badass kids.
Nope, never not once. Elementary school, I was a 4.0 kind of student. was, you know, I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't get my first B until high school. That's not true. I got a C one time because my teacher said I didn't turn in my homework and I argued with her until she changed my grade. Cause I turned it in. I swear, you know what I mean? Like, you know, when you turn shit in and she said I didn't do it and I got a C for that.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:I got paddled in the second grade, because that's when I started to have trouble understanding what was going on. And so I just didn't do my homework one day, and she fucking paddled me for it. Yeah. This is my very first time not doing my homework, because I just got so frustrated and couldn't figure it out. And of course, nobody was around to help me. And so just didn't do it. Yeah, my brother got paddled a lot, too. That's some fucking crazy shit.
Beck (:wow.
Beck (:Yeah, my brother got paddled a lot.
Dash (he/him) (:And they all had, they were so proud of, would like, would they would take a, what's, yeah, and like personalize them, their names on them. They would name them something fucked up, drill holes in them so that they would move faster and walk around with them.
Beck (:Our principal was a big old man too.
Beck (:wood burner.
Beck (:Yeah, I'm gonna etch their names in them and stuff.
Yeah.
Yep. Yep. Or mount them on the wall in their office.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. I remember there was a strange shift to like between elementary school and middle school because in elementary school when you got paddled they would bring you up to the front of the class and you'd have to bend over and like show your ass to the rest of the class and they would paddle you like that and you would get they would tell you how many you were gonna get right and so depending on the transgression you would get three or five or ten licks with the paddle.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:But in middle school, once we got older, they would take you out in the hallway and paddle you instead of in front of the rest of the class. And I don't know what that change was about. I don't know if it was an age thing, like if that happened all the time, or if something was shifting nationally about the way we talked about, like, because this would have been the early 90s.
Beck (:Yeah, I don't know who did the paddling at my high school, but it certainly was not the principal. He was like four foot eight and looked like Mr. Magoo. He was like 100 years old. He called us whippersnappers in our senior assembly. Yeah, it certainly wasn't him. It could have been the football coach was a big hulking guy. I could see them doing something like that.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:It was the small, like, female teachers that a lot of people were scared of, because they were also the ones who would, they would drill the holes in them so that there was no wind resistance. And then that, like, snap you could hear when somebody was getting paddled, like, down the hallway.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I know. that was, I think that that's probably some fucking trauma for me of like my obsession now with completing tasks. Like what happens is Miss Crawford gonna show up with a goddamn paddle if I don't give this email sent? I only got it once though. And then at the new school,
Beck (:Fun times.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Dash (he/him) (:And this draconian bullshit was very Jellicoe. This did not, they didn't do this at my new school. There was no paddling. We had to write lines and go to, we had to go to D-Hall.
Beck (:Yeah. I got detention plenty of times, that's for sure, because if you were late to homeroom like three times you got detention, phew. Yeah, I got plenty of those. My senior year of high school I almost didn't graduate and if one of my best friends didn't work in the attendance office and erase a couple of my tardies I probably wouldn't have. Because I had study hall the first three periods of the day. Who's coming in for that? Your senior year.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, three tardies was a detention.
Dash (he/him) (:well, I think, we, you know, we had such a small school, like you had to come no matter what. They would know if you didn't. We didn't come back from lunch one day and I almost, I almost got suspended because I skipped school.
Beck (:Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. we weren't allowed to leave campus for lunch.
Dash (he/him) (:We had to, there wasn't a cafeteria big enough. was such a small school.
Beck (:Yeah, no, we weren't allowed to. But we had a new high school that fit all of us really well. You ate what the cafeteria made or you brought yours or that was it, you know what I mean?
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I think.
Juniors and seniors were supposed to leave campus for lunch because they had to feed the rest of the school because it was a K through 12 school. And so it's like, we've got to feed these children. Y'all are going to have to go figure it out yourselves. So that's why we all got jobs because we all had to actually pay for food.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:But yeah, we skipped one day and I got in serious, that's the most serious trouble I ever got in at that school. Like I didn't go to detention hall that often, but we skipped, we just didn't come back one day and we didn't even do anything fun. We just sat at our friend's house and watched TV or his sister's house. I know. I didn't get in a lot of trouble in high school. I got in a lot of it in college. just like.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:I got pulled over one time and the cop made us pull all the beer out. I was in the backseat drinking. And my friend, she handed me over, we got pulled over and she threw a pack of mints at me. They were like herbal mints and I threw one in my mouth and the cop thought it was pills. And he was like, what'd you hand back there? And I was like this. And he was like, have you been drinking? And I said, no, sir, absolutely not. And I had had like four beers at that point. And he believed me and made me drive.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Beck (:my friend's car, yeah, and I had to drive it like a block where he was behind me and as soon as he drove off, I pulled the fuck over and got out let her, because she hadn't been drinking at all, you know? Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:my god.
Dash (he/him) (:man
Yeah, the first time I went to jail, it's so we had to, we were going to school in Kentucky before we lived there. It was illegal. We recognize this, but my parents and the school knew about it because Kentucky had just changed how they did their standardized testing and it was tied to state funding. And they were, they were looking for people who were going to score high on this kind of standardized test.
And it, the way that the model they had changed it to, we did, like me and my siblings, we just blew it away. I don't, for all the issues I had in the classroom, I was always in the 99 % of the TCAP. And so like they let us do it. They let us come up there. We didn't have to pay tuition. They, we used a fake address in town.
But we had to, and so this is why I got, I like somehow got a driver's license. Well, I know how I got it. I got a driver's license when I was 14 or I got a learner's permit when I was 14 and I got a driver's license before I was 15. And so I was driving us to school in the mornings from Jellico and I was not terribly good at it yet, but it's just somebody had to take us to school. and I got a ticket one day because I didn't know that you had to slow down when there was construction going on.
So I got a speeding ticket and I was doing like double. So it was a really expensive one. And so I said, he said, you can pay this, which was more than I made in a month. And, or you can go to traffic school for $40. And I said, okay, I'll go to traffic school then. But I didn't have, we lived on a mountainside and so we didn't have a mailbox. And the address that was on my license,
Dash (he/him) (:was the physical address because you can't put a PO box on a license. And so the state was trying to mail me shit about this traffic court or traffic class thing that, and I just forgot about it because I was 17. so, and I didn't, didn't get pulled over again for years. I was a really good driver after several accidents forced me into being one. Yeah. I'm a super great driver now.
Beck (:Same!
Beck (:It's knock on wood same. You won't catch me tailgating for nothing.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Uh-uh. But five years later, I get pulled over for turning right at a red light in Richmond, Kentucky. And he comes and he gets me out and this was in the Oscar the bitch, the little Geo Metro. My friend was sitting in the drop passenger seat and he was done up like a punk. He was in a punk era. Had this big old like mohawk and spikes out of his like shoulders and his collar. And he looked just fucking insane. I had dyed blue hair. I was wearing homemade blue jeans.
and like a checker shirt. looked like a goddamn clown. Bright orange Chuck Taylors. And he gets me out of the car. He says, could you step out of the car please? And I was like, sure. What's going on? And he didn't say shit. He just, he had this trainee with him and she said, turn around, put your hands behind your back. And I was like, motherfucker, what's going on? What did I even do? Cause he was like, no, I stopped you. And I was like, no, actually. And he said, you're not, can't turn right at that.
red light back there, which it did have a sign that said that at one time, but it was so old that it no longer said it. So was just a blank sign hanging there. And I told the judge that in court two weeks later, I went through there again, the sign was gone. But yeah, they took me to jail because of that. My, my license was suspended and he was like, do know your license is suspended? And I said, no, I wouldn't have been a fucking driving if I knew that. And he's like, I don't believe you. get a notice in the mail when you drop your license is suspended. And I was like,
Not if you're trying to send it to a physical dress that don't have a box. So I spent like, and this was a weekend too, so I spent like two days in jail and I did not, I knew I had done something wrong or whatever. I made an administrative error. But in my mind I was like, what did I fucking do?
Beck (:That's crazy.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, next time I to jail I was doing something wrong though.
Beck (:Yeah. Knock on wood, I've not had that experience. The only time I've been to a jail was either to pick up my brother or to tour it as part of the Girl Scouts or when I worked at the Rape Crisis Center, I had to go talk to some people there a couple of times. My brother, was a lifelong, his whole life he was getting in trouble. And one time he got into a fight with his girlfriend and he threatened to kill himself.
Dash (he/him) (:Thanks.
You
Dash (he/him) (:This
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:So he drank some Mean Green. Do you know what Mean Green is? The dollar store cleaner. Yeah. And so they locked his ass up. They took him to Athens, the psych hospital in Athens, took him straight up there and he got a psych hold for like five days. And there was a blizzard in the middle of all this and we had bingo that was, were still trying to hold. So I got volunteered to go pick him up, right? And so I took my mom's Jeep and I drove all the way to Athens. was an hour away.
Dash (he/him) (:The cleaner, yeah.
Beck (:and I pulled up and the look on his face, he was just like, Christ, like, cause it was me and we had a very antagonistic, he knew I was going to run my mouth about that. And I sure did. It was wonderful. was, was fun being smug. I will never forget the look on his face though.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, my-
Dash (he/him) (:My brother bailed me out because I didn't have the money. He had already joined the military because of, he had gotten in so much trouble because he went in for felony forgiveness, which I don't think they do anymore. I think it's illegal. It was probably illegal at the time, but yeah, he was in so much shit. The judge was like, well, you can go to prison or you could join the military.
So he had money then because he was deployed and they were getting paid and he didn't need it So it was just going into like a trust and so he he bailed me out when he died I still owed him that money for whatever reason that fucked me up so bad and it was like a thousand dollars, is a lot of money to somebody with no money, but it is not a lot of money to somebody with money and It's a material to begin with
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I cleaned my shit up after the second time I went to jail because I was like, this is unpleasant.
Beck (:Yeah, well I'm glad because I probably wouldn't have met you if you hadn't done that, so.
Dash (he/him) (:No.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it certainly would not have just made it into a stable way of living in the world.
Beck (:You know we've been friends for 12 years now? Yeah. Wild.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that's right. 2013.
Yeah, imagine my surprise when I go up north to a fucking PhD program. There's another heel jack in there.
Beck (:You can't take me anywhere. That's all, folks.
Dash (he/him) (:When you remember when they would have us introduce ourselves going around class and they'd be like, say where you're from. And I just remember every time I would say, my name is, and I'm from Eastern Kentucky. And people would get this look on their face like, good for you. And you made it all this way. Like, do you think that this is the great, emancipated North? That this is where, that this is where I've always dreamed of being?
Beck (:Right?
Right? I like it here. They have a sense of humor about things. Like when, do you remember the Toledo Christmas weed? That whole thing that happened? There was, yeah, and then when the the steak and shakes, they have three of them, they shut them all down for the health department. People held a candlelight vigil in the parking lot that night. Like, they just, you know, shit happens and they roll with it and I appreciate that here.
Dash (he/him) (:Christmas weed, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Alorth.
Dash (he/him) (:It's, it is actually pretty, it's pretty country there too. Like it's, they, I think one of the highlights of my life occurred there, which is the, Wood County Fair, combine harvester demolition Derby.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:I wanted to go to that and never made it. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:it's every year and it is fucking spectacular. Just modified, kitted out, combine harvester. It's exactly what it says on the, on the tin. is absolutely like once it's done, once it's decommissioned and it can't do its job anymore, it is up for grabs. Have your way with it.
Beck (:Now you're speaking to my heart a demolition derby like there is there is nothing That's one of my redneck most redneck traits is I love a good demolition derby
Beck (:Yeah, when we moved home, I had a neighbor that helped me with everything. He was a good old boy from up the holler, you know, and he introduced me to these guys that I sold this to and those guys that I sold that to and he helped me get my car fixed and, you know, helped me find the, he came up with a stick and a helmet on to help me get a bat out of the house at one point. but he was, he was a driver and he came in first place, in one of the rounds, until as the county fair, it's the demolition Derby has like 15 heats or whatever. Like they go on for, yeah, all day.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it's all day.
Beck (:They started doing school buses too. A school bus demolition derby.
Dash (he/him) (:Oh hell yeah. There's an under 13s category, where they use riding mowers, because they'll only go so fast. But it is still like, these are children driving riding mowers into each other as fast as they'll go. No.
Beck (:Yeah.
Did you ever go to the fair drunk?
I did that once with a, we had a cheerleader that got pregnant. She was like the head cheerleader and she had to do homeschool for a year and she ended up graduating. And for whatever reason, she wanted to party with me and my best friend. So we got a bottle of Southern Comfort and we drove it, Mike drove us around the hills, down back run and Miller's run and all that. And we got shit faced and went to the fair and had a good time. I saw all kinds of people I knew.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:I actually didn't go to fairs much. Not until, I don't remember ever seeing one actually.
Beck (:What?
Beck (:County Fair is a big deal in southern Ohio.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Well, in, I grew up in, well, in Jellicoe, I don't know where it was held. There may have been one in Campbell County, but I don't know where. we just didn't do, we didn't socialize. Like nobody liked us. Yeah.
Beck (:Every county has a fairgrounds here in Ohio. They're doing the Strawberry Festival for Lucas County next weekend. And I wanna go, but people say that gun violence breaks out every year. And I'm like, well, I'm not going there now. That is not a sense of humor to me.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I saw somebody, I saw somebody get stabbed at the black swamp festival. one year that I lived there, and it was, I just happened to be like outside smoking and I seen, and there's always fights out there because Toledo and, BG have some sort of turf war going on and it may have been either gang related or some sort of sport. don't know, but, yeah, it was just, I happened to see like.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:two dudes run up on this one dude in the middle of the street and just like, it was so fast and it was like, and then he was laying there and he was like, hey, and nobody came out. And I was just standing there watching cause I was fucked up and I wasn't going to go over there. But I did eventually like, was like, okay, I'm going to call the police. It's going be okay. And then I ran off.
Beck (:Right? Kitty Genevieve all again.
Beck (:Do know the Kitty Genovese case? it's a very famous case, the bystander effect. Basically, she got murdered in New York City and like 37 people heard it and some of them saw it and not one person called the cops. And it's the classic case when you're talking about bystander apathy and things like that. Basically, that case is what founded, what calls the foundation of the 911 system in New York City in the 60s.
Dash (he/him) (:No.
Dash (he/him) (:Okay.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I mean, we'll just all assume the next person will deal with it.
Beck (:Yep, exactly. But the more you know about it, the more you learn about the bystander effect, the less likely you are to be affected by it. maybe somebody listening will...
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it's the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger. yeah. Though I did call the police and then, or I called an ambulance and then I ran off. And I watched from my window to make sure that they got him.
Beck (:Right? I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right.
Dash (he/him) (:You know, I mean, in terms of trouble, I didn't ever go looking for it, but I just wasn't very smart. And I just did whatever I felt like doing because I never learned anything about how to be a moral or good person. So was making that shit up as I went along.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah. I came up after my brother, after my sister. My sister dropped out of high school at 16 and got married, you know, and my brother got kicked out of every school around and nobody in my family had finished high school even, you know, so I was just such a freak when it came to... I'm like the rainbow sheep of my family of black sheep. Like my family was the black sheep family of the rest of the family and I am the rainbow sheep of the black sheep. So, bye.
Dash (he/him) (:you
Dash (he/him) (:Well, now seems like a good time for a word from this week's sponsor. This one is, this is current to, the seasons because it is Blackberry winter. so this week's sponsor is Blackberry picking stick. It is Blackberry winter in the hollers which means it's time to get picking. This naturally occurring supplemental crop proliferates along every tree line, grove and outhouse wall.
Somewhere between landscape and nuisance in other parts of North America, Appalachian blackberries are a staple food item. However, sharp brambles and thorns aren't the only hazard, for hidden betwixt and among each patch is at least 10 to 15 copperheads, the way mommy tells it. So here, take this stick with you. All you need to do is to remain safe from these venomous vipers lying in wait for your fleshy pink legs to happen by is to slap the bushes with your pick and stick.
This, mommy says, is to give the murderous worms advance notice of your arrival and location. Don't worry though, they're more afraid of you than you are of them. But take this stick anyway and make as much noise as you possibly can before you fill your shirt with the Blackberry booty and hustle on home. This week's episode of Queernecks is sponsored by Blackberry Pick and Stick.
Beck (:bullshit
Beck (:You
Beck (:You
Dash (he/him) (:God, I hate it. I liked picking blackberries because it was an easy job, but it was fucking painful. And I was for real scared to death of copperheads.
Beck (:When we moved home, there was a copperhead nest in the driveway because they had not cut the grass in so long. Everything kind of was going back to nature. And I drove down the driveway one day and the snake flew through the air. I wouldn't walk down the driveway again. I refused. I was going down to Mammal's house, which was like a 30 second walk down the driveway, hell no, I was getting in the car and driving down there because there was no, we bought snake repellent.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Hahahaha
Yeah
Beck (:bullets and it shot them all over the driveway. They're, they, the, have some kind of scent in them and you put them around and it's supposed to repel snakes. I don't know. We bought them off Amazon. We tried everything we could think of because we didn't want snakes anywhere near us. That's my, that's my big can't do it. I can kill a spider with, with, you know, with, with, with anything. I have no problem doing that, but snakes, just.
Dash (he/him) (:What's a snaker-pillow? Bullet.
Dash (he/him) (:Dash (he/him) (50:52.622)
Mm.
Beck (:My dad was the same way. One time I found a snake out, he used to keep the yard really well trimmed and they had a pullout back. And I was out there with the kids one day and I saw a snake. It was just a little garter snake. It wasn't very big. And I told Mark and he came out with his pistol and shot the garter snake three times.
Dash (he/him) (:arguably less safe.
Beck (:He got it, though!
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:as he sent a message.
Dash (he/him) (:That is something like Randy Quaid would do in Christmas vacation.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah. He was funny. Before he got to be a bitter old man, he was a really funny guy.
Dash (he/him) (:Damn.
Dash (he/him) (:There was a lot of snakes around on the mountainside. But there was a lot of everything around on the mountainside and we kept 20, 30 cats at any given time and they would keep the snakes down. We didn't do it on purpose, they just came to live with us because there were snakes everywhere.
Beck (:He could be, anyway.
Beck (:Our dogs would eat the cats, so we didn't have any cats. We had the dogs that were eating everything. But that was their job. My dad would feed them a hot dog every day, and that was all he would feed them. And the rest of the food they had to scavenge on their own. And when it got around time to do the yard in the summertime, they'd cut the grass and they'd find deer carcasses and they would, yeah, they'd find all kinds of jaw bones of different things. They'd find the dogs, but they kept the hill clear of everything but rabbits.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Damn.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I remember like mowing being like just constantly turning shit up like the snakes. But the big threat for mowing was the hornet's nest because they were in the ground. And I remember one day I would I
Beck (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Fully thought my mother had lost her mind. I thought she'd had a, I just saw, I thought I saw her have a psychotic break right in front of me. And it was terrifying until I realized what was going on. And then it was terrifying for what I understood to be going on. Cause we were standing at the door, at the window in the kitchen doing the dishes. You know, and on the trailer, the dish, the sink will be right under the windows that's on the end of the trailer. Yeah. So we were there for quite a time and we looked, we out the windows, we could see David.
Beck (:and shallow enough to fit maybe one cup.
Dash (he/him) (:pushing the lawn, the push mower around on the sides. And we saw all of sudden he stopped and starts frantically flailing and doing this weird like twisting dance and stuff like that. And I did not know, I didn't put together what it was, but my mom then, cause I was like, oh shit, what's he doing? And then mom runs, she says, God damn it.
and she runs over to the cabinet where she keeps her cigarettes and she opens a pack of cigarettes, pulls all 20 of them out and sticks and bites them off. She bites off the tobacco part and just starts chewing really fast. And I was like, what in the mother fuck, has everybody gone crazy? And then he came running in the house and by the time he got in, she had chowed it all up to be like a wet mess and starts putting it on all the bites. Cause he had run over a hornet's nest.
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:And they were stinging him like crazy. So the time between him starting to flail like that, she realized instantly what was going on and chewed up a pack of cigarettes. But he was sick as hell. Like he almost died from, he must've had 20 stings from those things. Yeah. And so she put them all on there as a poultice to draw the sting out. I don't know. How the fuck do stings work? Is it a venom?
Beck (:The things a mother will do.
Beck (:Wow.
Beck (:Yeah.
I don't know, honestly. I'm too afraid of them to ever get too close to find out. I never had to do any kind of yard work because we had 17 acres we were working with. And so there was a riding lawn mower, it was a tractor.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know.
Dash (he/him) (:Dad would do that, but it was a mountainside. like it couldn't, the part that was too steep for the riding mower, we would have to do, the kids would get that job.
Beck (:same.
Beck (:Yeah.
Yeah, no, Mark had the area that he could get when we first moved there. He had it all flattened out so they could get to it with the lawnmower because there was a spot out there that they couldn't. And then they flattened it all out and he put a garage back there. So that's what he did. If he couldn't get to it with the lawnmower, he weed-eated it. What's the past way to say weed-eat? Weed-aid it? That doesn't sound right. He weed-eated it. He did something to it.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:We ate. We whacked. I always, I do always say actually weed-eated, but I do it, I have to like get my courage up to do it a little bit because I know it sounds stupid. And every time I do it, I'm like somebody's gonna say something.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Would you like to hear about today's nouns of interest?
Dash (he/him) (:I'm dying to hear about today's nouns of Appalachian interest.
Beck (:Alright, alright, alright, alright y'all. Welcome back to Nouns of Interest, that sweet little corner of Queernecks where we get to gush about the people, places, and things that make Appalachian culture what it is. Weird, warm, and a little greasy in the best way possible. Today's now, the pepperoni roll. Now listen, if you are from central Appalachia like we are, you already know this roll is a culinary cultural artifact.
a gas station delicacy, a lunchbox legend, a piece of edible history wrapped in soft white bread and stuffed with pepperoni. It is, in my completely biased opinion, the most queerly perfect food ever created. And here's why. It's deceptively simple. Just bread and pepperoni, right? But that simplicity hides its complexity. Like so many of us raised queer in the hollers. You bite into one and suddenly it's all soft and meaty and comforting all at once. You didn't expect that emotion from a snack, but here we are.
in Fairmont, West Virginia in: Can we talk about the: Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:I don't think so. Even the military got wise and began packing pepperoni rolls into rations for the troops in the early 2000s, which makes sense. They're portable, they're calorie dense, and can emotionally replace a hug from home. What can't they do? To me, the pepperoni roll is an Appalachian and is Appalachian queerness in edible form. It's practical, a little overlooked, hard to define, and full of surprises. It's got roots in immigrant labor, working class grit, and quiet rebellion.
And when you grow up queer in the hills, you learn to love these kinds of stories, the ones that survive, adapt, and make space for themselves, even when the world doesn't quite know what to do with them. So next time you're passing through West Virginia or anywhere near the old cold country, stop by at a gas station, grab a pepperoni roll, and take a bite of history. Just don't microwave it or you'll miss the magic. All right, that's it for this installment of Nouns of Interest. I'm Bec, still soft on the outside, meaty on the inside. This has been your cultural carb loading for the week. Back to you, Dash.
Dash (he/him) (:I fucking hate you. You ever laugh so hard you start sweating?
Beck (:You
Beck (:My work here is dead.
Dash (he/him) (:the pepperoni roll. I have thought about them in forever.
Beck (:What brought it up was I was talking about I asked on Facebook I said we're doing this thing and can you help me come up with some stuff made in Appalachia? Right? I was crowdsourcing and adju James. I'm sure you remember adju. He's living in Charleston, West Virginia. He got married and is living there now and he commented and he said he told me that he suggested pepperoni rolls and
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:or he suggested something else and I was like, have you tried a pepperoni roll yet? And he was like, I finally found one. Cause that's what West Virginians really want to tell you about. You can't go there without 14 people been like, had a pepperoni roll yet? You know?
Here you are. I don't like, I like making them homemade. I don't like the grass station ones. They're usually too dry for me. I'm really picky about my pepperoni.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah. Well, my mom was picky about the cheese. Like, she was a cheese hoe, you know?
Beck (:Yeah.
Well, a true one doesn't have cheese in it. A true one is just pepperoni inside a roll. Yeah, I put cheese in mine too.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that's true. And she would want for those. I know. I'm like, you know, you can be a purist if you want to and that's fine. But if in order to enjoy this thing, I'm going to put fucking cheese in it. And it's going to be just melty, ooey, gooey mozzarella. And you can kiss my ass.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah. I get the, the pepperoni from the deli behind the counter, the big fat, and I get it real thin. I get real thin, but they're huge. and then I get, frozen rolls from like Bob Evans or the sister Schubert ones or whatever, and let them rise. And I just pop them in there and you just bake them and they're perfect.
Dash (he/him) (:The big fat ones, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mom would get those roll the Pillsbury Crescent rolls. So I think it's like supposed to be like croissant bread or something. It's a pastry and it has layers like a puff pastry or I'm sorry. Yeah. And so she would get those and roll and put the pepperoni and the cheese in them and roll them up. And fuck yeah.
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:You take them to the kids or something and they don't have to come inside. You fed them, they're good, and you don't have to see them.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of pizza rolls. My mom was always buying stuff like that. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:I ate a lot of pizza rolls and lot of those Totino's pizzas. Remember them? You could get them for like a 10 cents at the, out of the freezer, the deep freeze at the grocery store. Cause, Fuck really? Damn. No man, you can get 10 of them for a dollar.
Beck (:yeah.
Beck (:They're like $2.99 now a piece. Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, they've made them a little bit bigger now, but then they raised the price on them. They were a dollar a piece for a long time there. God, you know you're poor when you know the history of the price of the Tostinos pizzas.
Dash (he/him) (:Thank
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, well... Yeah. Yeah, we ate a lot of that,
Beck (:frozen burritos.
Dash (he/him) (:Not as much. We had a lot of pot pies.
Beck (:Yeah, I still can't eat a pot pie to this day. Yeah, can't do it.
Dash (he/him) (:I fucking hate them. God, turn the thought, just saying it just now turned my stomach.
Beck (:What's the food that traumatized you?
Dash (he/him) (:Salisbury steak.
Beck (:Yeah, the frozen kind or homemade? Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:It's frozen. Yeah, it's the jelly shit on it and the texture of like they're trying to tell you, you're trying to convince me this is meat, but it is not. I have had offal before. This is connective tissue. These are tendons.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah. Mom made those all the time, mashed potatoes and corn. We ate it right up. We'd eat it with mashed potatoes and corn and bread and butter and eat those. The one that traumatized me was chicken noodle soup, Campbell's chicken noodle soup. To this day, I cannot even handle the smell of it.
Dash (he/him) (:Ooh.
It's too much. You know what though, I learned that a lot of the stuff we were eating, were supposed to, it was a mix. Did you know that that's a mix? You're supposed to mix it with water. We never did. We was eating it right out of the can.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, no, they made it right. But my dad was one of those people, you're going to sit there until you eat it kind of people. And I just hated it. I've always been weird, especially about tiny bits of meat, you know, because you can't tell if they're real or not. And it's they've always just grossed me out and I just didn't like it. And he made me sit there. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. It was objectively gross. Yeah. My sister had a lot of issue with the textures of foods and things. And I think that there's a kind of a little something spectrumy. And she's cause she still really can't tolerate certain things, but yeah, they would make her sit there until she, she, she would be sick trying to shove this stuff down her throat. But you know, to them, they didn't understand it. They couldn't see, they couldn't see it from a perspective of someone who could not tolerate a thing.
This we're not talking about distaste. We're talking like if it touched her lips, she would vomit and they just didn't care. Eventually they got a little softer on it and I was like, you know, all you have to do is make her a bowl of rice. She will eat the hell out of a bowl of minute rice. That's all you have to do, but they would not fix her her own thing. I don't know. There was a lot of they really wanted us all to be the same. Did you know anybody who was left handed that they make they made right with their right hand? Me too.
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Shanna. Yeah, my mom was left-handed and I have a niece and a nephew who are both left-handed, but the rest of us are all right-handed. they let mom be left-handed and she was born in the 50s. But Shanna, Shanna was born in 1982 and they made her change from left to right.
Dash (he/him) (:I think that's actually a more, I think that is an 80s thing, an 80s or 90s thing. I don't know if they really pressured people to write with the right hand before that.
Beck (:Well, was a, there was a lot of stigma around it because it was considered of the devil.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. They called it queer-hannit. Where I'm from. Yeah, like queer, but pronounced queer. They still call me Lieutenant Queer-Hannit.
Beck (:I didn't know that.
Beck (:I didn't know that.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I think that's real Kentucky though.
Beck (:Yeah. Well, like I said, my mom has passed, but I have a niece and a nephew who are both left-handed. Out of... A niece. Yeah. We won't go there.
Dash (he/him) (:Anif.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:I have two nieces and three nephews and two of them are left-handed. So I find that interesting how it follows genealogical. That's a lot because, know, out of, because my mom only had three kids and none of us were left-handed, but two of the grandkids were. Yeah, I guess so.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:That is.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Skips a generation. But not gay though. No.
Beck (:No? I'm the only gay until my cousin, we won't say her name, my cousin has a kid who's gay. But I'm the only gay that I know of.
Dash (he/him) (:I think it was easier to hide being gay than it is left-handed. Personally. I got a lot of cousins where I'm like, sure, that's your husband, okay. Does your beard have a name?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, not mine. Mine are all very straight, very straight people that drive you crazy. Straight people. I have got one cousin who is the kindest man I have ever met in my life and his name is John. He and his wife are wonderful and they have a lot of grandkids now. But I can't think of anybody else who would even be close to being queer. That's my of my 41 cousins. Though there was a few of them I never met because they died. I had an aunt that died before I was born and all four of her kids in a house fire.
Dash (he/him) (:Very straight.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-mm.
Dash (he/him) (:soon.
Beck (:So I don't know if any of them would have been. I'm actually named after one of those kids, Rebecca. So there were two of us.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm. You want to, can you tell us your social security number and your mother's maiden name too? Well, so tell us in the tweet at us or whatever it is, tweets, tweeting is not a thing anymore. If you, if you find us on threads or Instagram at queernecks or you can comment on our YouTube channel where we also have this, this show at queernecks. Have you ever had.
Beck (:Unless you're going to be hateful, then don't say anything at all.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, if you're going to be hateful, we'll probably just like mercilessly mock you on air and dox you. We won't dox you, like you really don't know what you're getting into until you try to come to, you try to step to a queer redneck. Like there's a level of silver tongue devil cruelty that you will never ever see coming. But yeah, let us know if you've had a pepperoni roll.
Beck (:Hahaha!
Beck (:Yup.
Dash (he/him) (:Let us know if you, what's something else? That, if you, do you have, have you ever been blackberry picking and did you, were you given a stick to ward off the cottonmouths Have you had blackberry cobbler? Have you, yeah. My mother makes the best fucking blackberry dumplings because her biscuits are so good. Her biscuit recipe is elite. I've never had anything like.
Beck (:if they have a Blackberry Pickin' Stick.
Beck (:it's my favorite. I want blackberry dumplings. Have you seen the recipe for that?
Dash (he/him) (:Her in they're really irregular right? Because even just trying to shape them in a certain way would ruin. She's all about the texture and the fluffiness. But yeah, she just takes what there's two methods for making dumplings listeners. OK, there's the flat method, which is essentially a pasta. Either an egg or just flour, noodle, pasta, square type thing. And then there's the method where you make your biscuit batter recipe and.
dollop it down into the the boiling syrup or broth or whatever it is you're cooking if you're making chicken and dumplings. So that is the appropriate method in my opinion.
Beck (:Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. I'm dying to try them. So one of these days and we'll get my hands on some. I've sent Shanna maybe 400 different recipes of blackberry dumplings. Maybe she'll get the hint.
Dash (he/him) (:Fuck yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Come on now, come on now. Well, let us know if you've had blackberry dumplings. All right, well, join us next time for Queernecks. And hey, if you got a buddy who thinks that we, who would enjoy some of our silly content, get them over here, subscribe and like and all of that. We would like to know who you folks are and where you're listening from and what your maiden name is. All right, we'll see you next time. Say hi to your mom and them.
