All Episodes
Previous Next
June 20, 2022 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
01:31:36
An Interview with my Father | Walter Peterson | EP 263
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I never do that.
You see, I hardly ever skipped school.
And every time I did, goddammit, you caught me.
I did it like three times.
One time I drove to Heinz Creek.
Oh, three times.
Really?
I tell you, it wasn't very often.
One time I drove to Heinz Creek to get away from you.
I thought, I'll drive to Heinz Creek.
He's not going to find me there.
And then on the way back from Heinz Creek, you drove by and waved at me.
I said, oh my god, he caught me again.
so ridiculous hello everybody hello everybody
I decided today that I'm going to talk to my dad as the subject for my YouTube video and podcast and find out more about his life, his young life on the prairie in Saskatchewan,
about his father, my grandfather, his grandfather, my great-grandfather, His mother, what it was like growing up back in the 40s mostly, was born in 1937, July of 1937.
And we've talked about such things, but not that much.
And so there's lots of things I want to know.
And so that's what we're going to try to talk about today.
And I'm going to walk through his life with him and ask him a bunch of questions so that I have the answers to the questions.
And I hope you enjoy it.
Hello.
Hey, George.
How are you doing?
Just as good as it gets.
Good.
Glad to hear it.
So I thought I'd start by telling the story of this third floor that I built on my house.
And so one of the things we did, we were going to build a log cabin on the third floor of this semi-detached house right in downtown Toronto.
Tammy and I thought about that.
I guess we wanted a cabin out in the woods, but we thought we could at least build one on our third floor.
And that sort of morphed into this Native American big house, which is all made of wood inside, unlike the plaster sheeting that makes up the rest of the house.
So walking up there is quite a transition.
We built it with some local architects and with some input from Quackayotu Carver, who filled it up with totem poles.
But on the walls You and I talked about the possibility of tearing some old wood off the farmstead in Saskatchewan, off the original buildings there that great-grandpa Bernd homesteaded.
And so that happened when the totem poles came across the country on a 53-foot truck.
Joel, my brother, had helped tear a bunch of the wood off the buildings surrounding the original house.
And off the barn.
And so the wall, both walls, are done in grey wood or red wood because some of the buildings were red, that barn red.
Or they're made of doors from the buildings.
And you had stripped some of that wood off years ago to use in your room downstairs as well.
That was before anything like that was popular.
Yeah, yeah.
I took the floor out of the loft of the barn and I used it for flooring in the cabins at the lake.
I didn't know you used it for flooring there.
You also used it in a decorative way in the pool room.
That's pool table, by the way, not pool.
Uh...
Downstairs here, you mean?
Yeah.
No, that wasn't from the barn.
That was from a friend of mine.
Oh, okay.
Okay, well, I think I got the idea for using the old wood.
Anyways, we did get the stuff stripped away from the old farmstead.
So, now, my great-grandfather, your grandfather Bernd, from whom my middle name is derived, he came to North America from Norway.
No, he was born in North Dakota or in Minnesota.
Was it his father that came?
Yeah, his father and his father-in-law.
Did you tell me they built a boat and came to Norway or came from Norway to New York?
That actually was...
His father-in-law that built the boat.
And the two families came.
I think there were a total of nine or ten on the boat.
Yeah, they left Norway and sailed all the way to New York.
And then they ended up in the Midwest, where there were a lot of Norwegian settlers.
Well, yeah.
Minnesota and North Dakota were the...
Well, Wisconsin, too, to a certain extent.
They were just areas where the Norwegians and the Swedes settled.
Yeah.
So they migrated that way.
And then there was a move up into Saskatchewan.
Yeah, about 1910, I think, was the first time that they came up and homesteaded.
And then they left again because it didn't work out as, I guess, homestead life was pretty tough, you know.
So they left again, but they didn't sell the place.
They did have an auction on My grandfather's old clock was in the auction.
And when they came back to Saskatchewan, they went to an auction sale and he bought it back.
And I still have it.
So, how did they get up to Saskatchewan from Minnesota at that time?
Was it rail?
No, they drove up.
In fact, I think you have a picture...
I think you have a picture of the old car that they drove up in.
I don't know what it was.
I can remember seeing pictures of it.
They left, and I presume they went back down to Minnesota, but then they came back.
Where'd they go?
North Dakota, a place called Vang.
V-A-N-G. Both families...
We're in that area, not separated by too much.
I think my grandfather worked in the dairy there.
And by both families, who do you mean?
Well, I mean my grandmother's family and my grandfather's family.
And they were married when they came up to Saskatchewan already.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, why did they decide to come to Saskatchewan if they were already settled in North Dakota?
Well, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Yeah, except when it's in Saskatchewan.
Burr.
Free land and...
It's not colder in Saskatchewan than it is in North Dakota.
Right, and so the Canadian government was offering homesteaders at that time a chunk of land.
If they would come in and do what to it?
Well, they had to prove it up over a period of three years.
I think they had to break about 10 acres the first year.
And I think they were required to have some sort of domicile on it.
And that's probably a loose word for home.
Right, right.
And so, do you have any idea why they left the first time?
You said it was hard.
I mean, we can talk about that in a minute.
No, I really don't have.
No, I don't really have.
I imagine there were a number of...
I'm sure life was fairly tough in Saskatchewan.
I imagine they were homesick.
Anyway, that's the story.
They left.
And do you know how long it was before they came back?
I think it was about a matter of about a year and a half, something like that, or maybe just a year.
But I'm not sure of that, George.
They thought they'd give it another try, and the second time they stayed.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, maybe it wasn't as bad as they thought, you know.
So what would it have meant to break 10 acres of land at that time?
What would have you had to do and how?
Well, you took your axe and you cut down the poplar that was on the place and I guess there were a few spruce on it as well.
And then you took your grub hole out and tried to dig the roots out and you used your team to pull the roots out and Piled them up and burned them and cultivated the land as best you could and probably sowed some wheat on it.
So that whole area, so that was near Nakem, Saskatchewan, if anyone wants to look on a map.
That whole area, the prairie there, would have been covered with trees?
Yeah, there were trees there at that time.
Yeah, it was covered with trees.
So to clear 10 acres meant you had to cut down hundreds of trees, I presume, and then you had to pull the roots out of the ground one at a time with a team of horses.
That's why you could only clear 10 acres, or why you had to clear 10 acres, you said, in the first year.
Because 10 acres isn't that big by farm standards.
I think it was 10 acres a year for three years to claim it up.
I don't know.
These are things we never really talked about when I was a kid.
How do you know about it at all?
Well, I guess sitting around the table listening to the adults talk, I picked up a lot of it.
So, how many kids did your grandparents have?
They just had the one.
Stanley.
Stanley.
My dad.
And Stanley was adopted?
He was.
And was he adopted in the United States or was he adopted in Saskatchewan?
He was adopted in Saskatchewan.
Do you know if they knew...
Did they know anything about him?
Did they know anything about his family?
That I have no idea about.
That was something that was never talked about as far as I can remember.
Do you know how old he was when he...
He was an infant.
He was an infant.
I don't think I knew Dad was adopted until I was a teenager.
And then I probably didn't believe it the first time I was told.
Was it a shock?
I don't know whether you'd call it a shock or not.
I suppose it was a bit of a shock, yeah.
So, and they had no other children?
They had no other children.
And so I remember going out to that farmstead, and that would have been 25 years probably after you had left it, with Great Grandpa Bernd, a couple of times, to ride on a potato harvester he had built.
And all the outbuildings were still out there, including the blacksmith shop.
And I don't remember what you called it.
It was this contraption, like an enclosed sled, That you used to go to school in.
It was still intact.
Caboose.
Yeah, you called it a caboose.
Why was it called a caboose?
Oh, God only knows.
I don't know.
I have no idea why it was called a caboose.
That's probably a good question to ask Google.
All right.
So, all right.
So, you, Berndt and his wife, and I don't remember Berndt's wife's name.
Of course, I never knew her.
Clara.
So they built a log house on the prairie and a barn, and there must have been eight or nine other buildings, small shed-like buildings.
One of them was a blacksmith shop.
Oh, yeah.
Well, there were different buildings over different periods of time.
Yeah.
But you're right, there were probably at least a half dozen other buildings and the house and the barn and the shop.
And the pump, which was surrounded by a big metal tractor wheel.
Yes, it was a wheel off a steamer that we made a trough out of.
And the cabin you grew up in, which was a log cabin, it was insulated with cardboard, if I remember correctly.
But when I knew the house, it was still standing, right?
We could still go in it.
It was still standing.
Well, I think it's still kind of standing.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
I haven't been there for a couple of years now.
Yeah, the last time I saw it was a few years ago and it had collapsed a fair bit.
I don't think you could get inside it anymore.
But it had a central room and a bedroom on...
Did it face...
Which direction did it face?
It had two bedrooms on the east side.
Okay, so it was one room, one main room with two bedrooms on the east side?
Or was there a bedroom on the other side too?
No, there was a kitchen and a hallway and a living room is what we called it.
And then there were the two bedrooms on the east side.
The house, I guess, was long, you know, it was long north and south.
Right.
And it wasn't very big.
No, how many square feet do you think it was?
Like, 600?
No.
Yeah, probably about that.
Yeah, like one floor of my semi-detached in Toronto.
Yeah, and you had two sisters grow up with you there.
How many people lived in that house when you were a little kid?
Well, how old was I? Well, how old were you when you left that house and moved into town?
I was probably about nine or ten.
Okay, so you should have some pretty decent memories of that place if you were that old.
Okay, so how many people lived there in that house from the time you were born until the time you were ten, generally speaking?
Well, I guess there would have been four adults and three kids.
Four adults.
So your grandfather and your grandmother, Barron and Clara, and Stanley, your dad, and Bernice, his wife, and your sister Judy and your sister Betty, both of whom were younger than you.
Right.
How did all seven of you live in that house?
There was two bedrooms.
How did you manage that?
How did we manage that?
I really have no idea how we managed.
Well, who slept in which bedrooms?
Were all the kids in one bedroom?
No.
But that would only leave one room for the adults.
Yeah.
I don't know whether I can answer that question or not.
I don't think I know.
Okay.
You have a soft spot in your heart for that house.
A soft spot?
Yeah, well, you always go back and visit it, you know, and you're nostalgic when you go to the farm.
Yeah, I guess I have a soft spot for it.
I grew up there.
Yeah, well, what was it like to grow up there?
Good.
Good how.
What did you do?
Like, when you were a little kid, when you were just...
The earliest memories you have.
What are the earliest memories you have of being out there?
Now, you only spoke...
You spoke Norwegian out there, right?
Primarily.
Well, yeah.
Kind of a Minnesota Norwegian, I guess.
My grandfather and grandmother spoke Norwegian mainly.
They could both speak English, but mainly they spoke Norwegian.
My dad spoke Norwegian when he was with my grandfather and grandmother, and English the rest of the time.
My mother, Bernice, probably could speak some Norwegian, but we spoke some English too because neighbors weren't always fluent in Norwegian, although a lot of them were.
So, what was life like there on the farmstead when you were a kid?
You had animals, you had horses.
We had horses and cattle, pigs, chickens.
Who took care of them?
Well, I guess we all did, or I shouldn't say we all did, but my grandfather and grandmother and mom and dad took care of them.
And what did that entail?
And how many cows were there?
Do you have any idea?
Well, I would guess that there were probably about six cows that were milk producers and then the rest were raised for beef.
Excuse me.
Horses.
We probably had four or five horses all the time.
And did you ride a lot?
Ride horse?
Yeah.
No.
Not very much.
I rode some, but I wouldn't say I was a cowboy or anything.
Any particular reason?
I mean, did you like horses?
Was it interesting to you, or were they work animals?
Well, both.
They were interesting.
They were work animals.
I mean, that's what pulled the implements when I was a kid.
I can remember when we got our first tractor.
And I can remember when we got our first rubber-tired tractor.
But I can also remember riding on implements with my grandfather driving four horses in front of it.
Plowing and that sort of thing?
And harvesting?
Well, I don't remember plowing as such, but I remember seeding.
Because on the seeder you could stand on a platform at the back of the unit...
And you had a good view of everything and there was something to hang on to so you didn't fall off.
And we had an old dog named Pooch who used to sit right up on the seed box and kind of look around the whole country while we were doing that.
He got pretty good at balancing.
How big a farm would have the family handled at that time?
I think it was three quarters as long as I can remember.
And how many acres are in a quarter?
180.
160.
160.
So it was 480 acres.
And so the farm obviously expanded past the initial homestead relatively rapidly?
That I don't know.
I know who owned the quarters that were bought and brought into the farm, but I don't know the details of it and I don't know when.
Right, so when...
When Barent and Clara came back up, they made enough of a go at it the second time to establish a farmstead that was successful enough to buy other reasonably sizable pieces of land.
I mean, three-quarters is not an immense farm by modern standards, obviously, but it's not no land at all.
No, it was probably at its time fairly average.
I mean, there were families that had one quarter of land.
So, three quarters was actually pretty good.
And so, everything you ate, I presume, pretty much came directly off the farm with the animals that you had.
So, eggs and milk.
Were you milking cows every day?
I wasn't.
My mother was a great milker.
I can remember her doing the milking a good portion of the time.
Grandma showed me one day a picture of the cabin with the firewood she had split for the winter.
And if that cabin was 600 square feet and a story high, the pile of wood that she split looked to be 1200 square feet and about at least as tall as the cabin.
When she said she split it, I don't think she meant that she manually split it.
She may have had something to do with it, but we had a wood splitter, which was run by a small gas engine And you could split wood to beat the devil with it.
Yeah, well, that sounds a lot easier than having to do it with an axe.
I know that Grandma was a busy woman, but that doesn't make it...
Oh, she was.
Yeah, well, she must have had her hands filled with three kids and a whole farm to run.
And then when the threshing crews came in in the fall, if I also recall, she used to have to feed them as well.
And that was on wood stove.
Well, she and my grandma, yeah.
And that would be 14, 15 men.
It pretty well filled the kitchen as I remember it.
Yeah, I bet.
So, and they were fed how many times a day?
Would she feed them three times a day when they were threshing?
Three times a day.
Right, so that's 52 meals for very hungry men.
And that would be one of her many chores.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nobody said it was easy.
No, no.
Grandpa showed me one time, or I saw a picture of him.
I think he showed me, though, the parka that he wore out in the winter to do his farm work.
I mean, Saskatchewan's plenty cold.
It gets to be minus 40 there on no shortage of occasions, and it also has quite the blistering wind.
I mean, it was a wool jacket and jeans, essentially, underneath it.
It wasn't anything particularly bulky or fancy.
So, I imagine winter was pretty, well, it could be pretty brutal.
Well, I think it was generally true that there weren't adequate clothes for the temperatures that we did have.
I mean, the best you had was wool, you know, and wool was the main thing.
Wool pants, wool underwear, a heavy wool coat if you were lucky enough to have one.
Maybe it had canvas on the outside for a windbreak.
But those guys were tough, you know.
Yeah, well, I remember Grandpa's arms, forearms.
I mean, they were no joke when he was a...
You know, I remember him from about the time I was 10, I suppose.
I think that's about where his memories come from.
He would have been 50, probably, at that point.
And, I mean, he had immense forearms.
He's a very strongly built person, and he had done plenty of work.
So, did you have a happy childhood, would you say?
Did I have a happy childhood?
Yeah, well, like I said, you're attached to the farm.
I would say yes, I had a happy childhood.
Okay, and up to what age?
Well, I suppose teen years.
So what made it a happy childhood?
Well, what...
What wouldn't have made it a happy childhood?
Well...
I mean, you were free as a breeze.
You had acres and acres to wander around in.
There was lots of wildlife.
There were some chores.
It was just a good life.
What chores did you have to do?
Oh, you had to bring in wood.
Occasionally you had to bring in a pail of water.
Usually it was only about a half a pail because you couldn't carry a whole pail.
You had to go with the pump and pump the water into the pail and then it wasn't very far to carry it, but it had to be carried occasionally.
So you weren't overwhelmed with chores by the sounds of it?
No, I wouldn't say I was overwhelmed with it at all.
No.
I had some things to do.
Right, right.
And you did them?
Yeah.
And if you didn't do them, what happened?
Or did that just not happen?
Oh, I imagine it happened.
I would imagine a scolding was probably the...
The main thing.
Who from?
Well, the scolding would probably have come from my mother or my grandmother.
Dad was pretty strict.
He didn't scold much.
So in what way was he strict?
Well, let's just say he was strict.
Well, I'm curious about your relationship with your great-grandfather and your father.
Because you've intimated that, in many ways, you were raised by your great-grandfather.
And I remember when I was about, I think, great-grandfather Barrett died when I was about nine, ten years.
Nine or ten, yeah.
Well, that was the first brush I really had with loss.
And I wasn't so upset with his loss because I didn't know him that well.
I mean, I was sad about it because I liked him.
But you were really broken up by that.
And so, that was the first time I think I ever remember...
Seeing you, like, emotionally distressed.
And it lasted at least a week, which isn't a tremendous amount of time, but it was a tremendous amount of time as far as I was concerned.
Yeah, well, it was...
He was pretty important.
Yeah, so...
Who...
Why was he so important to you?
What was it about him?
And your relationship with him?
Well, I... I think kids have a real relationship with their grandparents if they are fortunate enough to have them around.
And, you know, I can remember walking three steps behind him all over the farm.
So you trailed around behind him?
Day in and day out.
Aha.
And that was fine with him?
Yeah.
I think I was fine with him.
Was it more than fine?
He was told me to go home.
Okay, well that's something.
I mean, I remember the day, for example, we went out and rode on this.
Now, he was quite a handy person and quite a creative person, mechanically.
Yeah, he was.
Yeah.
This potato harvester, he built it, well, you could drive it, and I don't really remember how it harvested potatoes, but he had built it pretty much from the ground up, if I remember correctly.
Well, it didn't really harvest potatoes.
It was built so that you could drive it in a potato patch without driving over the rows.
It had quite a bit of clearance and outrigger wheels on it.
Right, right.
And mainly it pulled implements that harvested potatoes.
I see, I see.
So it was a custom-built tractor in some sense.
It was a custom-built tractor, right.
Right, and he did work in the blacksmith shop.
Oh, he was a good blacksmith, yeah.
And it was probably one of his, I guess you'd call it a vocation.
Because if it was raining or if it was miserable, it was pretty easy to find Grandpa and me in the shop.
Because there was usually a fire on in there and the building wasn't very large, so it was warm and there was always lots to do.
What did you do?
Especially for him.
Yeah.
What did you do in the blacksmith shop?
Oh, hell, I can't remember now.
There was always stuff to do in there.
There was lots of junk pieces lying around.
We had a...
I don't know what you'd call it.
It was a wheel mounted on what was like a stationary bicycle.
And you used to be able to get onto it and pedal so that the wheel went around.
And then you could sharpen your sickle or your axe or your knife or a stick or whatever you had.
And you could spend a lot of time at that when you were seven or eight years old.
And what sort of tools did he make in the blacksmith shop?
What sort of tools?
Well, I can remember him building a grain elevator.
We'd call it like an auger for grain.
And I think, as I remember, he built almost all of it out of pieces.
He bent the tin or the Galvanized metal that built a chute and wasn't awfully big.
It probably only lifted the grain maybe 12 feet, something like that.
But it didn't work like an auger.
It had a belt in it so that it just picked up the grain and moved it along on a belt that had I don't know what you'd call them even.
Paddles of type on them.
Yeah.
He was always building something.
So was it from him that you learned how to use tools and to appreciate tools?
Because you like to build things.
I mean, you've gunsmithed.
Oh, I think, yeah, I think it probably was to a large extent due to him.
Did he teach you explicitly?
I'm sure he kept...
Did he teach you explicitly, or did you pick up most of it by watching?
Well, both.
I'm sure that he probably made sure that I was kept busy and out of trouble while I was in the shop.
And, you know, that probably involved straightening nails and God knows what else.
Right, so you had small productive jobs to do while you were hanging about with them.
Well, they were, you know, a job is what the body is obliged to do.
So this wasn't a job.
If it's not obliged to do it, then it's fun or play.
And so that's kind of how you remember that as play.
Well, I remember it as a good time, yeah.
Right.
So he was easy to get along with for you?
He was good to you?
Yeah.
Yeah, very good to me.
How about your grandma?
Grandma was great, yeah.
How?
What was great about her?
Well, she was extraordinarily kind.
I can't ever remember her.
Disciplining me other than maybe shaking her head or something.
She taught me how to read at an early age.
We used to do homework together.
There were always treats.
Who knows?
She was very kind.
She taught you to read.
So that was how you learned to read.
Yeah.
I don't really remember learning to read.
I mean, I always had people reading to me.
My grandfather read to me a lot.
So did mom.
So did my grandmother.
I can remember reading the comics.
That was very important.
You know, the Cats and Jammer kids and Little Abner and that kind of thing.
You know, for a long time I didn't read it.
They read it.
But after a while, well, I don't know.
You kind of pick it up.
I can remember...
Go ahead.
Did people in your house read a lot when they had some leisure time?
I wouldn't say a lot because there wasn't all that much leisure time.
And, you know, for many years, when it got dark, it was dark inside the house, too.
Kerosene lamps didn't throw very much light.
Right.
Was there ever electricity in the cabin that you grew up in up till the time you left?
No.
So that was all kerosene?
Kerosene and later gas lamps.
Right, which were a little brighter.
Yeah, and they were considerably brighter.
Right.
No, it never had power.
Right, so people were up at dawn, I presume, and then, well, in bed, well, when it was dark in the winter, that would be pretty early.
Yep.
So you had a lot of time to spend by yourself, if you wanted, to wander around out into the fields and into the nearby woods and lake nearby?
No.
Slews, which aren't as deep as lakes, I guess.
Similar areas.
But there were lots of sloughs around, and sloughs always had wildlife around them.
Yeah, I wandered around a lot when I was a kid.
I think I knew every bush within about five miles of home pretty intimately.
Do you mean every tree?
Well, not every tree, but I wasn't about to get lost in it.
Yeah, well, there's something about that exploration you do when you're a kid that really familiarizes yourself deeply with a place.
I don't know if you ever do that again in your life when you move.
I can remember the houses around the house I grew up in in Fairview.
Far better in my imagination than I can picture the houses in this neighborhood.
Like, far better.
Even though I only lived there for eight years, and I've lived here for almost 20, I still have a much better map, house by house, in my head of the immediate neighborhood.
I think when you're a kid, you pay attention to things in a different way than you do when you're an adult.
Because everything's so new.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, well, I believe you're right.
I think kids pay attention to what's going on.
Yeah, I think what happens...
Well, you kind of...
Your perceptions get kind of generic, you know.
After you've seen 300 houses, you sort of know what a house is.
And you don't have to look at it anymore.
You just sort of replace it in your imagination with an image of a house.
You know, and that works as a placeholder.
But you don't know...
You don't know the back alley in detail like you did when you were a kid.
I think you really lose a sense of familiarity because of that.
That deep sense of belonging to a place is associated with that really detailed exploration.
I've noticed in the houses I've moved into and apartments, That unless any corner that I haven't cleaned, any drawer that I haven't organized is kind of foreign territory in some sense.
It's not friendly to me.
But if I get in there into the details and explore completely the house, which I'm trying to do with this house.
We renovated it two years ago, three years ago, but I was so sick I couldn't...
Remap it.
And it seems really foreign to me.
And I'm not happy in the house because I don't really understand the house.
You know, it's alien to me.
And so yesterday I spent eight hours cleaning out a closet that was full of stuff I hadn't been able to touch for three years.
And that was a great relief, you know.
Now I kind of like my closet now.
I know exactly what's in it.
I know exactly where everything is.
I put it there.
Like I sort of touched everything.
It's mine now.
Whereas before it was just this place that...
It's full of stuff I didn't understand and a bunch of work that I hadn't done and, you know, I was leery of it.
There's still a lot of the house is like that, so I'm still not comfortable here.
But I will be before I leave in January.
We're going to go through every square inch of it and hopefully put it in order.
It makes you much calmer to know the place you're at in detail.
Where are you going in January?
I'm going on tour.
Oh, okay.
Going to Washington first for a week or ten days.
Right.
I understand now.
Hey, and I talked to Joe Rogan the other day.
Yeah?
Yeah, so I'm booked on his show in Austin on the 24th.
24th of?
24th of January, just before the tour starts.
It starts on the 25th.
Yeah, it was really good to talk to him.
I always enjoyed listening to those shows.
Yeah, well, Rogan, he's quite the guy.
He's done a lot of things.
He's tough.
He's smart.
He's funny.
Doesn't take any nonsense.
He's nobody's fool.
And he's even-handed with people and generous.
And he's a good guy.
Like, he really is a good guy.
He deserves his success.
You know, he's been a successful...
Martial arts fighter.
He was a successful host on a couple of TV shows.
He's been a successful stand-up comedian, and then he's been this ridiculously successful YouTube interviewer and podcaster.
You don't get successful at five different things without being pretty competent.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing him.
And he's a courageous sort too.
And he's fun to have a conversation with because he has this great sense of humor.
So back to your grandfather.
You spend more time with your grandfather than with your dad?
Oh yeah, way, way more.
And why was that, Dad?
Why was it?
Yeah.
Why do you think it was?
I mean, was that par for the course in those days?
I mean, sometimes kids spend more time with their grandparents if their parents aren't working.
I think...
I think...
I think grandfathers probably have more patience than fathers do at times.
I don't really remember spending...
Very much time with Dad at all.
Did you get along with him?
I guess I must have got along with him when I was young.
But as a teenager, I would have to say no, I didn't get along with him very well.
Why?
Well, I guess I was probably as headstrong as he was.
Who knows?
What sort of things caused conflict?
I guess down near everything.
Now, you were at the farmstead until you were nine, and then the family moved into Nakem.
And how big was Nakem at that time?
Oh, it probably was 400 people, maybe.
And how much different was NACUM when I got to know it when I was a kid from the NACUM you grew up in?
Well, I don't think it was an awful lot different.
I guess there probably were some things you wouldn't do anymore when you were there that we did commonly every day.
Never thought anything about it.
Like what?
Well, can you imagine, how old were you, 12? 12?
Sure, younger than that too, but yeah, 12.
Okay, 11, 12-year-old walking downtown with a.22 in his hand to the co-op store to buy some ammunition and Taking the gun into the store and saying, I need a box of shorts, 22 shorts, and the people behind the counter wouldn't even blink an eye.
They'd just give you a box of shorts and take your 50 cents from you.
I wouldn't try that when you were there even.
No, nobody was doing that then.
No.
So that's part of that freedom that you described.
Yeah, freedom and common sense, I think, was a little bit more common then.
Yeah, well, I wonder, to some degree, I tried to think that through.
I mean...
People were working physically and directly in a way that they don't so much now.
You know, you're on that farm, you're contending with animals.
Well, you're contending with the cold, you're contending with the heat, you're contending with the light for that matter.
I mean, everything's...
Work, but you're directly related to that work, right?
I mean, there's an immediate payoff.
You go out and the chickens are there and you have eggs and you go out and milk the cows and you have milk and you churn it and you have butter and you turn the kerosene light on and you have light and you light a fire and you have heat.
You know what I mean?
It's hard work in some sense, but the reward is instant.
Plus, it's really real.
It grounds you to the actualities of things.
And then, you know, people were younger when they had their families and And so I think they were more likely to grant their kids, because they were a little more wild, let's say, being young, more likely to grant their kids a certain degree of independence, because they were still young and wanted to have fun.
And then most people had more siblings than they do now.
And I think one of the reasons that people are more helicopter-y around their kids now is because they wait until they're 35 to have them.
And so they're older by then and more cautious.
And then they only have one or maybe two.
And so they don't have ten.
You know, it's like you're not going to stay on top of ten kids.
That's not going to happen.
I don't think you can stay on top of four.
And so that means to some degrees the kids raise themselves, right, in sibling groups.
And the parents supervise, but sort of from a distance.
And I think you probably get a lot...
More realistic view of the world and your place in it when you're wrestling for position with like six siblings.
It's hard to be special in that situation.
I mean, your siblings aren't going to like that.
So you never know what these shifts cause.
And that common sense, it seems to me, that's associated with a grounding in real things and not this tendency we have now to sort of float off into abstractions.
Yep.
Yeah, because even when you're trying to build something and you're building it out of wood, let's say, because I built lots of things out of wood, It either works or it doesn't.
You know, it's really the proof of the pudding, so to speak, is right there in front of you.
And you can't delude yourself into thinking your table top is flat and straight when it's not.
It's either flat and straight and the table is stable and looks half decent or it isn't.
True.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I even thought, saw, you know, in my generation, a lot of the young men tinkered with cars.
Because you could.
Yeah.
Right?
You could understand a car with a certain amount of work.
And you could figure out how all the parts worked.
And you could even repair them.
Like, yourself.
Sometimes you had to buy a part.
But sometimes you could repair them.
And you had to take them apart and put them back together.
And if you didn't put them back together correctly, they didn't work.
And now cars are so sophisticated that...
You can't even get the hood open.
No, well, they never break down virtually.
I mean, they run a long time, but you certainly can't toy with them like you once did.
They're not immediately at hand in the same way.
So, I like Nakem.
You know, I thought Nakem was a fine town.
It was quite a nice town.
It had a lot of brick buildings.
When I was a kid in the early 70s, the downtown was still thriving.
There was a butcher store that was thriving.
There was a movie theater.
There was a dairy that sold milk.
And if I remember correctly, at that time, there wasn't anybody who ran the dairy.
There was just a refrigerator.
And if you wanted milk, you just got the milk and you put your money in basically what was a tin can.
There were no locks on the door or anything like that.
That's just how people did it.
And that would have served a community of probably 2,000 people, something like that.
No, not that many.
Well, but surrounding Nakem as well.
Maybe you're right.
Maybe you're right.
Yeah.
By that time, there was no dairy in Nacum.
That milk came from Melfort, which was 30 miles away.
Right, but that's still how it was sold.
Oh, that's exactly how it was sold.
Yeah, the proprietor of the theater was Ralph Smith.
And he had a great trust in people, I guess.
And he said he lost very little interest.
Yeah, well, he'd know if he made a profit, at least, and certainly he didn't cost him in staff.
So, maybe, and you never know, maybe, you know, it's conceivable, but probably not the case, that the odd pilferer might have actually needed something to eat.
I suspect no, because that isn't necessarily what drives people to pilfering.
But yeah, I thought Nakem was a real nice little town, and so, and it was, you know, the streets were nice and straight, and the houses were well built.
It was quite a thriving little community.
It had a nice brick school.
That's where you went to school.
So, everyone moved into Nakem at the same time.
Your grandfather?
No.
No.
Oh, okay.
How'd that work?
Well, my grandfather and grandmother were the ones who moved into Fairview and...
Nakem.
Yeah, Nakem.
They moved into Nakem.
And...
I'm not sure why I ended up there, but it probably had something to do with my grandfather and grandmother.
Anyway, I was in about grade three, I think, when I joined them in Natham and went to school there.
And mom and dad and the girls stayed on the farm.
You know, it sounds like we were really separated, but, you know, the distance was about four and a half miles, and it wasn't as though you didn't see them every day, because most days you did see them.
And was that an okay separation for you?
Were you unhappy about moving from the farm?
Were you happy to be moving into Nacum with your grandparents?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I told you, I got along with my grandfather and my grandmother exceptionally well.
And what about your mum?
Mum, I got along quite well with mum.
She was very kind too.
And what did she think about you moving into town away from her?
I really don't know, Jordan.
Uh...
I don't know what she thought about it.
Well, it was clear that she loved you beyond belief.
I mean, I remember one time we were playing cards up at the lake in Saskatchewan and Grandma was up there.
This isn't that many years ago, maybe 15 years ago, something like that.
And so you would have been 70, I guess, 68, something like that.
And Grandma would have been, well, in her late 80s.
And we were playing cards and, oh, you were getting teased.
I think Julian was teasing you and I think maybe I was teasing you and Grandma said, don't you pick on my Wally.
And she meant it.
And I thought, oh, this is so funny.
She wouldn't have said Wally.
She'd have said Walter.
Yes, that's right.
That's what she said.
Don't you pick on my Walter.
Well, it really cracked us up, you know, because, well, you know, you were a 70-year-old grandfather by that point.
And she's in her nearly 90.
And it was just like listening to...
A 20-year-old woman made me talk about her four-year-old kid.
It's like, don't pick on my Walter.
Mom definitely spoiled me.
Yeah, well, so she probably missed you when you left.
Yeah, she probably did.
But like I said, you know, it wasn't as though we were gone for any length of time.
At the very most, it would have been a school week, you know.
And probably, well, for a good part of the year, it probably wouldn't have been that.
Because my grandfather always went to the farm every day.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
You know, honestly, there was something extraordinary going on.
So did they move into town because they finally had the financial resources to have two houses?
Well, again, Jordan, I honestly don't know.
I would suspect that that might have been the case.
Yeah, well, those are pretty cramped living quarters.
Did you get along with your sisters?
Well, I could say yes, and I could probably say no.
Depends.
On the whole, I think we got along relatively well.
How much age difference was there?
Well, Betty was two years younger than me, and Judy was seven years younger than me.
Yeah, well, seven years is a long gap.
And she was very spoiled.
Betty or Judy?
Judy was very spoiled because she was the youngest.
You know, Betty was the in-between girl.
Right.
Right.
So, when you were out on the farm, did you have a lot of friends, or was it mostly activity that centered around the farm?
Oh, I had friends, but, you know, they weren't right next door.
Right.
You know, they were miles away.
But you had, you know, you had the occasional friend that would come over.
And I had a good school friend called Helmer Wunderboom.
And Helmer could really ride.
And he used to ride over on his horse every once in a while, and we would go for a ride around with him.
Me on the horse that I rode, not very well, and Helmer clinging to it like a Comanche.
So how was it that he got to be a better rider than you?
Just more practice?
More practice, I guess, yeah.
Well, Helmer was probably more of a cowboy than I was, too.
So what made you not a cowboy?
I mean, you like to carry your.22 rifle downtown into Nakem.
That sounds like a pretty cowboy thing to do.
So what was the difference?
I don't know.
I really don't know what the difference was.
Difference is people.
So, you could read before you went to school?
Yep.
Did you like to read?
Obviously.
Why obviously?
Because I stayed with it.
What do you mean by that?
Well, I don't think you do things that you don't like for very long, do you?
If you like it, you do more of it.
So you read...
Were you a reader in comparison to your friends?
Or was that a rather common pastime?
Because when I grew up, most of my friends didn't read.
You know, not much.
So I was very different.
Well, yeah, the difference though was that I didn't know what my friends were like at home very much, you know.
Even when I went to Nakem to school, I can't say that I really knew very much about very many of my friends as far as their reading went.
One, maybe.
Anyway, yes, I could read before I went to school.
I can tell you one thing that I can remember quite well.
I had learned how to Do cursive writing.
And this was before I went to school too.
My grandmother had a really lovely hand.
And so did my grandfather.
You could tell that they were taught how to write.
Anyway, I was copying a comic.
And I was doing it from the print to cursive writing.
But what I didn't know was that you stopped between each word.
It sounds pretty damn simple, but I can remember that asking my grandmother, how does this work now?
How do I do when I come to the end of this word and start the next one?
Just connect them and keep going?
Anyway, just an aside.
Well, it's simple when you learn it, but it's not necessarily obvious when you haven't learned it.
That's right.
Did you like school?
Yep.
Did you like school all the way through school?
Oh, no.
I'm sure there was periods of time when I was a teenager that I would sooner have been out farming or out helping on the farm.
In fact, I think I've got one report card that says something to the effect that if Walter attended more regularly, he would do much better.
Ah, and that would have been junior high?
Yeah, that was probably about grade nine, somewhere in there.
So what did you do when you skipped school?
I never do that.
You see, I hardly ever skipped school.
And every time I did, goddammit, you caught me.
I did it like three times.
One time I drove to Heinz Creek.
Oh, three times.
Really?
I tell you, it wasn't very often.
One time I drove to Heinz Creek to get away from you.
I thought, I'll drive to Heinz Creek.
He's not going to find me there.
And then on the way back from Heinz Creek, you drove by and waved at me.
I said, oh my God, he caught me again.
So ridiculous.
You weren't very inventive.
Not in that regard, that's for sure.
No, no.
So why did you stay with school?
You graduated.
Was that the standard routine?
Did most people graduate?
Or did most people drop out in grade 9 or grade 10?
Again, I don't really know.
I would think that the majority of kids of my generation probably finished school.
By that, I mean, went to grade 12.
Not all.
I mean, I can remember several of my friends dropping out prior to graduation, you know, in the grades before.
But a good many of them finished school.
Almost all my friends from junior high dropped out.
Many of them went and worked on oil rigs, and you can understand that to some degree.
Jobs probably weren't that plentiful at the time I got out of school, or was in school.
Great-grandpa had a band.
Yeah.
Well, I wouldn't say he had a band.
He was in a band.
What was the band?
Do you remember the name of the band?
No, hell no.
I don't know that.
That's way before my time.
Well, they still played.
I can remember seeing them play in the living room.
Once or twice.
You can remember some of them playing.
I think the majority of the ones that he played with in the band were probably long...
Gone.
Disappeared.
Was it a big band?
Oh hell, I have no idea.
I don't even know if you'd call it a band.
I'd call it a bunch of guys that got together to play for dances.
Dad was a pretty good guitar player, and he could sing.
Yeah, well I can remember Grandpa singing.
I mean, we don't have, I don't think we have any recordings of him singing, which is too bad.
But I can remember him singing.
Yeah, he had a pretty plaintive country voice, and he was a pretty good guitar player.
You made me a guitar, Grandpa.
Yeah, I've still got it.
It's downstairs here.
I know, it's in two pieces.
What happened was that in the closet, it was strung too tight, and the neck eventually worked loose from the body.
Oh.
I don't think I knew that.
Yeah, that's what happened to it.
I guess you're not supposed to leave a tightly strung guitar like that for too long, or perhaps I strung it too tightly, knowing very little about guitars.
Anyway, it's sitting behind a chair down in the basement.
When did you meet Mum?
Mm-hmm.
I would imagine that I probably met her when I went into grade 3 in Nacum.
What did you think of her?
I think that I thought she was wonderful right off the bat.
You think that?
Well, yeah, I kind of do.
I thought that about Tammy.
Yeah, well...
I was right, too.
Ha ha!
Yeah, so was I. Well, good.
Good for us.
Yeah.
What the hell do you think accounts for that?
Good luck.
Yeah.
She told me she kind of knew, too.
Well, I don't know...
I don't know that Beverly knew.
I mean, we weren't always good friends, even.
But...
Were you in the same grade?
Or was she one grade lower than you?
She was one grade lower than me.
Right.
Tam and I were in the same grade, so she was a year older than me because I was younger for the grade.
So that facilitates a friendship, being in the same grade.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
But don't forget, we were in the same room as the other grade because there were at least three grades in a room.
So we were probably in the same room much of the time.
When did you start going out?
Well, I think the first time we went out, we had been to a birthday party across the road from where we lived in Nakem.
And some kind of a game, she had to walk me home, which really entailed walking across the road a little bit farther.
So if you count that one, we were probably 10, 11 maybe?
And obviously you count that one.
Yeah.
When was the first time we went out?
I think probably...
It was I think I must have been through school grade 12 or past grade 12 and for some reason I knew that Beverly was babysitting at her brother's place that evening and so I went and knocked on the door and Uh,
said something witty like, ta-dum, I'm here, or I don't know what.
Anyway, I think that's the first time that we were together that way.
And then, I think we were together most of the time after that.
What drew you together, do you think?
Why was she attracted to you?
Do you know?
Oh, God only knows that.
Well, you were pretty good looking.
Oh, yeah.
I was really handsome, Rich.
Yeah.
No, I don't...
Well, maybe that was it.
No, I don't know.
She probably made a big mistake.
But anyway...
Well, you have your good qualities.
Such is life.
Yeah, fair enough.
What drew you to her?
Yeah...
What drew you to her?
What drew you to her?
What drew me to her?
Well, I told you.
I always thought she was something special.
And I probably followed her into Saskatoon when she When she went to take nursing, that was probably my main motivation.
So you said that you graduated high school and then you basically followed mum to Saskatoon.
Were you planning to go on to further education?
Yeah, I think I was.
When did you decide you wanted to be a teacher?
Oh...
I don't know.
I had a, you know, I had a couple of really good teachers in high school.
And maybe that was part of it, I don't know.
Joe Fofanoff and Frank DuPont.
What made them good?
Well, they were just, they were just They knew their subjects well, they taught well, and they were good people.
They were easy to get along with.
I did a lot of marking for Frank on the weekends and that kind of thing.
Maybe that was part of it.
I don't know.
These were men you respected?
Yep.
Yep.
Still do.
What made them good teachers?
Well, I told you.
Oh, yes.
They really knew their subject matter.
They were interesting to listen to.
And they were just good people.
And so you moved to the city.
How often had you been to Saskatoon before?
I mean, that's a pretty big city by NACUM standards.
How many times had I been there before?
Oh, I would guess you could probably count it on one hand.
So what did you think of Saskatoon?
It was fine.
Were you excited to be in the city or would you prefer, would you prefer the small town and the farm?
Oh, at that time I think I preferred the city.
I mean, there was lots going on and that kind of thing.
Did you have a good time in university?
Did I have a good time?
Yeah, I think so.
I had a car that wouldn't start when it was cloudy, but yeah, most of the time it was good.
Why wouldn't it start when it was cloudy?
Don't ask me.
It was the most perverse beast I ever had.
So, how old were you when you asked Mom to marry you?
You mean the first time?
How many times did you have to ask?
Oh, hell, I must have asked her...
I have no idea.
How many?
Oh yes, I bet you know exactly how many.
How many?
No, I don't know.
I tried to talk her into marrying me a number of times.
And she wanted to be a nurse and that was the first thing to get done and But yeah, no, I asked her more than once, I'm sure.
I think I asked Tammy five times.
Well, I don't think you have the record, but I'm not sure.
She asked me once too, so that worked out okay, the final analysis.
Oh, well, I don't recall Beverly.
She actually, well, she had come to Montreal to live with me, and we had discussed getting married, but she felt it was time.
And she actually asked me on, isn't it Sadie Hawkins Day?
Isn't that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was Little Abner.
We didn't even know it.
We didn't even know it.
It just happened that way.
You didn't even know it.
No.
So that was pretty funny.
Little Abner was just as real as Santa Claus, you know.
Yeah.
Well, that was a good deal.
It was a good deal, yeah.
Yeah, it was a good deal.
Would you say that you've had a happy marriage?
Yep, I would say I have had a happy marriage.
What was more important to you, your family or your career?
No doubt at all.
Family.
What was the best years you spent with your family?
Well, I think the best years were the years that you guys were home and growing up.
They were great years.
And of those years, younger kids, older kids, what was better for you?
Oh, I can't say that because it was all good.
No, there's no doubt.
That was the best time of my life.
Why?
Oh, who knows why?
Come on.
I think it's instinctive for some people.
Yeah, well, you're really good with little kids.
Well, I was, no doubt.
You seem to trust them.
Well, I seem to be relatively good at that, yeah.
And most little kids trusted me.
Yeah.
Not very many that I had shy away from me.
So you spent a lot of time with me when I was a little kid.
Yeah.
What do you remember about that particularly?
Well, what can I say?
What do I remember about it?
I don't know.
I remember quite a few things, but I don't know if any of them are god-awful important, you know?
Well, pick one.
Well, I remember the time that we hatched those chicks in the porch.
In Nippawad.
Yeah, that was cool.
That was interesting.
That was pretty good.
Yeah.
I remember driving home with you to Nacum a number of times and talking the whole time because you'd never stop asking questions.
Yeah, well, hasn't changed much.
No, I know.
You kind of are who you are.
Yep, that's right.
No, there were lots of good times, Jordan.
All good times.
I think I remember mostly, when I was a little kid, reading with you.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that was great.
That was so much fun.
I thought so.
Because what I remember, I was pretty little, but what I remember is that, well, first of all, we had a Dr.
Seuss book come every week or something like that because we were in a book club.
And you used to come home every night.
And after dinner, we would sit, lay on the rug.
We had one of those hooked rugs.
And we'd lay on the rug and you'd put your arm around me.
And away we'd go through one or two books.
And You taught me to read.
And I remember that going on for quite a long time.
And it was wonderful to have the attention.
And to be given that gift of literacy as well.
And to have it instilled in me at such a young age.
I loved reading.
It's really shaped my life in every possible way.
So, you know, and I remember, you know, one of the things that was different about you, we had our differences when I was a teenager.
Sounds kind of like the ones you had with your dad, you know, both stubborn.
And I, you know, I had hanging around with rough kids.
And we misbehaved a lot.
A lot of drinking and that sort of thing.
You put up with them.
That's about all you should have done, really, I suppose.
But...
Most of my friends, you know, they didn't have a good relationship with their fathers.
They had no respect for them.
I know.
Yeah, yeah.
It was really rough on them, those my friends.
Those are my teenage friends, or, you know, the ones in junior high.
Yeah, I know.
And, you know, when we were alone with my friends, they'd have a bad interaction with their dad or something, and they'd be pretty hard on him, badmouth him.
And I could tell they were mad, bitter, resentful, angry about it.
And they had their reasons, or hurt by it, or a combination of all those things, disobedience.
disappointed but I never felt that way I mean even when we had altercations yeah I knew that fundamentally despite whatever altercations we might have that you were on the side of my better angels let's say well Well...
Yeah, well, that's a tricky thing to manage, you know.
What was that?
Yeah, but it's a tricky thing to manage because when you have kids, you kind of, on the one hand, you want to like the kid, you know, but on the other hand, you want to like the kid that they could be even better.
So you have to kind of balance that acceptance and appreciation for who they are right now with a desire to foster further development.
And I think mothers sort of specialize in the former and dads to some degree specialize in the latter.
It's not that cut and dried, obviously.
But the fact that you had belief in my potential...
It has always been of inestimable value.
And one of the things that really hurt me when I went on tour and talked to so many people was that that was so lacking for so many people.
You know, they didn't have someone who really had their back, like really, when the chips were down.
Both you and Mom, I knew of that.
I knew that that was true.
And that gives you kind of a foundation underneath you, you know?
Well, you obviously had it with your grandparents and your mother.
Yep.
I don't know what it would be like to grow up without that.
You know?
You'd be pretty lost.
Pretty alone.
Yeah, well, there's no doubt it would be tough.
Anyhow, we...
Mom and I always said we were young and dumb, so everything goes well.
Yeah, well, what's been the most challenging part of your marriage, Dad?
What's been the most challenging part of being married?
Because you've been married how long now?
I don't know, 60...
I don't know, 64 years?
Something like that.
Yeah, well, that's a long time.
We got married in 60.
What does that make it?
61.
61.
Yeah, it just feels like 64.
Yeah, it just feels like 64.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Most challenging thing.
Jesus Christ.
I don't know.
I guess maybe the most challenging thing is trying to be a decent person because I have a lot of trouble with that.
What do you mean?
Well, just that.
What do you have to control?
Well, I... I'm very stubborn.
I guess probably quite opinionated.
And very vocal.
All those things can cause problems.
And I know that they've caused problems for your mum.
Yeah, well, Mum's kind of a gentle person, although she's got a spine.
Yep, she's a good person.
Yeah, she is a good person.
She's easy to get along with.
She laughs a lot.
She's friendly, outgoing.
Yeah, I can't ever remember really having a fight with Mum, you know?
And when we were kids and we used to make her upset, you know, because we were rambunctioning around too much, and we made her upset, that always made us feel guilty because, you know, mom didn't get upset.
If you made mom upset, you were probably being bad.
So, we just feel guilty about it.
So, yeah, well, you know, being stubborn and opinionated and assertive has its virtues, too.
Well, it may have its virtues, but they are making it very difficult for us.
Yeah, well, it's not easy to negotiate continually with someone under the same house.
And you and Mum are quite different in many ways, too.
So, you have those temperamental divides to cross.
I mean, she's more extroverted and social than you are.
Yeah, I wouldn't say I was extroverted and social.
No, well, you took my personality test, right?
I mean, you were assertive on the extroverted scale, but low in enthusiasm, whereas mom is high in enthusiasm and not as assertive.
Jesus, you remember things too long.
Yeah, well, I was curious, you know.
Yeah, well, it's probably true.
Yeah, well, I didn't...
You know, I gotta say, when I grew up, I never saw you really back down.
So that was something.
No.
You, uh...
I don't back down very often and I'll be damned if I'm going to back down to this government No.
Or whatever in the hell we've got.
So when are we going to see each other again, do you think?
Well...
I guess when you come to see me.
Because I can't go anywhere.
And I can't see...
I can't see it changing.
Yeah, I'm not very happy about that.
No, I'm not neither.
But I gotta live with me too.
Yeah, I know.
I'll come up.
I got my tour routing pretty soon.
Yep.
I'll figure it out and come up.
Good.
Got anything else you want to say?
What's the best relationships you've ever had in your life?
The best relationship.
Yeah.
Oh.
I guess for me, your mother, you, Bon, Joel.
Yeah, well, you know, in our culture, kids, they get a bad rap, you know?
But one thing, if you're careful, You can have the best relationships you've ever had in your life with your kids.
That's really something.
The thing is, they pay you back for, you know, people think of kids as this, like, interruption in their life or an inconvenience or...
No.
No.
That's not right.
They're the best thing that ever happens to you if you're careful.
You're right.
Anyway, we should probably quit.
Yeah, before we can't talk.
Before we can't talk.
Off to the UK tomorrow.
Yeah, well, we wish you luck.
Thank you.
I don't think you need it, but it never hurts to have a little...
It's good to have some luck, too.
Yeah, it's going to be an incredibly exciting trip.
Ridiculously exciting trip.
It's a ridiculously privileged trip.
I will.
I'll call you.
▲
Export Selection