impromptu podcast
We had a horrible flight home last night from Salt Lake City to Houston. Horrible as in really bad turbulence so that plane dipped and tilted so much my stomach was doing flips. I am normally great at falling asleep on airplanes but I couldn’t fall asleep under the circumstances. So I leaned my head against the side of the plane and proceeded to listen to the two and a half hour conversation between the two men sitting behind us. It wasn’t so much a conversation as it was one man creating a solo impromptu podcast. I’ve met a lot of talkers in my short life, but this man definitely takes the cake. Streaming from one topic to another topic effortlessly and really indifferent to whether the person he’s talking to has any opinion on what he’s talking about.
I’d like to offer a summary of topics discussed:
- He described his landscaping/construction business in great detail and the variety of clients he has. He has completed several projects for multi-family buildings, apartment complexes, dormitories at the University of Texas. Although he does not do interior work, he does occasionally install a granite counter for a family member or for personal use. “Usually the architect will tell us what they want and we will execute it. If the architect knows what he wants and tells us where he wants us to start and end, then we can do that. And if the architect doesn’t know what he wants, then we’ll tell them what to do. That’s how it usually works.” He then explained that most of the Mormon temples in Salt Lake City use granite exclusively and the most recent temple construction he knows about flew in granite from Italy. “Although granite and other construction both have the same basic principles, it’s really just another beast. It’s real precise.”
- He then talked about the stock market in 1990s and that his wife kept telling him to take his money out of it because they were losing so much but he was glad they didn’t because they ended up making millions off of the stock market. He whispered the word “millions”.
- When he couldn’t find a good way to transition into his next topic, he made his own. ” You know golf? I love golf. You know, years ago, when companies made golf clubs, they would send their design ideas to all of the physics research departments at the major universities like Stanford, Harvard and the University of Chicago where they would test how adjustments to a golf club could make it better. This whole process could take from 9 to 12 months before the design could go into production. But then this guy went to China to see what they could do there. They showed their designs to the people in China and the manufacturer said that they would make a prototype for it. The guy asked how long it would take and the manufacturer said Tuesday. Isn’t that something? They’d have it ready in a few days! But that’s not the kicker. The real kicker is that when they met on Tuesday, the manufacturer said that they were able to do some testing and they made some modifications to the original design because when they put it in a wind tunnel, they found out that if it had a lower center of gravity, it would hit the ball better. In three days, they had already made improvements to the new design. And when they asked how long it would take to make 10,000 golf clubs, the manufacturer said about 1 to 2 months. And the real kicker is that it turns out that each golf club was about 1/120 of the price that they had originally anticipated.”
- I guess China reminded him of poor places because then he started talking about all the people he knew who went on missions to impoverished places. “I knew a guy who was called on a mission to go to Nigeria, and he was telling me about the corruption and debauchery of the government there. They literally siphon all the money from the funds that other countries give them. They do that on the Ivory Coast as well. I knew a guy who went to some other place in Africa to help them develop their electrical system and give them power so they could have light at night. He would describe it to them as the magic of light. Isn’t that a fantastic term: magic of light!”
- Then he talked about the Mormon gospel and how there were red Indians and white Indians but the white Indians all died off first. But that they were really smart people and there were skulls that were found that had holes in them and the reason there were holes was because they were performing complex brain surgery. “They were really smart folks. They were able to control cerebral pressure… we didn’t start doing that until 1954!”
- When the flight attendant announced that we were starting our descent, he launched into a full mormon pitch. “I was really mixed up because I was raised Methodist and I didn’t know about all of this Mormon stuff they were telling me. But then I asked God if this church was true, and one day I heard a voice that said, ‘My son, you asked if this church is true. It is.’ And that was it. That was in 1970 so it was 39 years ago and I don’t regret it. My brothers and sisters, they see the goodness to it, but they refuse to give up their smoking and drinking. And their kids see them drinking and smoking, so they do the same. But there’s more to this life than this life. It’s like how the Lord’s prayer says it, ‘as it is on earth, it will be in heaven.’ Except they won’t have their alcohol and tobacco and the other things they’re attached to.”
Haha I’m actually missing a lot of the good quotes but I’m exhausted from writing this. What a guy.
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