Episode #150 How Some of This Happened

Yah, that’s a big ol’ pile of just what you think it is. Such were our Saturday mornings. Some say I’ve never stopped shoveling it. That’s me on the left, Jed on the right, John in the middle with a broken pitcher pump handle. Heifer got to rampaging, as I recall.

Howdy folks:

Grateful to say we’ve had a surge of new subscribers. So today’s episode is a general welcome from Mike, in which—drawing on the photo above and those below—he recounts just how unlikely it was that he’d wind up writing and performing for a living, and how his blue collar, working class, roughneck, whatever-you-wanna-call-it upbringing turned out to be perfect preparation for what is, after all, basic self-employment.

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Put myself (green shirt) through nursing school working on a Wyoming ranch. This was irrigation season.

Oil rig on the ranch. I fell off the top step, knocked myself cold on the bottom step. One of four ranch concussions. Three others were from amateur boxing, hitting my head on a log, and getting blasted by a bull. Wyoming: The concussion state!

Blurry old snapshot, but one of my favorites. I cut those windrows. They were a mile long. Elk Mountain out my cab window every day. Earning tuition, wondering about the world. So young, but I didn’t know it.

Got my EMT license in 1988, been carrying a pager ever since. Started keeping a journal on this job. Thinking maybe one day I’d write about making ambulance calls. Partner Robin (R) went into law enforcement. Ran into him this summer at the airport. He was flying his own plane. We sure did rack up some runs.

Started calling myself a freelance writer, wound up going all over the country for years, just gathering up stories. This time it was a crazy car racing article for a trucking magazine. I remember sleeping in my car at the top of the mountain so I could get the story from the get-go.

This building changed my life.

One of my many mentors. Celebrating his 100th birthday. Started out picking tobacco.

Yep.

The book that started it all.

The latest book.

Everything else.

Mike’s bio.

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Thanks again. See y’down the road.