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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
East Texas Literary Journeys, Pt. 1
Award-winning author and storyteller Joe Lansdale -- screenwriter (Bubba Ho-Tep) and novelist (Hap and Leonard series), discusses his East Texas roots and eclectic influences in our latest episode. Joe discuss growing up, and his life and literary influences. This episode offers a rich tapestry of narratives that are both personal and universal. Tune in to hear Joe reflect the art of storytelling, and how his Texas roots have helped shape Joe's distinctive voice in the literary world.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the past.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Sosbe and I'm Gene Preuss, and this is Talking Texas History. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Preuss, I'm Scott Soske. Gene, we have a key guest today. You know I was thinking before we started this that who is the most famous person we've ever interviewed before. It's not either one of us, for sure. On here and now I think we're going to call my fellow Nacogdoches resident, Joe, and I's fellow Nacogdoches resident, Brad Mullen, telling Brad, you're no longer the most famous person that's been on Talking Texas History, Because today we have noted author, screenplay artist and martial arts instructor, Joe Lansdale, who lives here in Nacogdoches. Joe, how are you?
Speaker 3:I am doing good. I hope you guys are doing well too. We're fine.
Speaker 2:Well, Joe, you are a real polymath, and by that I don't mean that you can do algebra in your head.
Speaker 3:No I cannot.
Speaker 2:I mean that you really do have a tremendous range of traits that you can do and talents that you do. And I've actually heard of your self-defense school that you started a couple of years ago, but I didn't put it together until Scott said you know why don't we talk to Joe Lonsdale? Because I'm going to tell you this, I've known about you for about 25 years now.
Speaker 2:When I met my wife when we we were dating. One of the things she said is you have to watch this movie. She goes it's the best, it's my favorite movie in the whole wide world. And I said what is it? She goes it's called bubba hotep. And I was like, well, what in the world is that about? And she said, well, you got to watch it. And so we did. And I'm going to say she's very disappointed. She couldn't be with us this morning, but she's going to listen to this as soon as we finish recording.
Speaker 3:Good good Well, apparently.
Speaker 2:I think that's a good measurement for your future. Success as a marriage is if they like Bubba Hotep. I think you're right. It seems to have worked so far, so let's get a. Tell everybody else a little bit about you and where you're from, where you grew up and things like that.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I'm an East Texan. I was born in Gladewater, texas, and then I moved to Mount Enterprise, for I guess I was probably about five when we moved there and left when I was around 11, close to 12, moved back to Gladewater and I graduated at Gladewater. I took a year at Tyler Junior College where I caused a big problem with the hair case Lansdale et al versus TJC. And then I went to University of Texas for about a semester and a half and dropped out and after that I took a few courses. I moved to Berkeley for a little while but I took a few courses in SFA when I moved back at SFA, when I moved back and I never finished the degree but I was writing all during this time and one day I looked up and said you know, I don't want to finish the degree. I'm, I'm doing it now. You know I don't need to finish it. You know I kind of regret that I didn't.
Speaker 3:I would like to have had the degree because I love university, love college, I love the whole educational thing. When I was at TJC last night just walking through the halls is, you know, it's nice, I like it. And same way when I was at SFA and later taught writing classes there. But you know I was already doing it, so I said I'm going to go for it. So that's kind of a nutshell background. I mean I can certainly tell you more if you need more. But that gives you the kind of born here. Here I am.
Speaker 1:That's an East Texas, an East Texas son, for sure. Well, this is kind of related to that. An East Texas, an East Texas son, for sure, well, this is kind of related to that. So I guess you know I've talked, gene and I, we are authors. I don't think I want to call ourselves writers because I don't know how creative we are in things we write, being too academic. But I've talked to some and there's always I always say ask them did you always want to be a writer, or is this something that's kind of developed because it was what your interest? And then also, what are your biggest influence? Who are your biggest influences on how you write and what you write?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think I can. I don't know what I was thinking about in the womb, but by the time I discovered comic books and discovered pencils, I wanted to write and draw and I wanted to write comic books. Now I wasn't thinking this is my career. I was four years old. But what I was thinking is I want to tell stories and something connected with me, my father. We were a pretty poor bunch and my father was a great storyteller, and so I had that going too. And I remember when I was a kid we lived in a house that faced a drive in, looked over a honky tonk. We were on a hill, looked over a honky tonk at a drive in theater, and I remember her we sat in chairs looking out the window and and her telling me what all the cartoon characters were saying. And then, years later, when I saw those cartoons.
Speaker 3:I said my mom was a dad burn liar. That's kind of that storytelling tradition I had. You know, my grandmother was born in the 1880s and as a child she saw one of Buffalo bills while West show, wow. And yeah, she came to Texas at a covered wagon, all that stuff. So she told me a lot of great stories. And then, you know, karen's grandfather came to Texas in the covered wagon thing too. He died when they were 100 years old, and my grandmother too. She lived nearly to 100. And both of them had those experiences which we shared, and her grandfather had been a Pinkerton. So, and possibly in Chicago, he was probably a Pinkerton about the same time Hammett was, but I don't think they crossed paths or were in the same place, but they were both doing Pinkerton work, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, what about those? I mean, if somebody said oh, I'm sorry, let me finish your question.
Speaker 3:I realize I just those are the things that got me going. But the influences were really comic books first. Comic books are the most important thing that I ever discovered because they made me want to tell stories. They also blended concepts and ideas. They might have a science fictional Western blend or a mystery science fiction blend or all these things, and so I think that that locked in. And I remember Roy Rogers they would be riding the horse and there'd be airplanes and there would be stop and use the telephone and Gene Autry, roy Rogers or Gene Autry. So those were already multiverse stories, you know, because they in some ways were almost contemporary but not quite, and a lot of people don't realize that a lot of those things like the phone and all that, those actually were before the 20th century and into the early 20th century, which is kind of when those stories seem to take place. So those were influences.
Speaker 3:And when I was a kid I used to watch the old movies that they were putting on and Hopalong Cassidy, and then later there was a TV show Hopalong Cassidy, lone Ranger, stuff that all the kids Tarzan primarily. But then I discovered classic illustrated comics and I started going. Well, wait a minute, what? What's the tale of two cities? And so I would go to the bookmobile, which is what we had in Mount Enterprise, and I would get a tale of two cities if it were there and whatever was there. And my mom gave me a big volume of edgar allen pole. And I mean, I was a young child, I mean I will say this, I was a precocious little guy, so I was reading all of that. Then I discovered edgar rice burroughs and I not only wanted to be a writer, I had to be one after that, because that's catnip for 11 or 12 in that era, I guess.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that's right and he's still my sentimental favorite writer. Is that right? Yeah, I guess probably Twain or Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite novel, favorite film. But she only wrote one book and one later. It was kind of the first book done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the whole thing. When they found that a book, you know what, after she died, and yeah, safety deposit, well, what it was, it was not a new book.
Speaker 3:It was the first draft kind of of.
Speaker 1:Kind of of uh, to kill a mockingbird and uh, atticus is not a perfect guy in that it's a much more realistic now I started to say that would be something that would I would, I think would be, you know, because Atticus is kind of this almost Christ-like figure in that.
Speaker 3:And I think she made the right choice, even though, you know, I think she meant to make him a kind of a superhero not quite that, but something like that because he was wise and he was Solomon in that book, but in the other one he was more like David.
Speaker 1:He was flawed. David's always the more interesting story.
Speaker 3:Not in this case. Not in this case, but it is. It is an interesting book. I think it's kind of underrated but I don't think it's a great piece compared to her other book, but anyway. And Richard Matheson, who wrote I am legend and many of them highlight zone episodes, tons of short stories, novels. And then there was Charles Beaumont, ray Bradbury, who I and I knew Madison and Bradbury a little bit, so that was great. I got to spend some time with them and knew them. And then I knew Robert Block, who wrote Psycho and I did. But all these people I didn't know then and they were influenced me. Frederick Brown, flannery O'Connor is my favorite short story writer. And then Hemingway I love the way he could, you know, be poetic and muscular at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's a good description.
Speaker 3:The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books, but I mean, this list could go on and on and on, but what happened is they all went into a blender. I didn't want to mix them, I wanted to blend them, which is a different concept, I think. So anyway, those are among many of the.
Speaker 1:Those are some of the most disparate influences. I've ever heard somebody say ever.
Speaker 3:A blender is exactly right. You know, when I was a kid, I found in the closet these stacks of old. I think they were life magazines and they were. They weren't ancient but they were old. You know, they were there before I was born, I think, or when I was a baby one of the two and I found the old man in the sea and one of the I think it was a life magazine, almost certain. I read it when I was a kid and I didn't like it because he didn't get the fish.
Speaker 1:When you're a kid you don't quite understand, no, but when I?
Speaker 3:reread it. I liked it a lot. It's not my favorite Hemingway by any means, but his short stories are absolutely masterful.
Speaker 1:Hemingway. He's one of those. Everybody and I like Hemingway, but I find it so terse sometimes that it's hard to read.
Speaker 3:I kind of like that. As a writer myself, I'm kind of a blend between that's not necessarily Hemingway, but that style and Fitzgerald you know.
Speaker 1:But I think Hemingway was talking about and he's told this interviewer that when he was writing a farewell to arms the last page, you know where he and Frederick and I forget the girl's name were rolling across Lake Como and leaving. He wrote, he, he wrote drafts, he wrote 87 drafts of that last drafts in it.
Speaker 3:They published that Is that right?
Speaker 1:And he said yeah, the last one he's finally decided. Well, it's adequate, and it's, of course, one of the most beautifully written pieces that you've ever read.
Speaker 3:She's, she's in the room and he walks out of the room and you know, because it's over, it's not her, it's, you know. But the and the description is all through that novel are fantastic and I always liked. I liked a couple, I liked a couple of the novels that were posthumous that a lot of people don't like, but I Islands in the Stream is my favorite Hemingway.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, it doesn't hold together altogether, but the individual novellas I guess you would call them yeah, were chapters novellas, but they were fantastic. And, uh, I, I like garden of eden because it was so unique. I've not even read that. Yeah, it's unique, I mean in that he's kind of a cross-dresser character, the character that in the book, and at the same time he's writing this uh story about africa, which is just, you know, fascinating.
Speaker 3:And the thing is I'm not interested in bullfighting, I'm not a big game hunter or a big game fisher, but when I read this stuff I say this is the real deal. You know, this is the stuff. When he got a little bit later, some of the books like Across the River Into the Trees, he kind of got across the river into the trees because, you know, there's not so much book there as it is a travel log through Italy with a guy lusting after a young, younger woman. So you know, I still I think he's, he's one of those guys people like to crap on and he's got a lot to be crapped on because he could be a real jerk you know, that's what I hear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I and another big influence on me is Raymond Chandler and James Kane. I love those guys and and they're, they've been, a big influence. But if I get to talking about influences Carson McCuller, you know it goes on and on and on.
Speaker 2:How about Robert Howard? Oh, and.
Speaker 3:Robert E Howard. Yeah, Robert E Howard had a being a Texan too. I made a connection. The first book I read of him was called Wolf's Head and it had an introduction about him being a writer, and it nailed everything that I thought about. And the main thing he said is I don't have some son of a bitch standing over me telling me what to do, or worse to that effect, you know. And I thought, yeah, that's what I want, Because I didn't have a good job.
Speaker 3:I did all these jobs where you know I worked in the Rosefields. I actually dug ditches. My mother used to say if you don't get a college education, you're going to end up digging ditches. First job digging ditches and for plumbing and stuff like that. So you know, I I did all those blue collar jobs and I wanted to have a freedom from that. And eventually, you know, by the time of 1981, I went full-time. I was 29 and that's all I've done ever since. I'd already sold before that but couldn't go full-time to then?
Speaker 2:how about william owens?
Speaker 3:I, I, he, I read one book by him. It was uh, the 30s right or the, was it about uh, this, this stubborn soil yeah, that's it. That's the only one I've read.
Speaker 2:If he did, I'm unaware of it. He wrote a book on the Titanic too, I believe. But you know, the thing about him is, and the reason I ask this, is because in that book, which I mean golly that that that book really really struck me and I mean I found myself.
Speaker 3:It did me too. I mean, I found myself it did me too. I mean I just recalled it now that you've talked about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he used East Texas as a setting and it was almost a character in the book. So, let me ask you a question about your writing. You use East Texas too. What does that mean for you and why do you use it? Is it just a good setting or is it something beyond that?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm going to jump back before I answer that. I'm going to also mention Steinbeck, who I like a lot. Okay, yeah, east Texas is a character, and I think the best work that I enjoy is frequently the locale is a personality. There are some kinds of books you can write, too, that have no, not even the characters are important at all because the book is a personality. There are some kinds of books you can write, too, that have no, not even the characters are important at all, because the book is the character, the book the style, that's the character.
Speaker 3:A lot of Ray Bradbury stuff doesn't have real characters in it, but it's a metaphor and it's stylistic, but it always has the places that he's lived or been and they stand out. And I wanted to do that, I wanted to be able to do that, and when I read Twain or Harper Lee, I thought I know those places because they're very similar to me, especially when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, very different than it is now, considerably so, and I don't just mean the technology, I mean everything in general, and I think it's in many ways for the better and other ways for the worse. I think that's true of every generation. So when I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in the woods and it wasn't uncommon, you know, you get on your bicycle in the morning and you go play and you come back in the evening I hear my mom yelling my name, you know. And so I would come in and be done, and then I would, uh, you know, do whatever you know, homework I do not doing enough of it and uh, I would uh, read or watch television, or, you know, in the back, then you didn't have television like you do now. You had three channels and when I was a kid it wasn't even on all day, it was on part of the day and it didn't go past 10 or 10, 30, you know, and then they started the night show and all that. So all of those things were factors. But at the same time I was spending a lot of time.
Speaker 3:Within the text East Texas geography, I was on the lakes, I was on the, in the river bottoms, you know, I I fished, and back then we used to hunt squirrels. We ate them. You know that it was important to us to get to get squirrels because, uh, we ate them. You know that that was, it was important to us to get to get squirrels. We you know my. I remember I went squirrel hunting when I was pretty young and I was kind of enjoying killing squirrels and my dad said, hey, come here and we're selling that log right there. He said when you like, when you start liking to see them fall, you need to sit down and have a conversation with yourself oh, wow this is for food, you know okay, and I never did that again the same.
Speaker 3:He says it's not a sport because they're not shooting back that's that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my dad tells the story of he grew up and they grew up in west texas by abilene and they were sharecroppers and they were poor. But his dad lost a job at a cotton gin one time and he said they'd always gone hunting. But he realized this time, going with his dad, it was different because his dad was being very diligent about what he shot and how much he shot and then he finally asked us it was because this is what we were going to eat that night.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was very different uh to go hunting in that yeah, my father had been born of a sharecropper family and so, uh, and you know, uh, they were dirt poor. We were poor growing up, but not like that. And then the Great Depression came along and they were even poorer, you know. And but the 50s supposedly the boom time my dad had one period where he was doing pretty good when I was real small, but most of the time it was hand to mouth, you know, and so we were. We were poor, but we didn't think of ourselves that way. Mouth, you know, and so we were. We were poor, but we didn't think of ourselves that way. We thought ourselves as broke. Because that gives you the opportunity later that you're going to succeed, you know, and he never succeeded greatly, but if you look at it from where he came from, he was quite the success. He always put the roof over our head and food on the table and he couldn't read or write Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and my mother was a great reader, you know. She read everything and she was very encouraging for me and my dad always encouraged me to be a writer. He always encouraged me to get an education. He knew how hard it had been for him and he wasn't that. Don't get above your raisin. You know they were buff, let's get above your raisin, Except for those things that they think are important.
Speaker 3:My dad said I asked one thing of you and I said, what's that your character? And I'm like, okay, okay, I get it, that's right, you know. And but his parents and everybody, they'd all been sharecroppers and he had done sharecropping and he'd had a rough life and the geography I lived in influenced me. But the geography he told me about that they lived in was even harsher, because he was born in 1909. He died in 1901, I think, and my mother in 1914, I believe. So they had stories which pretty much covered a large part of the century and my grandmother told me ghost stories and all that sort of stuff. And my grandmother told me ghost stories and all that sort of stuff. But all of those things rang especially true when you went down into the woods and you heard the stories about the goat man that was supposed to be down there at the swinging bridge, they call it, the swinging bridge.
Speaker 3:It's still an urban legend, yeah, and we used to go down to it, or the one that they said was the one. I think there actually had been more, but there was one that was noted as the swinging bridge and it was just cables and I think it still had boards that you could walk on them, but I vaguely remember that. But we would go down there to fish and hang out and there was an old graveyard that was kind of grown up in the woods and I remember going down there and they had like a recording of a dying rabbit, which is the most awful damn thing you ever heard, because they scream and I'd never heard a rabbit scream, you know. And so they played that recording and we turn out all the lights and you'd see all these eyes gathering around, just creepy as hell, you know, and it was, and then when they would turn it off and gone. You know whatever those creatures were, you know, uh, and it was, uh, and then when they would turn it off, they're gone.
Speaker 1:You know whatever those creatures were, you know they were when the lights came on, they didn't want to be around, but see that's all part of that environment, it's all part of that attitude, it's all part of that.
Speaker 3:this is mysterious, this is different, and I was on the river all the time, you know, and you would lots of water, moccasins and, uh, I never. Actually, back then alligators were rare because they had mostly been killed. Yeah, yeah they didn't migrate yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you know, I remember seeing one in the water and a dead one in the back of a pickup. Well then, we're blue collar workers all around me and that's also part of your environment. When you read Robert E Howard, all of his people really are people like iron mill workers. And even if they're Conan because there's those guys, because no matter what you write about, you're always writing about now in a way. You're always writing about your background in a way. And when I first started writing and I would send these stories to New York or you know, for trying to be published, I think I started out trying to write stories about New York and Los Angeles, which were not very successful, because I think the biggest town I'd been to by that time was Tyler and it was like 30,000 then. So they write back now and they weren't. So I started writing about my own place and I sent it in and they said I'll never forget this. I got a reject said why don't you write about someplace real?
Speaker 3:really oh he did that really, really, uh, aggravated me and I started writing. Even I doubled down on it and used to. If I went to new york when I was in my early 30s I think that's the first time I'd started going out of the state in any big way uh, they would always think I was stupid because I had an accent. Yeah, oh yeah, and I use that against them.
Speaker 1:I do too. I do the same thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, everything. Oh, this old boy. He don't know what he's doing, but I I may not have been the brightest person in the world, but I, you know I wasn't an idiot and but they assumed you were because you have an accent, as if that you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know that that kind of brings up what I'm thinking of. I said you know you're most how many I'm trying. I'm going to say it wrong. Are there 12 Happen Leonard books?
Speaker 3:There are 14, with one coming out. Oh, one's coming out next time. And I'm writing a 15th.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. Well, they're your most enduring characters. Of course, hap and Leonard live in Laborde, texas, which is obviously East Texas, but we've been talking about it. So tell me, where would we go to see Laborde? What is it? What is it in our area?
Speaker 3:It's borrowed because it's partly Nacogdoches and it's partly Tilo. If you put those two together you've got most of it. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't borrow here or there. I'm like a magpie I'll borrow whatever.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, and those are the characters Happen Leonard, I mean themselves. I always tell people that Lansdale has created two of the most unique literary characters I've ever encountered, because there's nothing out there that I know of that are like them and they're just. I mean, think about it, it's you got a guy that is on the surface. I always say, you first, you know, when you, when you first encounter a pap, oh, this is your typical East Texas white dude, you know, and he looks that way and sounds that way if you're talking about him on film. But then you find out he's much different. He's not the same guy. He protested against the Vietnam War. He even went to prison just because he didn't want to go fight in the war. And then he's friends with with with Leonard, who is an African-American guy, who's gay but then went and fought in Vietnam.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh yeah. Well, that's the thing too. These two guys. They beat the hell out of everybody all the time when they encounter, which is fine and great. So how did you come up with these guys? For one thing, did you base them on something? And I have to ask you this Is there anything autobiographical there about those? There's a lot of it's autobiographical.
Speaker 3:A lot of my work is autobiographical and not necessarily always what happened to me, what happened people around me autobiographical in that sense. But also the hap is definitely me at that era, you know, and I was a vietnam war resistor and I was. They were sending me to prison and I I didn't, whatever reason. They gave me a one Y and sent me home. It's a long story, but I mean they had me come and I was the only person that refused to join, and so they sent me to a table and they said well, are you a conscientious objector? I said no, I don't believe in this war. But a conscientious objector, I said would you? They said would you defend yourself? I said yeah. They said would you have fought in World War II? I said yeah, but this one, no. And I think you know, all these years later, 54,000 soldiers dead.
Speaker 1:For what reason?
Speaker 3:And now it's one of our biggest trade partners and people go there for vacations. So you know, if they were really looking, then you could see that this, this, this wasn't going anywhere. And I told him all that. And my brother now he was a captain, he was in Vietnam, I think three times, and he's 17 years older than me and or was he died about two weeks ago. Three weeks ago, oh really Sorry to hear that. Oh, thank you, but he and I had different views on where we close and we got along fine, but we had very different views.
Speaker 3:And so they sent me in to see the psychiatrist because they didn't know what to do with me. They sent me home first. They go home, get prepared and come back. Getting prepared for me is probably folding two pairs of underwear, it's about all. And so then I went back, got the bus back. I will tell you this, though they did give you a box lunch coming and going. Oh well, there you go. So both of my trips.
Speaker 3:And then they sent me in to see the psychiatrist. After they talked to me, I still wasn't going to do it and they said well, you can teach martial arts. And I said I would love to teach martial arts. But I said I'm against this war and it would critical for me to do that. And they said, well, we could. You're, you're officer material. Yeah, we can turn you.
Speaker 3:I said, first of all, I don't believe you, and then, second of all, even if I believed you, it's still the same thing, you know. And so I? They said, well, you know what's going to happen. I said prison 18 months. And they said, right, I said I know. And then that's when they sent me in to see the psychiatrist and I was in there 15 minutes. He gave me a, one wine. They sent me home. I remember being in just kind of a cloud all the way home, going, wow, what happened. So, unlike that, I didn't. I didn't end up having to go to prison, but I knew a few people that did and so, um, I'm sure that influenced it and Leonard was. I knew a few gay martial artists that nobody else knew was gay and they were just tough, tough people and I thought, wow, you know this is not, doesn't fit the stereotype?
Speaker 3:It sure doesn't, because it's just like everybody else you'd be. You know, heterosexual, homosexual people are varied. You have some people that seem obviously one way or the other, and then others who don't, and you, you know, you can't make that judgment, and so to me I didn't even intend to put him in there. I was writing the story Savage Season, and here's Hap out, you know, shooting skeet with this Leonard, and then Trudy shows up and then later Leonard comes back and I go who is this guy? Why am I writing about this? And I had seen and this is rare back then Now it's not, but back then I saw a black person on TV that was a Republican and that was like seeing a dodo bird, what. But of course now things have changed, but back then that was very, very rare, and so that that went into it, and I was working in the Rose Fields at that. Well, I had worked in the Rose Fields. I wasn't that time. I'd worked in the Rose Fields and I had them working in the Rose Fields. I wasn't that time. I'd worked in the Rose Fields and I had them working in the Rose Fields. I had worked in aluminum chair factories and and I had worked in mobile home factories. I was a janitor at SFA for six years maybe, and then one at medical. I was a janitor at medical center and then the high school, and then that's yeah, bob Laborde whereorde was thus the town. Laborde was my boss and a friend of mine. He died, I think, probably in his forties I can't remember now but he may be a little bit older than that but he was a young man and he, he ran a frame shop downtown at some point. He did a variety of things. The frame shop is sort of the frame shop in Colden July and I turned the main character into a framer. But OK, so you see, you, do you? And it's more complicated than that. I mean, if you really stop and think, when I wrote the Bottoms, which is my most, I guess, famous book, that was stories based on my mom and dad told me and my own experiences, even in my time, which were not that varied from the 30s a little bit more money, but all the racism, that was there, the true racism.
Speaker 3:It's bad now in some ways, but boy, back back then my God just awful, and so I use a lot of that and I've used it in other books. So I use a lot of that and I've used it in other books. But I use the 30s because I was fascinated with the Great Depression and I was fascinated with the river bottoms because I grew up in them and I was fascinated with all those old stories.
Speaker 1:So John, I'll say that this has been such a great conversation. We're going to do something that we hardly ever have done. This is going to be a two part is what this is going to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to have part one.
Speaker 1:No, you didn't. No, we wanted to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's go ahead and stop it right here, and then we'll pick back up where we came at. So thanks a lot, everybody, for listening, and we'll see you at part two coming up in just a couple of weeks. Bye-bye you.
