#3 The Blizzard of '93 Cryptid
Dash and Beck explore their shared experiences growing up in rural Appalachia, touching on themes of family dynamics, political ideologies, and the humorous challenges of winter life. They reflect on their childhood memories, dating experiences, and the unique aspects of their queer identities in a conservative environment. The discussion is filled with laughter, personal anecdotes, and a deep sense of community. In this engaging conversation, Dash and Beck reflect on their childhood experiences in Appalachia, sharing nostalgic memories of winter, family, and the unique challenges of growing up queer in a rural setting. They discuss the complexities of gender identity and sexual attraction, as well as the impact of societal norms on their lives. The conversation also touches on the Mothman legend, exploring its significance in Appalachian folklore and culture.
Key Takeaways
The importance of local community in rural life.
Humor can be a coping mechanism for difficult experiences.
Navigating family dynamics can be complex, especially regarding political beliefs.
Childhood memories shape our adult identities.
Dating experiences can vary greatly based on personal circumstances.
Winter presents unique challenges in rural areas.
Shared experiences create strong bonds between friends.
The impact of upbringing on political ideologies.
Humor often arises from shared cultural references.
The significance of personal anecdotes in storytelling. The holler culture included unique communication methods like party lines.
Childhood adventures in the snow fostered community and creativity.
Winter smells evoke strong memories tied to family and home.
Growing up queer in Appalachia presented unique challenges and experiences.
Gender identity and sexual attraction are not the same; they are distinct aspects of identity.
Trans experiences in sports highlight the complexities of identity and acceptance.
Nostalgia plays a significant role in shaping our understanding of childhood.
Family connections, especially with cousins, are deeply valued.
Cultural norms around gender can create barriers to self-acceptance.
Folklore, like the Mothman, reflects the rich cultural tapestry of Appalachia.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Local Life
02:50 Humorous Anecdotes and Shared Experiences
05:41 Navigating Family Dynamics and Political Ideologies
11:00 Reflections on Childhood and Growing Up
16:44 Dating Experiences and Relationships
21:33 Winter in the Hills: Challenges and Memories
35:37 Nostalgic Winter Memories
38:22 Childhood Adventures in the Snow
41:05 The Smells of Winter and Family
44:02 Growing Up Queer in Appalachia
48:02 Gender Identity and Sexual Attraction
51:00 Trans Experiences in Sports
53:57 The Mothman Legend and Appalachian Folklore
tags: queer, rural, Appalachian, family, politics, relationships, winter, humor, childhood, community, Appalachia, winter memories, queer identity, trans experiences, Mothman, childhood adventures, gender identity, nostalgia, family, folklore
Transcript
Did eat yet?
Beck (:No.
Dash (he/him) (:What are you gonna fix?
Beck (:I don't know, probably Mexican food to be honest with you. It's been a long day and I don't feel like cooking and I doubt Shanna does either.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I'm probably gonna I've been on a red beans and rice cake
Beck (:We have a really good Mexican restaurant, like literally around the corner. We're in a little town called Waterville. I don't know if you were ever here, but it's a small little town and we're on the same street as Kroger. Like I can almost see the Kroger from my house and a little micro mall has built up around that Kroger. There's a therapy place and a Chinese place and a Bigby coffee and yeah, really everything you need is right there. You can get a haircut. Pizza Hut is there.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:everything you need.
Beck (:Yeah, so and the two auto parts stores because that's what you need two of them so the We're right close to it. So the Door dash is really cheap Yeah, yeah Yeah, we do it more than we should
Dash (he/him) (:Fuck I'm in store dash, I don't do that shit here.
Can I tell you, like, when we first met, I I knew that we got along instantly when we met, but the moment I realized that you were hilarious was you told me about a haircut you got. And it was like kind of a, didn't like the haircut. And it was like kind of a mean joke, but also like so roundabout that it wasn't overtly mean because you said that.
They gave you like this bowl cut kind of thing with bangs. You said they turned you loose looking like you needed staff.
Beck (:Hahaha!
you
Dash (he/him) (:And I remember being the only one that laughed because it's such a hyper specific to like, only somebody who spoke our dialect would understand what was so funny about that. It's like, you didn't say what kind, but some kind of help.
Beck (:hahahahah
That's funny because that's the kind of work Shanna is doing right now. Yeah, she has to deal with a lot of shit tonight, literal shit, and I could not. Thank God there's people that can do those jobs. I could not. I'd throw up.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I know.
Dash (he/him) (:Absolutely. There's of them out there. The older we get, we sort of inch towards relying on folks doing shit we never would have done ourselves.
Beck (:Yeah, yeah, for sure. I just, couldn't... I can barely handle my own shit, let alone strangers and them having diarrhea four times a day and that kind of thing. Ugh, and diapers. just... Nope.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
No, I don't know. Who knows? It's one thing to say and then another, like, you know.
Beck (:One of them has a problem with their wiener, so she has to put cream on it every day. I was like, nope, couldn't do it. Couldn't, could not touch an old man's wiener. just, like we were talking about the other day, the idea of being asexual, right? Like the opposite of hypersexual, that'd be way too intimate for me. Even though it's not a sexual thing at all, it would just be way too intimate for me.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. I'm sure there's a compartmentalization and, and, know, techniques that the professional folks have for that kind of thing. And I would hope that they're able to, you know, to weather that in a way that I don't believe I would.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:I did that job when I was first out of college the first time, when I dropped out of school and I moved to West Virginia. The first job I had, besides a telemarketing place, the first real job I had was working in a place called Autism Services and it was working with people in group homes and stuff. And I did okay, but I didn't have to deal with shit. I have a really funny story about one of the clients shitting, so I probably should never tell that story on air.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Do you remember, do you know about Sinister Pond, babe? She's on TikTok. She's this West Virginia, you got to look her up. got like the way she talks is so soothing to me. She's this like trans creator. She predominantly is on TikTok, but I'm sure she's on other things as well. But she goes, all she does is just, she sits and gets high and gets on Google Earth and looks up really remote locations and like high
Beck (:Uh-uh.
Dash (he/him) (:like zooms in and looks at everything. And she has these criteria for what makes a place like, you know, she would live there. And one of them is it has to have a Chinese or sorry, Mexican restaurant. I vibe so much with all of her. And, know, it's like she she has this eye for what makes a good small Appalachian rural town, you know, like what like how just watching her like decode.
Beck (:That pretty much would be ours too, because Shanna would die without it.
Dash (he/him) (:what we understand to be good, what we understand to be like quality and how we can tell where we can go and where we can expect certain experiences for people who aren't from that region on TikTok. She has a huge following.
Beck (:What did you say the name was?
Dash (he/him) (:It's sinister pond babe. I actually that's her. I don't know what her at like handle is. That's her username or vice versa.
Dash (he/him) (:She's foul too though, like you can't listen to her at work.
Beck (:I'm officially following her on Instagram.
Dash (he/him) (:And she's probably, she probably even been to Portsmouth. Like she, she has done, she's been doing this for years and she takes requests from people, but she has so many followers that, you know, it takes a long time to get noticed by her. but she's been to some places close by where I'm gonna say been to, like she's actually physically going to these places. She's just, you know, doing a deep dive on Google earth. It's brilliant content.
Beck (:I am following, I will check that out for sure.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I love the way she talks.
Dash (he/him) (:I thought of an intro while it was working, now it's gone.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, I'll just wing it.
All right, ready to get going? Mark. Welcome back to Queernecks the show about the complexities of being a queer, rural, central Appalachian, hill and holler folk. I am your host, Ash.
Beck (:I am your other host, Beck.
Dash (he/him) (:And welcome to episode three. As long as we air these in the correct order, this will be episode three.
Beck (:Yeehaw!
Dash (he/him) (:I've been messing around with hashtags online, trying to like see what people will like notice and stuff. I put yeehaw fucked the law Nobody's using it. Yes. Yeah. If you listen to this, and I made us like, I'm not going to be on tick tock, there's a there's Queernecks were at Queernecks on, Instagram and threads now. And so.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Yet.
Beck (:nice! I've not been on threads.
Dash (he/him) (:It's I can't figure it out really. I don't have any followers, but the We've got Yeah, blue sky too. It's just a fucking wasteland to me. I can't figure it out. But if you're in the digital's Look us up on on Instagram and threads and give us a follow and let's get the hashtag ye how fuck the law going
Beck (:That's how I am on blue sky.
Beck (:Yee-haw, from the law.
Dash (he/him) (:There was, I found one topic on there, rednecks for Kamala. And I was like, okay, how active is this bunch lately?
Beck (:Well, you know, the Democrats in southern Ohio, where I grew up, are pretty active. And now the Republicans as well. my dad, my biological father, was a Democrat, and he always had signs in the yard and all that kind of stuff.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
My dad has been a Republican since he could register, but, you know, he's so old that back then, a lot of people don't know how recent the party shift was. And this is not, this is not apologism for what the hell public Republicans are now. Like this is, they are scum, fuck Republicans, like contemporary Republicans. But the, party shift is actually.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:as recent as like the late sixties, early seventies. It was kind of Nixon that did that. And my dad registered to vote before them. And so he registered Republican because Republicans were the progressives. Republicans were the anti-racists, right? In the South, especially, know, they were the, what you call it, the opposite of segregation.
Beck (:the anti-segregationists.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I guess that, yeah. That's what they were. so growing up with him, by the time I came along, Republicans already were well on their way to being what they are now. And I just couldn't understand it. Because I knew him and I was like, you are not this. What are you doing? And for minute there, he was on his way down that alt-right pipeline. that was, I come from a generally don't ask, don't tell family. We didn't talk about religion. We don't really debate ideologies.
But during that time, that was when we, we fit the most during that time, because I was like, I'm not going to let this happen. I have to know what's happening here because this is not you. And I don't, I'm not sure I can get you back from this. And this was during, you know, the Occupy Wall Street stuff. This was during like really early days of Black Lives Matter, like back, you know, remember Trayvon Martin and you know, when, when that, those movements first began to, to
Beck (:same.
Dash (he/him) (:really emerge on the national media stage. And the shit he was, and he was watching Fox News and everything, and I was like, this is not gonna happen.
Beck (:My dad was on the road to that kind of thing. After he retired from the bingo, he went back to truck driving. This is my adopted father. And he started hanging out with a lot of guys who were not big on education, we'll put it that way. And he started getting some funny ideas about things and one was not getting the COVID shot. And I don't think he was watching Fox News, but he was certainly parroting some talking points from there.
And that only happened around the time my mom died. That's when he started getting really bad about that. So the last year of his life.
Dash (he/him) (:looking for community probably. Yeah, and my dad worked in a really conservative space at the railroad. Strangely, well, maybe not strangely, for, you know, a site that is historically extremely pro-union.
Beck (:Maybe.
Dash (he/him) (:these, the commitment to those ideals didn't trickle down to the people who were at the very bottom of the pyramid on the railroad. And I'm glad, it was a scary time. And of course I was also in the back of my mind. was like, you're never ever gonna love me when you find out what's going on in here. Cause I hadn't come out yet. And I was trying to put it off. was trying to...
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:put all this off until after they died, basically. Even though fucking Melungians live forever. I was gonna be 70 years old transitioning.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Dash (he/him) (:Cause dad was 70 fucking, yeah, dad was over 70 when his dad died. His mom's still alive. Yeah.
Beck (:Wow. I'm in my 40s and don't have any of my parents left or grandparents. I have one aunt left of the generation that came before me. I have one aunt left.
Dash (he/him) (:You know, there's actually, there's some like, there's data on what happens to genes anytime there has been a bottleneck. But yeah, anyway, so luckily, I mean, we, was a rough, like probably 10 years of me chipping away at this, but then he, the things that went into him having to deal with my transition and also understanding
or listening more about the experiences of others in general. understanding me through my commitments and Vanessa, my sister, I'm gonna bleep that out, my sister through her commitments and her friends who she's friends with who I'm friends with. He just, you he still had big ears and he still unders, I think he was able to see that like the ideals that he once had, had shifted to a place that he hadn't gone with them. And so,
Trump shit came around and he was like, there ain't no fucking way. He was like, I'm a Democrat now. Yeah. Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, my parents voted for Obama through it all that you know what I mean? They even went to like Obama rallies and things. When I was cleaning out their house, I found a whole big folder full of Obama merchandise that she had kept because she thought it would be valuable. It was right with her Elvis collection.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Wow.
Beck (:I found so much shit dude. my god. One of the coolest things I found was a little boy's belt buckle. It was from the 50s and it had a little tiny, it's metal, I don't know if it's not silver, so maybe tin. You push the button on the belt buckle and a little pistol pops out and it has, it's like the ones that snap the firepats, the little strips.
And yeah, and it shoots off two shots and then you you buckle it back. But it's a real live shooting belt buckle. It's the coolest thing I found in everything. Mom had a Care Bear collection that I sold to one person miraculously. There were over 90 items in that Care Bear collection, most of them dolls.
Dash (he/him) (:yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:What was?
Dash (he/him) (:Like, hair-bear.
Beck (:Do you have the Wiggles? I have an entire set of the Wiggles dolls if you should know anybody interested in that particular vein of memorabilia.
Dash (he/him) (:about. We had some toys that we got at the yard sales, like some action figures and stuff. I had a Joker and a GI Joe that I would make kiss.
Beck (:these were not toys I got to play with. These are toys mom bought off eBay because she thought they would be valuable. My dad had to build an entire room onto the house so that she'd have a place to put all of her eBay shit.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Man, eBay got some folks.
Beck (:Yeah, my mom had a credit card and a whiskey Pepsi. Yeah, yeah. She was very, she was a one drink kind of girl. drank Canadian club whiskey with Pepsi. That was her. Yeah, pretty gross.
Dash (he/him) (:And a whiskey. Yeah, and a long neck.
Dash (he/him) (:I you know, they're, and like, don't, I don't really ever miss drinking. occasionally though, I will miss like a particular thing, that I actually liked, you know? cause I think, I believe that there are some people who, who drink or do certain like substances or vices because they enjoy the flavor of it or they can enjoy it in moderation. And there were times when I can do that, but for the most part, the thought of, of liquor or anything just.
Beck (:I haven't had alcohol probably since my wedding and that was, I drank I think two beers and that was eight years ago.
So I haven't had a drop of alcohol in at least eight years.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it's been about that for me.
Beck (:Yeah. And before that, I bought a six pack of Ying Ling and it lasted in my fridge for like a year. Just sometimes I'd be watching baseball and be like, I should have a beer with this. And so I'd go get, yeah, because that's what you do. I'm a red blooded American. Give me my beer, damn it. And I gave most of those to my friend, Andrew. So.
Dash (he/him) (:Because that's what you do.
Dash (he/him) (:So I know that we talked a little bit about like dating and stuff when we were in school and it wasn't really something for you. Did you date anybody at all before you went away to college? That was...
Beck (:So I had two boyfriends, both were very nice young men that I was a whirlwind of issues basically. One kid, he was so sweet. I remember one thing about him, he ran home from baseball practice one night so he could call me before he had to go to bed. It was so sweet. And then my other boyfriend stole my car one time and I was like, nope, can't be having this.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:I went away to college and was kind of, like I said, asexual. I didn't date anybody seriously until after I dropped out of school and moved to West Virginia. My first real girlfriend was somebody from West Virginia. or, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:So you didn't like do that get your heart ripped out of your chest thing in high school. fuck.
Beck (:I had a boy who was completely in love with me though. I was on the other side of that. I was the object of affection for somebody who is now gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. He wrote me love letter after love letter after love letter, like in the yearbook and then he would pass them to me written in purple ass ink, you know? And I don't know if you remember or if you were allowed to do it, but where my parents worked, the shop was open from 10 in the morning until nine at night. So I had the house pretty much to myself.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, there was some.
Beck (:my brother and sister were already gone. So I could spend as much time as I wanted on the phone, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I spent, the younger kids got older, like once they were old enough to do things for themselves, I got to spend more time like by myself and with friends and things. God damn it, Ziggy, shut up.
And so I spent a lot of time on the phone too, because my friends, we all lived far away. And so if on the nights that we couldn't be together, like when we were together, we would be together all fucking night. And when we weren't, we were on the phone together.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, I was on the phone so much that my mom got me my own line so that she could use the phone when she was home. Funnily enough, my phone number was 259-5011 before 5011 became a thing.
Dash (he/him) (:Wow.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, my dad ran a, so, um, after we lived, um, in the trailer park for awhile, when I was about 11 or 12, um, we moved up on this mountainside. We like, nobody told us the truth about what happened, but all of a sudden we didn't have anywhere to live. And so when, so we, yeah, mom and dad had this, they got, they found this place in Tannery Haller that
Beck (:Hey, that happened to us too.
Dash (he/him) (:We slept on the floor for a couple of months and it was pretty nasty. That was the first fist fight I got into. and David got in a fist fight. I think we were just so stressed out about being homeless and not knowing what the fuck was going on. But then we moved up on this mountain side. It was a coal mine in a quarry. And that's where we lived until like we moved to Kentucky. That was actually on Jellicoe Mountain. And the...
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Fuck, I forget what I, my dad, I was on, I really wanted to be on the phone all the time then. And so there wasn't a phone line in the room I had in this trailer, but there was a telephone pole right outside. So he ran a line right outside to it. And I was on the phone one night, during a storm, got struck by fucking lightning. Cause it didn't ground.
Beck (:wow.
You
Dash (he/him) (:Years later, I would tell that, and the lights went out and I thought I'd gone blind.
Beck (:Did your entire skeleton line up like the cartoons?
Dash (he/him) (:No, and it wasn't a real good, you know, it was more like a because it was through like those are really insulated lines and it was through this like cheap as plastic. was a pretend it was made to look like a flip phone, but it was a wall phone. And so it was plastic. And so it really was just more of like a zap. wasn't.
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:It wasn't like a, know, I mean, it did hurt my ear and it's one of the things that happened to my hearing, but yeah, it was felt like just getting punched in the side of the head. And then, yeah, the lights went out and so I thought I'd gone blind. But living up there was the first time I got to watch TV really. Cause they.
Beck (:Beck (21:33.76)
Yeah, I had access to TV my whole life. My mom was not much on restricting us from anything. The only time I ever got grounded was when they went to Vegas for a week and I threw a party. And I even got out of that because I made my mom laugh. I said, how would you ever just wanted to do something bad? And she cracked the hell up and I didn't get grounded or anything. I had to stay in for a few nights, like it wasn't like I was working and she forgot about it immediately.
Dash (he/him) (:Mmm.
Beck (:So, I was a terrible criminal. I left beer cans in a garbage bag behind the house. Like, ashtrays still full that I didn't even notice were like, in the back room. I was an idiot. I'm not a mastermind criminal, I'll put it that way. I'm terrible at lying, I'm terrible at crime.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:you
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, my parents always thought I was up to something to my I would get God damn just all the time. My mom is on to me about something. I was like I am the captain of the fucking academic team and
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:I had a brother who was into everything and he got suspended and all that kind of stuff. So I came after him. So.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, that's
Dash (he/him) (:Well, and but David was younger than me, but he was into everything too. I was like, look at that one. You're just letting him run it. They thought it was cute that he had a party for his 15th birthday. All right. Should we choose a topic before we just keep on? Yeah. Let's, let's see what we get. All right. I'm going to spin now. We're okay. We're going, we're going.
Beck (:Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Beck (:random talking.
Let's do it. Let's do it.
Dash (he/him) (:God, I forgot I put this one on here. We got winter. You want to talk about winter in the hills?
Beck (:So, do you know the difference between a creek and a holler? I mean, a run and a holler?
Dash (he/him) (:Oh, um, don't a run have an end? It's both got a way out and in.
Beck (:The run has a body of water attached to it like a creek. Some hollers have creeks, but they don't call them runs. But most runs have have a creek attached to them. And I grew up on a run. So to get to my house, you had to you had to cross a bridge. Before my dad died, he replaced the bridge because it fell in. It was about 10 feet off the ground. There was a pretty good creek running underneath it that eventually ran into the Scioto River.
Dash (he/him) (:okay.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:but my dad replaced it with an old diesel truck scale. So you'd go over and go clang, clang, clang, clang. And then it was a gravel driveway and you had to go up a hill and make a sharp turn to the left at the top of the hill. And these are Appalachian foothills, right? So when it would get cold and then it would warm up, that water would come down the hill and it would accumulate ice at the top of that hill. So you would cross the bridge and try to go up the hill. And unless you had four wheel drive, you were going nowhere except into the bushes or into the creek, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:And it gets worse every time you try to because like the wheels like shine and shine up that ice a little bit.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:And I assure you, my parents did not get a four wheel drive until after I moved away. and I never had one of my own until recently. So I've, I've walked that hill maybe a thousand times in my life and I, I hated snow for a long time because of it. I fell on that bridge on my ass so many times and trying to cross the hill and there was a giant,
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Beck (:propane tank in the middle of the yard and it would like you'd have to like dodge it and so you didn't step on the any of that and it would be muddy down in the little valley. It was was a mess. One time my best friend she drove a little brown chevette we called it the bean. It was like a 1989 chevette and we were trying to come up the hill and she tried it and she went up and she started sliding backwards and she went off the hill a little bit.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:My dad called a couple of his nephews and his buddies and stuff and they came up and pulled her carried her car across that bridge so that she could get out of there and go home.
Dash (he/him) (:Where there's I always say this where there's a redneck there's a way Yeah, and there there is no there's not plows right there's not nobody plows the roads is the
Beck (:Yup.
Beck (:My dad had finally purchased a side by side that had a plow on it.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Like if it gets done, then it's because a person did it, not the city, not the city. Yeah. Cause the, know, even if they did like the roads are not flat enough to plow. like the, the difference between whether or not winter is any fun is entirely dependent on where you live. Like in the trailer park, winter was pretty great because it was flat and we didn't have to go very far to find places to play in the snow and in the snow drifts.
Beck (:Yeah. hell no. Hell no.
Dash (he/him) (:We'd make little sleds and put the younger kids in them and just tow them around. They thought it was great. On the mountainside, just like you were saying, it was a corkscrew up it, so we didn't have a driveway or a road to go up there. was, you know how mountaintop removal mining will create steps. And so we had to sort of do that. But it was kind of inexpertly done.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:mining and so it was really irregular. And so here we are trying to get my dad had they had the Ford Aero Star and a 1965 I think Ford F-100. And we eventually wrecked all of those vehicles at one point. At one point just and so anytime we go grocery shopping we'd be like remember we had to carry it took 50 fucking trips.
Beck (:Nice.
Beck (:Yeah. Yeah!
Dash (he/him) (:because up in the van wouldn't make it up the hill, so we'd have to park it at the bottom of the mountain.
Beck (:Yup. That's exactly what we would have to do. And walk our asses up that hill back up to the trailer. Yes. They didn't even buy a sled or any of that shit. Like, couldn't you have at least bought a sled so they could pile the groceries? Like, every time it snowed we had to walk up... Not a fan. Myself. And my dad had a different car every other week because he was a mechanic and he'd work on them and sell them and flip them and he'd always had some kind of car project going.
Dash (he/him) (:Herian like your body weight No
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, trauma.
Hmm.
Beck (:He built every car that I ever had until I bought the Hyundai. One of my Hyundai's. I bought that off of a lot. He always told me that as long as I stayed in school, he'd keep me in a car. And as soon as I dropped out of school and needed a car, he took my ass right to a dealership and taught me how to get a loan and get one. But yeah, he rebuilt every car. My Malibu that I drove for 14 years, that was a salvage. He rebuilt that one for me. It only had 800 miles on it when he gave it to me.
Dash (he/him) (:So you.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, my dad had a vehicle thing because he had to drive so far to get to work on the railroad. Like the railroad wasn't in Jellicoe. He had to drive over to Knoxville or further. He had to go down to Bristol to get on a train. And so he needed something that had good gas mileage. And so he'd just get something, wear it out and then give it to me. And so I had a couple of Geo metros that way, but oddly good in the winter because they were so light and they were, I had the manual transmission.
Beck (:Right.
Yeah.
Beck (:One time I was trying to turn into the holler. I was like going from like the main highway that leads it to the holler. I was turning from the highway into big run and it was snowing and I was in my Geo Metro and my car skidded kind of sideways. So I opened my door and tried to push it. And when I did, I kind of fell under my car and I almost ran myself over with a Geo Metro.
That thing, it was a four door, but it had some little quirks. Like you'd go to press the, I don't know if you remember, but the buttons for like the windshield wipers, they would fly across the car. Yeah. Or the, headlight were like cross-eyed. Like they would, one of them would go up and down. But if you use it, I learned this, if you used either a lipstick case or a pack of empty, an empty cigarette pack rolled up.
Dash (he/him) (:and they would fly off. You push one and the other one goes flying.
Mm-hmm.
Beck (:and you stuck it under the headlight, it would stay up pretty much where it was supposed to be. So I forever had a cigarette pack hanging out of the front of my car. All kinds of things that happened with that car.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I don't... The first one I had, that 1991, it was a tank. I hit a deer with it, and it... There was just one little, like, scallop dent in the side of where the headlight was, and that was it.
Beck (:Wow.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I was like that car actually it was still running. I was delivering pizzas while I was faculty at at my last university and I saw that car. It had 350,000 miles on it when I sold it for $500.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Wow. Yeah. My Malibu ended up, I got it with 800 miles, I sold it with 200,000 on it. That's why we went with a Chevy again because it lasted that long and it was a salvage, you know what I mean? And cars like that can last you a long time if you take care of them. If you do the oil changes and the tire rotation and get the recommended maintenance and all that kind of stuff, they can last you a good long time. Knock on wood.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Did y'all get out of school whenever it snowed?
Beck (:It really depended how much snow we got. If it was just a dusting, usually not. If it was more than a dusting, usually so because the buses had to run up the hollers.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, you get up at like 4 a.m. And be watching that scroll at the bottom of the TV see if your school was on it
Beck (:and watching the tits. Yep. Yep. Yep. And I went to Valley so I was all the way at the end.
Dash (he/him) (:we, we kinda, I mean, we, did and we didn't, I mean, it was no matter what, there was some kids that weren't going to come to school and it was almost like they didn't care. But there was, did anybody have like, is there that one winner that all the old folks still talked about when you were growing up? That was ours too. Was it March? Ours was March. And so think.
Beck (:1993.
April. Ours was April of 93.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. It was probably, probably pretty close by, but yeah, it was, it was March of 93. The snow was, it started snowing one day and never quit for days. And that was the first time that I've ever seen anything like that. They, canceled school during, in the middle of the day and sent us home. And it was still kind of sunshiny. And so the kids, were all like, what's going on? And they're like, get on your bus, get on your bus. got to get home.
Beck (:No, it was March. You're right. was March of 93. Yeah. Yep.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:And then the snow started and it was the weirdest snow because it was like, I mean, it wasn't hot outside, but March in Southeast Tennessee is pretty warm by then. So it had been, you know, 50, 60 degrees and it starts hammering down snow and it wasn't sticking to the ground or anything. And so I just remembered like that being my first introduction to how weird weather can be. And I stayed the night at my friend's.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:my friend's house, the only friend I had when I was in school, and I got stuck there for a week.
Beck (:When I lived in West Virginia, I lived with my best friend for a while up the side of this hill. It's one of the largest hills in Huntington, West Virginia. It's like one of the tallest. So it was called Sky Oak Drive, right? It was way up there. And I lived with my best friend and we had an ice storm happen and I had to go to work and there was no way I could get up that hill because I was driving my Hyundai with the manual transmission. I probably would have had the best effort getting up there, but I wasn't going to try to go over that hill and crash.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:So I ended up at my girlfriend's house at the time. That's when I got my phone number. I've had my phone number since that since it was like 2002, 2003. I've had the same phone number. got it because of the snowstorm. I didn't know whether we would be having work or not because you know it was still the same area and if I couldn't drive some of the schools senior pictures and stuff sometimes got canceled because of the weather.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:But when I was adjuncting in Portsmouth last year, I was teaching English down there at Shawnee State. One of the students emailed me, they couldn't come to class for two days because of the flooding. They had a creek that crossed their road and because it was so swollen, they couldn't actually get across it. it's something people are... Yeah, yeah. It's something people deal with all the time down there.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, Eastern Kentucky was pretty much gone from that.
Mm-hmm. I notice out here it's I'm in I'm in Minnesota, right? And you know, Minnesota is beastly the winners are beastly like they're fucking cold, but the snow ain't Like yeah, it's deep, you know it get No, I don't think that's a thing. That's a thing where we're from because of the the like Just the way the atmosphere is there but here humidity doesn't isn't as important a factor as it is down there
Beck (:Right? It gets too cold to snow, I think.
Dash (he/him) (:And so like it can, it can snow at any fucking temperature. was negative 18 snowing up a storm. but it's just, it's just snow. I don't know if that makes sense. It, doesn't like.
you either can or can get through it, right? It can't sneak up on you. You can't be confused about what it's like outside. And so I'm trying to explain to these folks why ice is worse than snow, why ice is a killer. Because you can't always see it. It will take a tree down on top of you, and you won't see it coming.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:That storm is why my dad had a generator installed in the house. If the electricity went out one time, for even a minute, the generator would kick in. My mom said she was never gonna be cold again. And after that snowstorm, she started buying quilts on eBay and made him put the generator on the house. So.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, and we lived, where we lived, it was all conifers because wherever there's mining, take out the old growth forest and they replace it with like pine and stuff like that. Well, pine is a very moist tree and when it freezes, it explodes. And so you'd be walking along and not know it and there's a fucking bomb next to you. And have you ever been near a tree when it's gone, like when it's exploded?
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:wow.
Beck (:No.
Dash (he/him) (:When they call it poppin or like just pines poppin and you can find videos of it and stuff on YouTube. But yeah, it like it'll freeze on the outside. And so it's encased and then the, the, what's it called? Resin sap and stuff like on the inside. It will also freeze until the tree just flies apart. It's crazy. And then they, it falls down and he takes out whatever's below it.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:I mean, I've known people who were killed by trees that just came down because of ice.
Beck (:The property I grew up on had a lot of trees. They were mostly big black walnut trees. And there was a lot of old growth up there.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, old growth is going to stand up better to an ice storm than the...
Beck (:Yeah. The problem, like every time it rained, my mom's phone would go out. You know? Yeah, for real. For real. My cell phone didn't work up on that hill until like 10 years ago. I had a beeper in high school and it wasn't working. It didn't matter if I had it or not because I couldn't get the signal up on the hill. Most useless beepers, country kids, I guess.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Better hope nothing happened. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:I knew people who had beepers too, but I never did.
Beck (:And I didn't need them at all. Like I was not a drug dealer in any manner. And it was just because we had no cell phones or whatever. And was an easy way to get in hold of people.
Dash (he/him) (:We would just, yeah. The holler that my mom grew up in, Woodbine holler, had one of those party lines. it was, yeah. And so like that was weird. Like they still had it when I was born. And it would be like, they gotta check if somebody else is on it or whatever. They just didn't really, I guess, need the phone for as much.
Beck (:My mom, same with my mom, burns hollow.
Beck (:I can't imagine just having everybody in the neighborhood able to pick up and hear what you were saying. It's wild.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:The other thing though about like that winter in particular, 93, was the snow stuck around for so long. when it's, so we had built, I had friends who, part of the way like you deal with having kids in like places like where I'm from is you kind of crowdsource your childcare. And so all the other people that have kids around the same age, you just take turns having all of them.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:And so like there was these one kids that we hung out with who had a farm and they was, you know, cows and pigs and, quite a few other things. And one of the cow pasture was on an extreme grade. And so we built like a loose ramp basically during this storm. And my mom at the time worked at the vending center at the welcome station there at Jellicoe.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Dash (he/him) (:And they had taken the front of a vending machine, you know, like that vinyl piece that goes in the front that has like Coca-Cola on it or whatever. They had taken that out. It was the slickest shit I ever felt. And we drilled holes in it and pulled it up like it was. And like we would get all, as many of we could of us in there and go down this hill. it like, every time we went, it got slicker. And finally we were just shooting across the
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:hahahahah
Beck (:wow.
Dash (he/him) (:It was the dumbest dumbest shit
Beck (:That is great. Yeah, I haven't been sledding in a long time. I went, I remember my freshman year of high school, my friend Jonas and I, I'll talk about Jonas a lot. He was a big part of my childhood. But we, I was in a phase where I had a crush on him, right? He was so gay. He was so, so, so gay, so young. And my mom was like, Becky.
But we went sledding and we were like best friends and that's what the attraction was that we were both gay and he was my best friend, you know? But we went sledding and I remember him singing Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You, too, It was up this giant hill. was one of my cousins, my dad's cousins. It was a lot of fun.
Dash (he/him) (:you
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, we had a tractor tire tubes that when you blow those up, we could fit like all 15 of the kids on them at once. Yeah. So that was, there's a video actually, somebody like borrowed a video camera and coming was like shooting video of us doing all this dumb shit. like, it had high potential for like last known photo, you know, like this could have been somebody's last day.
Beck (:wow.
Beck (:Hahaha!
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:The other thing about winter is like nobody ever is prepared for it. Like it comes every year and every year you're like, that's cold outside and nobody's got a fucking coat. Nobody's got boots. Nobody's got gloves. No. And so.
Beck (:Yeah.
Nobody's propane tank is filled.
dfather's name and he died in: Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:So you would have to pay at a dollar sixty nine a gallon or whatever it was so it plus it serves seventy five dollar service fee So it would be well over six hundred dollars every time you needed gas which would be about every other month Yeah It was wild it was expensive
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Damn. Yeah.
Yeah, we would put, it was kerosene heaters for us. So, cause we lived in the trailers. And so, I would, we would get up in the morning and mom would turn the kerosene heater on. We would wait until we heard the, you know, that sound of it burning. And then we would go and all of us take all our clothes and we would sit in front of it and be putting our clothes on. Cause we were so fucking cold.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yep.
Beck (:Yeah. My sister would keep a kerosene heater in our bedroom and God, I would sweat. She liked it so hot when she slept there. I think that's one of the reasons to this day I can't sleep without a fan in a cool room because she put me through torture sleeping in that hot ass room. It was insulated. They had put shag carpet on the walls as decoration. So it was super insulated in there. It was ridiculous. Yeah. But no, the propane was in the trailer. They had hooked up the trailer to have propane gas.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:my lord.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that's a thing you can do. It's just nobody did it for where we lived. actually, I don't recall seeing a lot of propane down in Jellicoe, even though that was one of the things mined there. It was like nobody had, some people did have coal burning stoves, but it's not like we could have the coal. you know, like you mine it, you give it over to whoever it is is going to sell it to somebody. And you've to figure it. Most people like my papa had a wood burning stove and he was a fucking coal miner.
Beck (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:I love the smell of that wood burning stove though, especially in the wintertime. Like the smells associated with winter in like my childhood home. it's like, I love those. I'm never going to experience anything like that again. There will never be anything that comes close to the smell of winter. Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah. Yep.
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:Doesn't that break your heart that you didn't even appreciate it back then?
Dash (he/him) (:I feel like, I mean, I do recall enjoying it, especially because each place had its own smell, its own like sense profile. but I don't think I, I certainly didn't have a concept that one day I would have to miss it. That, and that it would be tied up with the other things that I miss. You know, like the smell of, of Christmas was also the smell of granny and papaw. my mom's people, they die pretty young. especially.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:the men, like all of my uncles are dead and have been for decades. like they died, my grandparents on her side died when I was pretty young. And so, and I just remember like the, this realization that year that I wouldn't have Christmas there. Cause Christmas there was always just a delight. Cause that's the only side I had cousins on. And cousins, know, like cousins are like siblings.
Beck (:Right.
Beck (:have 41 first cousins.
Dash (he/him) (:I was trying to count mine up on the way home.
Beck (:So there's 44 of us total if you include the three of us, my brother and sister and me. Yeah, there were 44 grandkids between my two grandparents, or my two sets of grandparents.
Dash (he/him) (:My mom had six siblings and they all but one had kids, but my dad's brother didn't have any kids.
Beck (:Besides two cousins that I have that are developmentally delayed, there was Billy who passed away and my cousin Ashley. I am the only other of those 41 that has not had children. Literally all of my other cousins have had kids at this point. So yeah, I'm definitely the family gay for sure.
Dash (he/him) (:So they're all heteros.
Yeah, I swear to God I don't know about that though because I feel like it's always like there's one that's just the one that comes out.
Beck (:Well, my cousin, my cousin, I won't say her name, but my cousin, my first cousin, her son is into theater and blah, blah, blah. And he is definitely gay. He is definitely queer. Yeah. So it runs in the family. And then there was another cousin on the Reisner side that my dad, he was like, did you ever meet this person? I was like, I actually did. She was the girlfriend of my friend's mom. It was a very random way. They came to bingo, which is how I met them. They were Debbie and Debbie.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. He's creative.
feeling.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:had an aunt Pat that I am pretty sure, cause she was not my aunt. And she rocks that like softball dyke mullet, know, like that, that Mississippi waterfall. And she hung around my mom an awful lot. So you went to, you went to school with gay boys, but did you know any lesbians or bi girls? Okay. So there was.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah.
Yup.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Beck (:Nope, not a one. It came out later that there were a couple of people that were quote unquote bi, but all of them ended up in hetero-facing marriages. So do with that what you will. Yeah, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's pretty normal where I'm from too. Well, I like, cause you know, we was talking about dating earlier. I actually did date quite a lot. I had a lot of queer relationships before I graduated high school. And thinking back on that, like that's kind of cool and unusual considering how often being queer where I'm from was hell on earth. Like there were times when I really did get to have like experiences.
Beck (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:lot of car sex, lot of like sex in the woods.
Beck (:That stuff happened to me when I started when I moved to West Virginia. That's when my romantic life happened. I just didn't do a lot of that when I was very young. Yeah, lucky.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, and like I said, too, my school was full of lesbians. But I also like, just wasn't that lesbians kind of intimidated me or there was something about them that I wasn't that interested in because it was like, love the bi girls and the straight girls. I was this earlier this morning, I was thinking about like, like for me, especially before like really coming to terms with not being a woman, dating a lesbian, it really does place you in a position of being a woman.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:and so Dayton, the straight girls and the by girls, it's like straight girls will treat you like a man. when like, don't know if, you know, I updated lots of straight girls when I was a woman too, like straight girls, fuck, other women, like it's messy out there folks. don't, it's not all clear cut. but like the experience of Dayton girls who, who were not, who didn't identify as lesbian only as only attracted to other women just felt a little.
more neutral to me in terms of like gender roles. Yeah, I just thought about it this morning. Because I mean, but the girl who broke my heart though, that was that was a straight girl fucking ripped it out and shat on it.
Beck (:That's really interesting.
Beck (:Yeah, I had a rule that I wouldn't date bi girls or straight girls in any way and Shanna was a certified straight girl when I met her up until the... Yeah, it sure will. It worked out for me though, you know, it's been, we've been together for 21 years, so.
Dash (he/him) (:Alright, it'll come get you.
Yeah, well I knew all kinds of lesbians too and they would say shit like that like, never dated a bi girl, they'll leave you for a man. And it's like, anybody could leave you for a man, what are you talking about?
Beck (:Yeah.
It's just so scary because you're afraid that they're going to be able to do what you can't do. You know, that you're...
Dash (he/him) (:be straight that they're gonna have that they're gonna be able to access that hetero privilege.
Beck (:Yeah, exactly. And that you're never going to live up to the kind of partner that a man could be because they could have all of those natural, quote unquote, natural things.
Dash (he/him) (:And, that's, but that's your problem though. That's you thinking you're inferior to a man. She didn't say that. Cause I remember those moments and I was like, something about this ain't right. And I can't put my finger on it, but I would parrot it too. I've definitely said messy shit about, you know, identities, like being in gay spaces. When I first went to college, the kids would, Gen Z would faint, you know, just the ways that we talked about.
Beck (:Right, right, you're exactly right, you're exactly right.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:roles and gender, like gender and sexuality were just like, had to be statically aligned to one another. And the idea that you could be a trans gay man or something like that, it just was like, what are you talking about? You only, our gender only has anything to do with who we're dating. And so they...
Beck (:Right?
right? That's something that I really stress when I teach women's studies is the difference between gender identity and sexual attraction because I think so many people assume that they are one and the same and they absolutely are not. They are two very distinctly different aspects of sexuality.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, and I think we don't talk about like as a culture, this had nothing to do with winter, which is fine. we don't talk about the fact that gender is encoded into everything we do. Like it's a religion to us. Like the fact that we greet, like the standard greeting, it's normal to greet a group of people, ladies and gentlemen, like you are greeting them folks genitals first. What are you doing? How did that become the way we talk about people?
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:Just asking someone what kind of baby they're having. Are you a boy or a girl? Why do you care what kind of genitals that baby is going to have?
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it's too weird. And I just remember, I think I remember like, just being super sensitive to that, but I did still like, I would have crushes on the gay girls too and still do. I mean, I think I just like everybody though. And things get weird when you like, when your own gender is fucked up in your head and you're just like, that person's pretty. And it, I'm not gonna, I'm not, it's the opposite of simplifying things. It actually makes it messier.
Beck (:I bet.
Dash (he/him) (:But yeah, I put a lot of miles on my frail teenage heart before I graduated high school.
Beck (:I did not. I was secretly kind of like had a crush on a girl who was my best friend, but I would never have acted on that in any way. We're still friends to this day.
Dash (he/him) (:For me, it was all about being able to be masculine. And so if that's what the lesbian, if lesbians got to be masculine, I was gonna hang out with the lesbians. I went to college and cut my hair off if it was the best I've ever felt.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, I did
same.
Yep. Yep. I remember the day that I did that. remember cutting it off at a little shop uptown in Oxford. I was like, let's do it. My mom was like, no, you didn't. And I got there and she liked it. But I've had short hair since I was probably 19. I've not grown it out a single time. I have no interest.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah.
Mm-hmm, me too. grew it, I actually went, I went as a girl for Vanessa's wedding, for my sister's wedding. I was a bridesmaid and so I grew my hair out for that. And I kept it for a while but my hair was so damn thick when I was a girl. When you take testosterone it thins it out so it's easier to deal with. Like it's so much easier for guys to have long hair than it is for girls, because it's thinner.
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yeah, I bet.
Dash (he/him) (:And she told me, she was like, you don't have to do that. She was like, and I was like, I am not starting to fight at your wedding. Cause she was like, you can wear a suit if you want to. And I was like, I don't give a fuck. This is one day and it ain't nothing to do with me.
It's, you know, it was not important to me.
Beck (:I get that.
Dash (he/him) (:I don't know. I think for me, my... for, like, gender, of course it's tied up in how people view you, but that's always a close second to how I view myself. And so it didn't really start to fuck me up to stay in the closet until,
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:I had to go into professional environments. And I was beginning to go into places where the person I was was going to be the person I was forever. It was really difficult to change something like your name and your gender and stuff like that.
Beck (:Right? I bet. That's a...and people don't think about how difficult that is. They're like, yeah, they did it so they could win sports. I assure you, there's not a trans person out there who's going through all of those trials simply to win a ball game, you know?
Dash (he/him) (:I had at a university that I worked at in late 2018s, we had the first NC2A Division I trans woman athlete. And so we had to go through all of those, like myself, her coach.
We had to get with the NC2A, like committee on like title nine and literally write the, the bylaws on trans people in sports. And, and they were rigorous. They were, were people acting like it was super easy back then. Those laws we wrote were still pretty strict because she, you can't simply like say I'm a woman and compete against other women. She had to do hormone replacement therapy for at least 12 months. She had to get her.
estradiol count or, well, that wasn't as important, but her testosterone count, how to be down, in what would be considered the normal range for a cisgender woman. which destroyed her athletic ability, right? Imagine if you had, if all of your athletic training was with a particular body and that body radically changes, she, by the time she got to competition, she got fucking blown out of the water. She lost, but she didn't care.
Beck (:Right.
Dash (he/him) (:She was like, I got to swim and I got to swim as myself. Yeah. And then it wasn't even three years later, Leo.
Beck (:That's amazing.
Beck (:Thomas.
Dash (he/him) (:Thomas comes along and she has actually trained as herself and has become a top tier athlete through training, not because she was trans. And then they scrapped the ones we wrote and changed it now. So it's impossible for any trans person to compete in the collegiate level.
Beck (:Right?
Beck (:That's crazy sad.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, it's three years of HRT now. That leaves no eligibility.
Beck (:Wow.
Right. Unless you start in high school.
Dash (he/him) (:which is, and then they made that illegal.
Beck (:Right?
Dash (he/him) (:Cause kids can't, you know, whatever. It's ain't a political podcast. In a way it kind of is, but, um, well, I don't know. Any final thoughts on the winner? The blizzard of 93 is a fixed point in time. Uh, for me, Oh, I bet that was for me. Winter was smells and rubbing Vaseline on my face so that I don't get chill blains.
Beck (:Right, right, right, right.
Beck (:That's also when my niece was born.
Dash (he/him) (:and putting on 10 layers of what you call them sweatpants.
Beck (:Mine is probably always being underdressed for the weather. We never had money to buy coats and things like that. So I'd wear jackets and heavy sweaters and hoodies and that kind of thing. Yep. And I'm with you on the smells for sure. The smell of propane, because there's nothing like the smell of propane through the house. Plus we had a fireplace and my grandparents had the wood burning stove. So we had both of those. The smell of coffee for sure.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Like three or four of them at a time, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:because they wouldn't have any windows open or anything like that. We were a coffee drinking household. I don't know how I... I don't drink coffee to this day. It's too bitter for me. So is... Yeah. Now I've tried it many different ways. It just feels like somebody's punching me in the nose every time I take a drink of it. I just cannot. I don't like pickles either. I don't like very... I don't like things that get you in the jaw, you know, or punch you in the face. It's just... I don't know.
Dash (he/him) (:Hell yeah. I'm fucking addicted. My first cup of coffee, I was probably three or four.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:But like I said, that was probably a lot of the fast food stuff that I ate when I was a kid. I was never exposed to anything like that. even pickles always had my cheeseburgers plain.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, this feels like a good time for a word from our sponsor. This week's episode is kind of on theme. This week's episode is sponsored by Plastic Grocery Bag, full of other plastic bags under the sink.
For three quarters of a century, plastic grocery bag full of other plastic bags has been a trusted Appalachian household staple. Everyone knows coming home from the monthly grocery run with 50 plastic bags can be overwhelming. The claustrophobia of them piling higher and higher in the corners of your trailer's tiny kitchenette, the racket of the kids splashing around in them, the other worldly sight.
of them suspended in the meager breeze from the open window. But you can't just throw them out. Heavens, what if you shuck corn or shell runner beans and have to carry the mess to the slop and you shirt him?
What if you get caught in the rain at the hairdresser's and don't have one stuffed in your pocketbook? What if it snows and you don't have any to wrap around the kids' feet inside their tennis shoes before they go out to play? You were raised better than to throw out useful items. Out of this great need, plastic grocery bag full of other plastic bags was born.
Beck (:Ha
Dash (he/him) (:The innovation opened doors to diversifying the kinds of plastic bags you could hoard, including bread bags, used Ziploc bags, and produce bags. Even the hair nets and stockings with runs Mommy swears she's going to make that quilt with. Plastic grocery bag full of other plastic bags under the sink is a proud sponsor of Queernecks Podcast. Well, how about that? That's kind of them.
Beck (:You
Beck (:That was great. That was great.
Dash (he/him) (:Why did we all have one? We had one in like the kitchen and every bathroom. Me too. We got one at work now because I was like a red.
Beck (:I have one now!
Beck (:Though the ones now, they're not the same kind of grocery bags, so they're not quite as useful. They don't fit in your garbage can quite as easily in your bathroom. The Kroger for pickup, because that's the only way we do grocery shopping is through Kroger Pickup. They have these larger bags. They're probably twice the size of a regular plastic bag. They look like a tote bag, really. They're wider and kind of V-shaped.
Dash (he/him) (:Hmm.
Beck (:I've got whole bundle of those, so should you be in the market for a giant plastic bag, I've got about 50 of them.
Dash (he/him) (:There's some bullshit out there now in terms of the plastic bag offerings. Just miss me with it, you know?
Beck (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Beck (:But you do get to collect fun tote bags in sarcasm.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm. Yeah. My mom, actually, she decided to upscale our plastic bag full of plastic bags, and she embroidered a, like a cooler. She quilted it, but it was like she made it herself. She used to do that. She made her clothes too, but it would never be like the main clothes that you would see on anybody else, because it was just like she would kind of eyeball it.
Beck (:oooo
Beck (:Suck.
Dash (he/him) (:but yeah, she created this like tube, this quilted tube that we would shove them inside.
Beck (:Yep. My brother had one made for me. There was a lady at Bingo that would make aprons for the tip sellers and stuff, and she made other little things. And he bought me one that had the American flag on it. Like, what the hell am I going to do with an American flag bag holder? But I kept that thing for a long time. It was handy.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah. Yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Beck (01:01:25.216)
It all started in November of: Dash (he/him) (:you
Beck (:Two young couples reported a terrifying sight, a man-sized creature with glowing red eyes and giant white wings, chasing their car near the abandoned World War II munitions factory known as the TNT area. The local newspaper called it a man-sized bird...creature...something. And just like that, the legend of Mothman was born. Over the next year, dozens of sightings poured in. Some described a bird, others swore it was more human than animal.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:and some claimed glowing red eyes. Others blamed it for things like buzzing television sets or even missing pets. Explanations ranged from out of the place sandhill cranes to snowy owls and even a few pranksters with helium balloons. But believers saw something more, an omen. On December 15th, 1967, tragedy struck. The Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia to Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed, killing 46 people. They were thrown into the river.
gend only grew from there. In:Today, the Mothman is more than a mystery. He's a symbol of Appalachian weirdness and wonder. Point Pleasant holds the annual Mothman Festival that draws thousands of spectators. There's a 12-foot statue downtown, which if you've ever seen it, it has what they call the shiny hiney on the behind of it. It's great. It's huge. It has glowing red eyes. It also has a dedicated museum and a pancake eating contest in the Mothman's honor. From trading cards to video games like Fallout 76, the Mothman is everywhere.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:You
Beck (:But whether you think the Mothman is a misidentified bird, a supernatural being, or something in between, one thing is for sure. His story has taken root deep in Appalachian soil. And maybe that's what makes legends like this endure. They speak to the mystery in the mountains and the power of community to turn fear into folklore.
Dash (he/him) (:Excellent. Yeah, Mothman is a super cool cryptid. A lot of cryptids from the hills, actually. I mean, maybe I'm sure that makes sense, but...
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Just this last week, I live in Northern Ohio and it's near Michigan and one of the dispensaries up here, somebody said that there was a Bigfoot sighting near Monroe, Michigan and one of the dispensaries is giving out pre-rolls, free pre-rolls if you bring proof of Bigfoot into the store. I'm half-tented to go get like a gorilla suit and make Shanna take some pictures. Shanna, pre-rolls are pre-rolls.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:Damn. If you do, please, like, report back.
Beck (:That is some dumb shit I would do.
Dash (he/him) (:man, dumb shit, I mean that's kind of the redneck way. So a lot of it is going back what we said last time, it's just making fun where there might not be some already.
Beck (:Like, do you ever get the Planet Fitness text messages saying, come join our thing? Somehow they got my phone number and I am not a Planet Fitness kind of gal. And so I reported back one time, I responded, I said, no thanks, I've decided to stay fat. And they were like, well, okay, if you change your mind, they totally didn't get the joke whatsoever.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-mm.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:If you change your mind about being fat. Somebody was like, I didn't get paid enough for this.
Beck (:hahaha
love moments like that being that person.
Dash (he/him) (:I used to work for a like, um, cold calling one of those cold call farms, the cubicles. Um, we, and so, uh, I worked, it was actually really, really gendered. So like they was, you could call for a discover card or you can call for the fraternal order police and the fraternal order police made $8, which was double minimum wage at the time. Um, and discover made minimum wage and all the girls had to do discover.
Beck (:yeah, did it too.
Dash (he/him) (:But because I could read extremely fluently, they gave us this test and it had, you know, ACT words on it basically. And I was like, okay, yeah, I can read this. They put me on FOP even though I was a girl. But I hated it. God, I only did it for like a week and I only did it because David worked there. yeah, people would say all kind of shit, I call them. So one guy, said,
I'd said his name or something like that. He said, Nope, I'm just here to rob the place. It's like, okay. And sometimes people would pretend to be having sex. you, pick up the phone and you'd start talking. They'd say, I like, I hope that that actually is your wife and you just not getting some random person in on it.
Beck (:Hehehehehe
Beck (:The company that I did cold calling for was MCI Worldcom, selling long distance to age myself here.
Dash (he/him) (:I watched the documentary about them and like the they're this what a shit show they were recently it's on YouTube it's pretty cool
Beck (:Yeah, yeah. I had to do one of those tests where I read a little script and they were like, yep, you're hired. It was like right in the middle of the room and it was like one big room and they had computers lining every bit of it all the way around. Nothing in the middle except for like a couple of like little cubicles that were the managers and stuff. But all the way around and everybody was seated next to each other.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Beck (:I got in trouble. I knew it was not for me because I got in trouble for being on a call way too long because you were supposed to be personal with them and try to make a friend because it's easier to make a sale and I'm a talker, right? So yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm-hmm.
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, I can't imagine somebody trying to tell you not to talk, not to spin a yarn on the phone.
Beck (:Yeah, and I mean, I was 16 and you know, even more eager. So, yeah, I ended up I remember I talked to some lady she was like the governor's niece or something in South Carolina, something random like that. And we talked for like an hour. And they were like, like clicking on the clipboard be like, are you going to get off the call? And I would just be like, yeah.
Dash (he/him) (:You
Dash (he/him) (:Sorry, she's having a rough time.
Beck (:When I worked at Amazon, I actually made a friend with a lady. Her email address was hilarious and I told her it was funny and we just really hit it off on the phone because I worked for Amazon.com's customer service for four years. And this lady called in and I helped her with her problem and she was like, you know what? You should email me one of these days, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay. So I let it percolate for a couple of weeks and I finally emailed her and we became friends. She ended up being a crazy shit show of a lady, surprisingly.
Dash (he/him) (:Mm.
Dash (he/him) (:and
Beck (:She lived in Columbus and they drove by my house in Cincinnati.
Yeah. So, don't make friends that way, friends. I don't know! I-I- if it's weird and can happen, it will absolutely happen to me.
Dash (he/him) (:No thank you. Why do you get all the stalkers?
if
Dash (he/him) (:Yeah, yeah, same.
Beck (:One time I wrecked my car. I was the last car in a five car pile up. Don't do that either. Zero stars. Do not recommend. And so they published the information about the wreck in one of the guy's hometowns, which was Paducah, Kentucky. And the paper for Paducah goes into the Western Regional Jail. And I started getting emails or not emails, letters, because they put my whole name, my age and my address in the newspaper. And so I started getting these letters from these guys handwritten things like,
please excuse my handwriting. I'm in the hole right now. Or, yeah, I moved. It scared me so much, I moved.
Dash (he/him) (:What the fuck?
You should have sued him.
Beck (:It was right there in the back. I figure it was a Freedom of Information thing. Plus, I was like 19, 20. I didn't know.
Dash (he/him) (:What does this add to the story though? I don't know. Well, maybe it's time for us to, when you was wanting to get off the phone with somebody, did you ever go, well, let me let you go? It's great, right? You're like, when you ready?
Beck (:Yeah.
Beck (:Yep.
Dash (he/him) (:Well, this has been another bizarre and interesting episode of Queernecks.
Beck (:Stay with us, we will get a format going eventually.
Dash (he/him) (:We may, and it might not matter. That's not why you're here anyway. You're here because we've lived weird lives and we talk about them and we are glad that you're here. Yeah. but we will continue to teach you, more things about where we're from. follow us, on wherever it was I said we are threads and Instagram.
Beck (:Yes, we are.
Beck (:What's the hashtag they're supposed to use?
Dash (he/him) (:hashtag yeehaw fuck the law.
Beck (:Yeehaw! Fuck the law!
Dash (he/him) (:And subscribe please so that we can get some more listeners. All right, say hi to your mom and them.
Beck (:Yes.
Beck (:Bye!
