Chuck's at a demolition derby in Lind Washington. This is eastern washington wheat growin land. Not a lot of water. Not real profitable. This isn't just any demolition derby. It's a combine demolition derby. You know that scene in cars when they go tractor tippin' and the idea is the tractors are sheeep and then the combine is the angry bull? Those things,the giant machines the types of which regular city folk have never operated anything near as large. The closest I've ever gotten to something like that is when I rented a uhaul to move. Imagine doing a demolition derby in one of those, but way bigger and harder to operate. A combine isn't just a car that picks up wheat. It's a real piece of heavy machinery.
Linn is a struggling town in a lot of ways. fifteen years back they were coming up with fund raising ideas and the combine demolition derby was the winning idea. Gets bigger every year. Now it's 100% what the town is known for. If you've heard of Lind Washington and you don't know someone that lives there, this is why.
It's a dangerous thing, some folks have gotten hurt pretty bad. But the Lion's club that hosts the event doesn't make anyone sign waivers or anything. It's just understood that everyone's doing this at their own risk.
These are the old combines. They haven't been in use for years and this demolition derby is the only time they get out of the barn all year. The first couple rounds of the Derby are pretty smooth. Full slot of combines, no one gets hurt, everyone is having a good time. But the later rounds when folks have to get their combine fixed up ASAP to give it another shot are rough. There's supposedly a 30 minute limit on fixing your combine between rounds. But if there aren't enough combines to do a round, they just wait until enough of them are fixed up enough to go.
The theory of the last round is supposed to be that the winners of the previous rounds go at it to crown a champion. But there aren't enough winners that are in shape enough to go another round. So it ends up being 3 winners and the other 6 are just combines that are in good enough shape to go for it again.
This chapter kinda reminds me of the wrestling chapter. Year after year these guys come back here for this one activity. They're all gonna be in big time pain tomorrow. Brings em together. Keeps 'em a tight knit bunch. They need this sort of thing to look forward to every year. Farming wheat in the dry eastern washington land is hard.
my life as a dog pg 55
Chuck starts out talking about how largely anonymous life as a whiteguy is. Chuck dresses up as a dog and his friend dresses up like a bear and they go have some fun in Seattle. They go into the seattle art museum and they sell them tickets, but then they kick them out. They wander around a mall and they get a lot of attention. The kind of attention he never gets as a white guy. Attention like security follwoing you around and walkie talkying your location.
confessions in stone pg 61
Chuck's talking to different guys that have built castles. Most of them in Washington State. Likely cause Chuck lives in Portland. Probably there's lots of castles elsewhere in the country but he's not talking about them cuase he doesn't live there. Lots of cool talk about castle building. A lot of people just build canstles out of cement. They look like castles, but they have a lot of temperature and moisture problems. One guy described them as just really big basements.
The way cooler way to build a castle is to start with a rebar inner core, build useful things like plumbing and electricity and computer networking cables. Then you put insulation around that and you build stone walls to make it like a castle. You build it up like that floor by floor. The coolest way to heat a castle is with pipes int eh floor that are heated by a boiler. It heats the stone real nice and it keeps that heat real good. It'll stay relatively warm for three days after the hot water goes.
The bigger deal you've gotta factor in before you do anything is what the local building permit process is. One of these guys built a castle in Washington and found it to be a bit of a challenge. He wanted to make it 40 feet tall, but the highest you're allowed to build a house where he lived was 36 because that's how big the fire ladders can go. One guy ended up building his castle too big and it was declared a commercial building and he had to completely redo the way he was gonna have wiring, plumbing, etc. so that it was all conduits. But in the end, he was much happier with it. There's a lot of good reasons that building departments make you do things a certain way based on the size of your building. Idaho is much more wild westy. You start building a castle there and they pretty much let you do whatever.
Lots of cool talk about what life living in a castle is like. One of the big things is that none of these guys ever seem to finish the castle, so you're living in a building thta' salso a construction site. One guy had his whole family basically living in 1,000 square feet of their HUGE castle because he wasn't ever able to get the rest of the castle built up to the point where it was inhabitable. It was cool to have parties in and what not, but it wasn't great for living. Also, you're an attractive nuisance. People are always tresspassing if they can see you from the road. That's why a lot of these guys finish the first castle and kinda get sick of it and then build another castle situated so it's not visible from the road. It's a lot less annoying when there aren't a bunch of people poking around at the building you live in.
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