The Cabincast

#101 A Real Fixer Upper

March 08, 2024 Kristin Lenz and Erik Torgeson Episode 101
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers
Speaker 1:

Hello, Hi Eric.

Speaker 2:

All right.

Speaker 1:

I have a question for you and Good thing I'm sitting down. Yeah, I don't just not a hard question, but are you guys into classic cars at all?

Speaker 2:

Well, I love vintage cars, Like I think, like you know a Woody or a, you know an old Bronco, that kind of.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like some of you like that kind of vintage, but not the super classic. Have you guys ever restored like an old car in brown? No, we haven't either. We have friends that have gotten into that before. My dad always tells stories of before all the electronics and the chips that got put into cars. It used to be so fun. You could take the motor out of an old fast car that was beat up and then put it in like a truck or a Jeep and make all these modifications Hang out with your buddy. All the old you know word. One of your friends is kind of a grease junkie guy and doing that.

Speaker 1:

And it's a great camaraderie thing for guys to do that. I just don't think they do as much anymore. You need, you know, computers to plug in to check the codes that were wrong. It's just very hard to do the classic car thing anymore.

Speaker 2:

Right If I could collect something be old vehicles, but not to work on them myself. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

I want them already done and refurbished. Beautiful and yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm not a car guy, I'm not a tool or something, but I can appreciate the beauty of, like, I think, an old, vintage car. Even some of the new cars are like works of art that people put on. We talk about like cabins that are more project cabins that you'd buy Right Right, Something in the woods that needs a fixer upper.

Speaker 2:

Like you're so excited for what you see and you can dream it could be.

Speaker 1:

Right. And then you get people that find these old cars that are out there that they has as a fixer upper In vision, as you. Let me know if this is of interest to you. Okay. And then there's a new house that comes with 300 classic cars, hits the market for $400,000, but it's for cash buyers only. What do you think?

Speaker 2:

of yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you'd be interested in that I would definitely be interested in that. Oh my gosh, this is is.

Speaker 2:

Where's it located?

Speaker 1:

New Hampshire. Okay, this New Hampshire house of built in 1988 and the property spans 18 anchors with many vintage cars included, so it's 1600 square foot. One bedroom, two baths, a basement and garage. The property's extra storage space can be transformed into an office, bedroom, gym, laundry room or pantry. Great, that sounds good. Okay, then you see the pictures and you're envisioning like how could they sell all these classic cars for 400,000? It's a cabin in a junkyard.

Speaker 2:

So every realtor should hire this writer.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and to get an article out there now. There are vintage cars in this article and we'll share it. In the show notes there's some beautiful cars. They're in rough shape, however, and the home is just as rough a shape, oh goodness. So if somebody is looking for like a lifetime of fixing up a cabin, siding missing it's mostly cedar. You can see water stains and all kinds of flood damage. The house is barely finished and then there is just acres and acres of car parts and old cars that are towed and parked with trees growing out the windows.

Speaker 2:

My goodness, now my vision just completely changed. I'm going to see these pictures, and I bet our listeners are too.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in addition to an inventory of vehicles, the property includes the business and business name. The Zillow listing states remember classic cars and those that love them are on a completely different level, one where it's not so much about efficiency and speed but about the timelessness of the experience, style, exclusivity and craftsmanship. The parts inventory included with the sale are becoming increasingly hard to find. This is definitely a rare opportunity for the right person. The house is currently listed on Zillow for 399.90 cash buyers only, so that's a good thing to think of when your significant other is getting frustrated at how long your remodel is taking or something that you're trying to repair, patch up an old boat, really fix anything in your house, you can say those that love this is on a. It's a completely different level one. It's not so much about efficiency and speed but about the timelessness of the experience, style, exclusivity and craftsmanship.

Speaker 1:

So seriously, that writer is amazing, so they can sell snow to the Eskimos or something like that, just usually like a write up that has a red flag.

Speaker 2:

You know, real estate wise is like this charming cottage or a little quaint quaint.

Speaker 1:

It's tons of character.

Speaker 2:

Yes, but none of those words were used in this, and you know some of what I picture when you think of vintage vehicles used in a cool way. Have you ever driven by where, like all, the Cadillacs are sticking out of the ground or old tractors are kind of set up along a field.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like some people do some really cool displays. So I was picturing more like like that, like they weren't really going to be what I would want personally, but they were gonna be cool enough, like on display or something in some way in the yard just not in good shape. But no, that sounds like they're-.

Speaker 1:

It's a junkyard and honestly there's probably somebody with classic cars that might be. You would think they would have removed anything worth like tons of value, because why wouldn't you at least like auction that piece or part off? It looks more like a parts junkyard that you could figure something out. But the business was called parts of the past, a business selling classic cars. So if someone's interested in a business, slash cabin, slash fixer upper, but there might be one car there worth the whole kitten caboodle.

Speaker 2:

It sounds like it might be a TV show to pitch to HDTV, like moving into this Fix this cabin up, fix the cars up.

Speaker 1:

That could be pretty entertaining and honestly, it's probably it would be an amazing like influencer Instagram launch point where it's like I bought this thing, and now what am I supposed to do? But you'd really have to have a lot of back end wherewithal, tech savvy and then also be able to fix and yeah, a big dream to fix this up.

Speaker 2:

Well, here's what may make or break it. Is there a junkyard dog that comes with it?

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, that I did. It doesn't say anything about a junkyard dog, but that's an easy thing to fix. You can get your own junkyard dog and throw them in. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so it's super fun Again looking definitely a project.

Speaker 2:

Well, we'll link this article in our show notes so everybody can look at the full article, and we'll show some pictures on our social media so everybody can get the full view, because I bet they were like me when you started out and it did not quite meet what the write-up was, right? Speaking of great writing, I just read a book that I loved, and we did it for my book club.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So it wasn't just me that loved it, everybody loved it. Now, when I first saw the book and I heard the name, I thought it was just gonna be a quaint, charming, cute story. And it was so deep, it was so well written, it had so much to talk about and it was so fitting for cabin life. So it's called Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J Ryan Stradle, and I apologize if I pronounced your name wrong, but you're an amazing writer, so I hope you'll forgive me for that. So this is the synopsis.

Speaker 2:

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband, Ned, is having an identity crisis. Her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day and her mother, florence, is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been hotel'd up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir to a chain of home style diners, and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant.

Speaker 2:

In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard won victories of each family hang in the balance With their dreams dash. Can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses? And will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation? In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays in brandy old fashions? The author has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss and marriage, what we hold onto and what we leave behind and what our legacy will be when we are gone. So when you first hear Saturday night at the Lakeside Supper Club and I'll post a picture of the cover it just looks like a sweet little book.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's a great cover, great graphics, but you have no idea the depth of this book. And for those of you listening that don't know, eric and I are both part of family businesses.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And the layers that brings into life, right? So this book is full of that and that the couple, the main characters in here one owns this historic family supper club and then the other one is the chain restaurant that comes to town and kind of their love story and what they go through, and then they both have different issues happening with family business. Like it said, it skipped a generation cause. One parent wasn't interested in taking it over, and then there's sibling things, and so it's all these layers. There's even things that come down to. The story happens in a vacation spot, kind of like where we live. So tourists versus locals, you know, there's just all these these things to make great discussion. What was super fun about the post book club was, I said, you know what it seems wrong to not do this at a supper club. So I said who wants to go get ice cream drinks?

Speaker 1:

So after book club.

Speaker 2:

We went to Norwood Pines and we had ice cream drinks and so we interviewed the owners of Norwood Pines in our very first episode after our trailer. So that was episode number two, supper club story. So everybody go back to listen to this it's it's a really great family business story, inspiring, and it also gives you a lot of history about what supper clubs are. Some of you it may be a new term and whether you live up here or not, this book you will love it, just really impressed with it. So when we went to get our ice cream drinks, they do a new thing now they do flights.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I was actually going to mention that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and so we shared flights when we went. So you get to cause. Usually the ice cream drinks are like mountainous, yeah, towering overflowing. Yeah, and now, and you want to try them all or just have a little bit, so they do a flight. So you get four different flavors, do you remember?

Speaker 1:

what flavors they were.

Speaker 2:

Brandy Alexander grasshopper, pink squirrel right. And then there they have one, they named the Edgar, which, if you go back and listen, to that the ghost.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so if you go back, and listen to that episode.

Speaker 2:

You'll hear about the Edgar and you'll also hear about how their ice cream drinks came to be. It was a challenge. Did you remember that?

Speaker 1:

Oh, I don't specifically. Okay, so everybody have to go listen to that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, but it was just. I mean, I mean, if you have a book club, this is a great one to do. And I also want to mention I listened to this on audio.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's on audible as well, yep.

Speaker 2:

And I count that as reading for all of you. So I mean, that's a debate that people have too. But I go back and forth between listening to podcasts, listening to audio books, listening to music. It just depends, and the narrator in the books can really make or break sometimes.

Speaker 1:

I agree, yeah you can have the best book with a bad narrator and it ruins it. Or you can have like a fine book with an amazing narrator and you're just completely engrossed.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and this one was great.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a great book with a great narrator.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so if you want to do it on audio you know when you're done listening to the cabin cast then you can go to your audible Go and listen to this on the way up to your cabins. Highly recommend this book.

Speaker 1:

Good, that's fantastic. And you get some other recommendations, and this is a recommendation for music from your son, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, so this is my 15 year old. Eric and I are like we have a list of songs that we love, that we want to share, and then I'm like you know what? Let's see what some of the younger folk are listening to, right? So I love my kids playlists and so I reach out to Brooks and so he sent this one.

Speaker 1:

Noah Richardson is a 23 year old indie pop artist out of the city of brotherly love, writer of songs, singer of the same ones he grew up with in his family's funeral home in Philly where he first started making music. Sounds kind of creepy, but he swears, he's pretty normal. So this is a song called lowercase letters by Noah Richardson, and we hope everybody enjoys it. So you cross the room and, doomed, I don't have a chance. I don't know how to dance. Baby, you're gonna move. Seeing you keep the tune, I'm swimming down my fair. You might be the play I think my mama would approve. What do I gotta lose? What do I gotta prove? Just an opportunity I can't let loose. It's right to text, and lowercase letters in the body seems so common. I'll be whatever you want.

Speaker 2:

I like to talk about what I call walk out songs. Like a baseball game, but you can have those in life. I love it that line about she writes everything in lowercase letters. Do you ever get texts from people where it's all? There's like either no punctuation or they're all lowercase, or if you get one, that's all caps? It's like they're screaming at you.

Speaker 1:

No, that's always so hard we. Our point of sale system at the store is you can only do it in all caps.

Speaker 1:

for some weird reason they're just like you have to hit the caps on in our point of sale, which is fine because it's like sales orders and how you type everything. I think I always think about the software engineers that are so wonderful that organize everything, but they don't always think in the same way that, like a, the user would think of it like okay. So the first thing we do when we teach new employees is to teach them to have your caps lock on at all times when you're in your point of sale. But then when you switch back to your email and start typing and then you realize you've typed an entire email in all caps and then you have to go back and it's just like this brain thing, because it is, it's it's so much like yelling. And then the caps, you know all lowercase letters, and then you get people now that use so many emojis or no emojis, and then you feel like, well, should I use? It's like? And then the.

Speaker 1:

GIFs thing that people throw in for reactions. It's like there's so many ways to communicate. I don't actually even understand the reference of like. I mean she like writes her texts in lowercase letters. I guess to me would just be someone talking really nondescript and like not really excited about everything, and then like normal punctuation seems like normal speaking and then, like you said, all caps is just yelling at all times and all things and being super, super loud.

Speaker 2:

Or I even. I'm old enough that when I get a text or an email that's either all lowercase, all caps, whichever, my first thing is like they don't understand grammar.

Speaker 1:

Right, oh for sure.

Speaker 2:

We're younger people, kids, what maybe? Will message me that way, where there's no punctuation or whatever, and I'm like, oh, that's just cause that's how they talk, but for older people. And then the other line in there that I was thinking about was when he said my mom approves.

Speaker 1:

Yep, yep.

Speaker 2:

Did Sam's mom approve?

Speaker 1:

of you, I would, I don't know, probably You'd have to ask her. It goes way back. Right, yeah, right yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I know it was one of the funny things, for when I first kind of had a crush on Brian in college. Well, I had a crush on him for a long time, but we went away for summer and my parents knew I had a crush on him and they were going to the college, cause my dad was still really involved at the school, cause it's their alma mater too, and Brian was working in admissions and giving tours.

Speaker 2:

So my parents went on a tour of the college with Brian as the tour guide, so that they could meet this guy that I had a crush on, so I don't know how much I'd have to ask him if he remembers how he felt knowing that they were there.

Speaker 1:

but it's like the reverse of Greece you guys hanging out during the school year and then yeah, and then not in the summer time, but no, it's kind of a cute story.

Speaker 2:

I think that they were like, let's see who this guy is yeah, that's really checking out. Yeah, and then my brothers, when they first met him cause I had two younger brothers that were like high school, middle school age at the time. They met him and their first thought was why does he talk like that?

Speaker 1:

Cause they are from Texas and then he's from.

Speaker 2:

Wisconsin, and they're like God. We thought his voice would sound way different than that. So just those funny things when you first meet somebody and like is my mom going to approve of them?

Speaker 1:

And oh, for sure so lots in that little song. That's great. Oh, and I was laughing. You're in mentioned like grammar and text messaging we were talking about. I saw this screen capture and you know you'll scroll Instagram and then it'll start recommending things that you don't really want to see. But this one I thought was really funny, where you know there's like the grammar police out there that actually, and we actually had somebody cause our.

Speaker 1:

Our motto is like the getaway primer, and we had a lady that was very upset that we called it primer and it's actually apparently pronounced primer when you're using it in the context that we use it, but no one here uses that that way. It's like a primer for priming paint, but a primer is what? But?

Speaker 2:

We were scolded.

Speaker 1:

We were scolded and apparently we're supposed to sound like the fine English language and say a getaway primer. And like apparently everyone would know what we're talking about. But I digress. This was one where this lady posted a photo of her swimming in the ocean with an algae mustache and she said something like oh, the joys of being married to a phycologist. Do you know what a phycologist is? No, a phycologist is a scientist that studies algae. Okay, so she just did this as a joke and then put the phycology. Well, what do you think? Somebody said of like, oh you know, it'd be really nice if you were a scientist that could spell psychology correctly. Oh my God. And then she had to, like put the definition of phycology, which is the study of algae, in there. And it just makes me laugh, because just these people that are so like self important that they're going to correct everything you say, even you're a stranger and they're just like this is the problem with the world today People don't even know.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

Like, and she's like a scientist making an inside crazy joke to match with the photo, and then she's corrected. And then that's the best thing ever is when you get to like, correct the correction.

Speaker 2:

Right yeah.

Speaker 1:

And no, actually I was. I meant exactly to do that. And then you like, nobody ever says like, oh my bad, usually they'll just like delete the comment, but not before she was able to get a screen capture. So I'll try to find that and we'll link that in the show notes as well.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that is great, Well fun episode today. I hope you have a fun week ahead of you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sounds good, enjoy everyone.

Vintage Cars and Fixer Upper Property
Family Business Discussion and Music Recommendation
Correcting Comments and Enjoying Life