The Chilly Effect is sponsored by Walt Street, Window dot Com and listeners like
you Yeah now, undated, voyce and check Chelly July twelve. I think
it's the twelfth, July twelve, twenty three, allegedly, according to that
thing we call a calendar, this is indeed the show you were looking for,
because you're hearing me say all of this stuff. Anyway, welcome to
it. It's Wednesday. It's the wild Card as produced by Nature Boy.
And you know that means we have no idea what the theme is, what
the guests could be. Uh. Sometimes I don't even know who the guest
is going to be, although we've been a little better about that lately.
I get a heads up, but sometimes I get surprise guests, and sometimes
I get guests that well, frankly I might not have booked, I might
have overlooked. And it's always interesting because Dave brings on people that are unique
one way or another. If if you don't know what I'm talking about,
weight and ec who shows up next two weeks on here we're gonna have the
return of the Cross Cross if I can get it out, the cross dressing
Trump Supporter will be back on. If you don't know who that is,
and you haven't been listening to the Wednesday shows, You're gonna find that real
interesting, late, Lady Maga Usa. But anyway, I would prefer to
talk to people who write books. I really would people who write books,
people who make documentary films. I love exploring that stuff because it's my favorite
time to media outside of talk radio. Anyways, RC Hand, Okay,
who am I talking about? An interesting author? Now, I'm going to
refer to him as Ray during the discussion, but if you find his books,
RC Hand would be the name you find him under. And if you
go to just to make sure I got my notes all straight here, if
you go to Cowboy Productions fifty two dot com. Okay, I've got a
bookmark, and there's a reason and for it. It's an interesting story.
This gentleman has a personal story. He's an author interesting style of writing actually,
which I've only gotten a sliver a look at. Actually, so this
is one of those situations where I'm not familiar with their entire canon of the
author's work, But I'm telling you right now that just his bio and his
introduction on the website are worthy of your exploration. And why I might be
able to connect it to in a vague sort of way, part of the
audiobook that I've been putting out for you guys, in case you haven't caught
it, That is going to go back into production and we're going to continue
from chapter eleven soon because we're writing that in real time and editing it for
you guys. If you don't know about that, check it out at o'chelly
dot com, which also, by the way, is back too fully functional,
and the podcast will be coming out through the website once again. But
if you've been hearing us on Apple or wherever else we've we've gotten through the
regular feeds. We are where most podcasts are except YouTube. But if you
need video, ROCKFN and oh, by the bye, this show is also
being recorded for ROCKFN, so you might be watching me. Sorry about that.
I'll give you something better to look at, my guest, RC hand,
How are you doing to night start? First of all, I've got
an interesting way to begin this conversation, I hope, But first I want
to find out how you're doing, and you know, what's it like for
you on a Wednesday here in human I'm in human land. I don't know
where you're located exactly, But how you doing. What's the weather, like,
what's going on? I'm great. I live in Hinton Beach, California,
and we're right on the beach. Weather it's seventy or so. It's
beautiful, excellent, excellent. Well, look, I do want to talk
about your books more than the weather, that's for sure. You do have
connections to Atlanta, according to your website. I guess we'll get into that
at some point, and also where you grew up and things like that.
Matter of fact, let's go right for it. I tell stories about spending
a lot of time when I was a kid, starting at about the age
of six, in a bar. A lot of people don't know about that.
That's maybe something that's sort of gone away, But there used to be
a time when parents would bring occasionally, if they had a relationship with their
bartender, they would bring their small children into the bar and sit us on
a stool in a back corner. Now, we weren't officially part of anything.
As a matter of fact, we were supposed to be exactly like children
were, you know, seen, not heard, and not seen very often
and stay in the back corner while mom and dad do whatever. And well,
if you guys are familiar with my story, you know Mom was the
one taking me to the bar. But anyway, all that or element,
it's an interesting culture and subculture to be involved in on that side of the
bar. Turns out, according to your bio, though, you might have
been more like a friend I had named Chris at one point, who I
found very strange because his parents owned a bar. They were very very Christian
people, and they owned a bar, and they owned one of the cedious
joints in my town, which I found interesting. The very Christian people owned
a very rough sort of joint where listen, I'm gonna be blunt. I
mean, drug dealing was going on, prostitution was going on. The bartender
knew it, but somehow separated that from his Christian life. And he had
a very nice, shy son named Chris, and also another one named Michael,
come to think of it, who were just these really cool kids and
everything. And I got to know them briefly, but only because they were
on one side of the bar helping out mom and dad, and I was
on the other just being tucked away and kept quiet while Mom was doing whatever
she was doing at the bar. Now that wasn't the place that I hung
out in primarily, but it was right down the street from it and an
entry place in town. You were one of those kids on the other side
of that bar who might have been just you know, part of a family
business or what. How did that? How did that happen? That's correct.
My parents were Mormons, by the way, so that's a similarity in
your story. My father was a plaster and he worked on Disneyland out here
in Anaheim, and when that union job started to slowdown, he went out
looking for jobs to do on his own, and he went to bid a
plasterin job on a vacant bar and restaurant and ended up taking up the lease
and we ran it for ten years. Interesting, yet, my father did
work in some of the bars before he died that I wound up hanging out
in when Mom took me because before that we had babysitters. But do you
recall, you know, being around that when you were young, that there
were you know, kids like me on the other side of the bar,
or some people think I actually made that up, like that wasn't a thing,
but I assure you it was. Did you remember kids me on the
other side, Well, I have to say that in California, if you
serve food, you're bona fide eating establishment. They allow children into that building.
So because of that we had children now, and then that we had
three separate rooms. So the front of the building was a restaurant, the
second person of the building was a bar with pool tables and shuffleboard and games,
and the back room was a giant dance hall that was open on Saturday
nights where we had light entertainment. Oh nice, a multi leveled, multi
purpose kind of place. So fancier than the bucket of blood that I was
hanging out in, So definitely likely, not likely, not very fancy.
No, it sounds like it, okay, Well tell me about that.
Also, quick note for the listeners in case you don't know it, Mormon's
not the drinking folk, so interesting that they would have an establishment that serves
alcohol, again separating business from their own personal beliefs. But go ahead and
tell us about this though, because it sounds like an interesting place, whether
it's fancy or not. Well, we were on the edge of civilization at
that time. Anything west of us was farm fields, tomatoes and beans,
and the police were reticent about coming into our establishment. It was a ethnic
bar we were in. It located in a predominantly Hispanic area, and I
grew up. After school every day I would come in with my brothers.
I was six at the beginning of this adventure, and we swept and mopped
and loaded boxes full of beer and clean bathrooms. And my older brother bought
me a shoeshine box, and by the time I was that was shining shoes
and he was getting a piece of the action off of that. And we
had two pool tables, so I was shooting pool when I was eight nine
years old. And we lived there until I was about sixteen, maybe fifteen.
And again there were a very few other groups of people that would venture
into this establishment. It was a real bar, lots of anagan's going on,
shooting, stabbings and the like, and I got to sit back and
watch a lot of that. Ah, So it wasn't that much different than
the place I was in. Accept no dance hall, okay, I get
it um. And just for the record, in case people aren't watching the
video, if you're just hearing the audio podcast, you're you're kind of a
white guy. It looks like to me, I mean that's my best guess,
and that's what people would say if they saw you. Right, You're
just you know, you're you're a run of the mill honky so to speak.
That's a joke. Well under these under these lights coming through my den
window, I do appear that way, Okay. In real life, I'm
a little more brown, and most often if I go to a restaurant to
eat Mexican food, I'm spoken to in Spanish, and I do speak Spanish
fairly well. My father spoke Spanish better than I because he was in construction.
But yeah, I'm not offended at all, but people speak to me
in Spanish. Okay, no fair enough, But but you do look like
a white guy under the lights there Again, lights can be deceiving. That's
right. At this moment, I look pretty white. Well at that time.
Did your family sort of blend in with it because you said it was
primarily a Hispanic sort of or you know, I guess that's not proper to
say anymore Latino whatever it is you want to call it. But um,
you know, people that speak Spanish in one form or another were your primary
customer base and the people coming in and out. Uh, did you seem
to be part of that according to or were you separate from that? Oh,
I was right in the milieu there. My father spoke perfect Spanish,
and he had dark hair and very gregarious person. He played the guitar,
the piano, the violin, and he would play the guitar in our restaurant
sometimes. And people love my dad. He was very easy to like and
get to know, and he was a perfect emperasario for this kind of establishment.
Ah, So we were there lots of different kinds of businesses around.
Like were you in a business district? I mean, because you kind of
said you were on the edge of civilization. I'm trying to draw out the
full picture before I just let you run with a story here, because I'm
trying to get the whole setting in my mind. You know, it's California,
first of all. That's a little different than a lot of other places.
You got nice weather most of the year, like we started out talking
about at the beginning of the show. Right, absolutely tell us about that,
though, I mean the rest of it, like what was it surrounded
by? Were there other things around, other businesses or were you in a
neighborhood? I mean, we were in a neighborhood. We were in a
Latin Hispanic neighborhood. There was a dairy a couple of blocks south of US,
and directly across the street from US was a liquor store in an Arco
gas station, and everything west was mostly fields. And so yeah, we
had a lot of local people live in the area that would come through.
And the farmers. We had Japanese farmers. They would come in and buy
a sake and sit in a corner and have a quiet little party by themselves.
They couldn't speak English, and they'd come in and their work attire with
the big rubber boots and have a grand old time drinking three courts sasaki in
the corner. Well, outside of learning to wash dishes, mop floors,
and again no offense, that's something that's got to be constantly done in a
bar and a restaurant. But outside of doing that, I mean, what
other things do you think that early experience gave you outside of probably a lot
of good stories that I'm sure you've written about, Uh, you know,
tell us about that a little bit. Outside of the experiences, what other
skills do you think that gave you in a life well as a child,
all my friends were adult criminals and drug addicts and alcoholics, and I had
to fend for myself around adults, and sometimes these people would be less than
pleasant. Most often they thought of me as their little child, perhaps our
little brother, and we're very gracious to me. I want to add that
my father was an alcoholic, and so we had issues with that quite often
in the in the in the years and my growing years in my life.
So this was a perfect habitat for him to behave badly and my mother,
of course had to deal with that on a daily basis, and he joined
in the fun with everybody else, and again we were welcome with open arms.
I have to say that I have a very deep warm spot in my
heart for the Hispanic community because they treated me so well. At the same
time, those that I was dealing with were the ones who were the least
well behaved, and so you'd have to duck now and then for a flying
pool queue or you know. I was in a room where people were shot
and sliced up with knives and so on and so forth, so it kept
you on your toes, but it made me appreciate listening to these stories and
being around adults who were not very successful in the world around them. They
most of were coming in and going back to prison or jail and for any
number of reasons. And I took that information and used it to formulate a
way of living. And I didn't have to make those same mistakes that those
people may in order to learn from them. And so I look at that
as a valuable education that kept me on the straight and narrow, so to
speak. Oh, that's a good way to summarize the complete education that you
would have gotten. You might have been dealing with some of the well,
depending on the location there. Now again I'm still painting a mental picture here.
You might have had a couple of ethnic motorcycle gangs out there, you
know at that point, Yeah, they would have existed out there. Did
did you encounter organized guys as well as you know, your run of the
mills sort of knock around guys that were again in and out of prison because
or in and out of county jail at least and then sometimes go into prison
depending on what level they were at. I mean, were you around those
kind of guys too, or were just you know, part of the hell
raisers set as well? We had local gang members, and we had motorcycle
gangs, and we had low riders that would come in occasionally. My neighborhood
around that place was full of guys with their cars lowered and customized and painted
in lovely different ways. And I was the local. My nickname was Wetto,
which means white boy, and I would go from house to house in
the morning, having a breakfast and two or three different houses, and everyone
knew me and welcome me in with open arms. And I looked back on
those times fondly. So at what point did you decide to write about that
experience and begin telling this story, which again has endless possibilities. Different directions
you could go in. You could sort of tell somebody else's story, or
you could begin with something from the bar if you wanted to. I mean,
there's lots of different ways to go in different ways. You could have
learned about this and decided to again make a capsule out of the story and
present it to others. When did you decide to do that? I started
writing in grammar school. I wrote my first book I was in sixth grade.
It was about Little league baseball. And in high school I wrote short
stories and poetry and I worked with my father for all of my life until
he retired at twenty eight. I did ten years internship with him in our
plastering business, and I worked in thousands of people's homes all over. One
morning, I might be in the forest neighborhood in town. In the next
hour, I'd be in the wealthiest neighborhood. So I saw all spectrums of
life working with my father, and my characters in my books are very I
think, highly developed, and I have to be very careful that not all
of them are stereotypical drunks and nerdy Wells. But I find myself creating someone
and creating an environment, and pretty soon I'm back in a bar somewhere.
I have stories about detectives and boxers and any number of things that are a
little bit on the senior side of life, among a couple other books that
are a historical fiction. So I write a wide range of things. But
those characters that I met influenced me eventually, and I do have a beginning
to an autobiography of my life. I cross passed with some famous performers,
so I contain a turner came through our place early in their career, Jimmy
Rogers. We had Contin Floss, who was the highest paid performer in the
world back in those days. He made eighty or one hundred movies. In
Mexico, he did a burlesque floor show with singing and dancing and so forth.
Looked like a Mexican version of Charlie Chaplin. So we had all different
We had Mariachi's coming in from Mexico. My dad used to go to Tijuana
to hire them and bring them back across the border, and he used to
tease me about me not having papers and perhaps not being able to get back
across the border. Well, look, you ended up being exposed to a
variety of characters that allow you all sorts of texture where you could fictionalize almost
anything. You know, because of all these different walks of life, you
were exposed to different elements, different types of people, different neighborhoods. You
know, a lot of stuff that is part of the invisible side of America.
You know, the stuff they don't always show us on TV, the
stuff that they don't always think is the best, you know, a fodder
for short stories and whatnot. I mean, right now, we're dealing with
a trend where they've gone back to the cowboys, you know what I mean.
In modern media and things like that, that's a constant go back.
But a lot of this stuff that went on, I think during the twentieth
century is not supposed to be talked about in polite company. But you could
mix up characters and create composites with a lot of great references here, just
based on your early and then later on life experiences. It seems like it
was custom made for you to have lots of references to be able to create
literary characters and interesting people, whether they were based on real people entirely or
again they were a mishmash, a composite. Very interesting. One last little
question here before I let you run, and I'd love to hear just one
story that you know, just a short story if you don't mind that that
gives us an indication of what you're what you're writing is like, Um,
you mentioned your father was also a musician, uh, and I find it
hilarious that he was a Mormon alcoholic. I'm sorry. I know that that's
probably not funny to a lot of people, but to me it always was
because I always found it interesting that, uh, you know, in a
bar, you could find somebody who was a proud, screaming alcoholic, you
know, who didn't care and that was their thing and they got their drink
on. And then you had others that would kind of, you know,
be be hidden, closeted, so to speak, um, and you could
find them in the same place. Sometimes really interesting people that if they ran
into each other in the grocery store, either one of them might not even
want to acknowledge the other one's existence. But in the bar they come together.
Yeah, because there's a common ground and it's the booze. And uh,
you know again, I'm not trying to mock people's problems. I know,
booze destroys people's lives and things like that, so I'm not I'm not
trying to be a jerk about it. But I do find it ironic that
the Mormon is an alcoholic. I saw stuff like that too, and have
Mormon family members as well. But I always find that interesting when there's this
huge amount of hypocrisy, which is something that I saw a lot when I
was on the other side of the bar. And my place wasn't a restaurant,
even though they served a little bit of food. It was one of
those kind of places, you know, where they got the small kitchen,
make a couple of sandwiches, that kind of thing. But anyway back to
it, though, you really had a guaranteed, like a whole education laid
in front of you about the human condition really so that you could build complex
characters. You could relate lots of stories. I wonder if there's one short
one that you could give us that would that would indicate to us what a
lot of that was like, that would give us a snapshot, so to
speak of that number one. Number two, you mentioned that your dad had
been into music. Did you ever perform or learn to play an instrument or
sing or anything like that as well, because that's yet another subculture. Uh,
you know a construction person, that's a subculture. A you know,
a bar, you know the bar scene. That kind of thing is another
stuff. It's like you have all these subcultures that you had access to.
D Did you ever get into the music land if you will? Because your
dad based on working with the mariachi's, having talents on his own, having
a bar, there's a ballroom there. There's all sorts of possibilities where you
could have been. I don't know, swept more into entertainment as opposed to
a construction, you know, for lack of a better term. So could
you give me an idea about that and then give me a story in short
form? Obviously that gives us an idea what that snapshot is like. That
shows us, you know, where you could find a diverse um source if
you will, or diverse sources for characters and storytelling. So yeah, two
question, were you ever into music at all? And did that go anywhere?
And two could you give us a composite where it gives us a snapshot
of how you have access to all these different people and what that might have
fed you know, given give us an idea about that. Good. Well,
all of my siblings and I I had two older brothers and a younger
sister, were all six years apart. We all took music lessons. I
played the tenor saxophone, my sister played the violin and flute, and my
brother played the violin. We I did not go into it in a deeper
sense than either did my siblings, but we all have that skill, and
mine probably lesser of the three of us. I had two brothers who these
are customers and associates. That came into our bar. Two brothers. One
was Leko, who was a fellow about six foot tall, about three hundred
and fifty pounds, and he had a barbershop in his house and that's where
I would go to get my haircut. And he had little It wasn't in
his house per se, but he had a shed built on the side with
the three or four sheet supply we basically and his wife was as big as
your baby finger. And he was just this enormous fellow. And he would
trim your hair with a piece of broken glass around your ear. He used
a piece of glass, or at least he held that up to me and
made me believe that that's what he used to trim the hair around my ears.
And his brother's name was Pepe, and he weighed about one hundred pounds
of wet and he was a cat burglar. He was a three time loser.
Was he specialized in stealing automobiles and breaking into your house while you were
sleeping, and going through your clothing and your drawers for looking for valuables.
Whenever we locked my mom locked the keys to our car in our car,
we would call Pepe and he would come and he picked the lock to our
car and let us back in. So those are a couple of glimpses of
people that I grew up with, and they were wonderful guys. I had
another friend who had had the tip of his ear on the top of his
ear bit off in a barroom brawl, and they sowed that piece of ear
into his chest to keep the tissue alive, and he never went back to
have it reattached. So he had one ear that looked like tinkerbell, little
pointed ear like spot perhaps. And and I would say these gentlemen every day
because they were constant. Their only source apparently of entertainment, and their only
hobby was coming in and drinking beer all day long. Nice. Nice,
And they would obviously be surrounded arms. All right, I don't know are
you hearing? Okay, sorry about that. I don't know technology, you
know. Anyways, it's interesting to me when you when you hear about there's
two characters in the same family there, right, that are definitely interesting.
One guy's got the interesting star. That's definitely a conversation starter. The other
guy, you know, kind of a character playing around with you about cutting
your hair with glass. That's that's pretty funny. Now, what's fascinating to
me is those two guys could be con I'm sorry, I've lost you.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not sure why. I know I'm broadcasting.
So what I was saying is that they could run into all sorts of different
people at the bar, right, so, you know, tell me about
the different interactions, like if they interacted with somebody who came from out of
town who is not familiar with the area. How did they deal with strangers?
Were they sociable? Did they keep to themselves? Tell me about that.
I think that, like you said before, that bar becomes an open
house for everyone to come in. And as long as you behave yourself,
you already have a common interest. And if you keep your hands to yourselves
and don't become obnoxious, you can sit there as long as you'd like.
We actually had a fellow who would come in and talk to the owner of
the building. He would sit at the end of the bar. He was
the local whino, and he would talk to the owner of the building,
who had died about fifteen years before. So he was hallucinating that he was
talking to a life person, perhaps when he'd been dead for many many years,
and we would let him stay until he began getting obnoxious towards our waitresses
and making gestures and so forth, and my brothers would pick him up,
and they had tossed him physically through we had saloon door tight doors. They
would through those saloon doors and count the times that he balanced as he hit
the concrete outside. But he always came back. This was his second home,
I suppose. Ah, Okay, So I got a couple other questions.
You know, first of all, fascinating that you write your first book
when you're a kid, But you know, when you decided to put out
your did that get released in everything? I mean it was published right away?
Or was it just no that that never did. It's a gut loss
to history somewhere. I have no idea. We moved around quite a bit
so much. Sure, Okay, So then tell me about the first BOOKCAT
published. Then, since we can't reference that first book directly, you know,
we can't show anybody else at what was the first BOOKCAT published? I
have a book on Amazon called The Adventures of the Smith Family. It's an
eighteenth century English adventure romance novel about a young boy who comes from a poor
family with nothing, and with a little bit of skill and a little bit
of luck, is able to leave his village and move to a bigger town
and create an empire and become wealthy. It's the first book of two books.
The second book is called Sailing Away, and there they take place during
the American Revolution in England, and the second book is a sailing adventure from
London to the a training and down the coast of Africa to South Africa and
perhaps back to London if all goes well. Interesting. So that's part of
your historical fiction you were talking about, like where it's got, you know,
gives you an idea of the time period and a lot of other things.
How much how much real world is in that? Well? I do
historical research. I when I do write something, I try to make it
as truthful and the correct as possible. That story is really the story of
my life, coming from a family with nothing and using the tools that you
have at hand to venture out into the world and become successful. And of
course if you have the determination, you can accomplish anything. It hasn't a
lot to do with your brain power. It's how hard you're willing to work
and how determined you are to succeed in my case, I see, the
failure is not an option. Excellent. Well, you know another thing that
comes to my mind as you mentioned that there were pool tables in the back
of the place. Now, let's just be straight and blunt about it.
Were you a hustler or were you just enjoying the game and played a little
I mean, quite frankly, I wounded up making a little money hustling and
wound up getting the attention of the local Italian businessmen after somebody tried to whack
me out with a pool que actually, which is one of my favorite stories
to tell from my life, and it got me a little bit of respect.
You know, at the age of eight, okay, we have we're
living in a parallel universe. My skills were highly developed, and I never
played for money if anyone, but I wish I had a nickel for every
quarter I put in that pool table ire somewhere, because I spent a lot
of time leaning over those tables. I'm not granted algebraic, except I'm good
at geometry, which you use that geometry on the pool table. I've got
that down pretty well. Oh yeah, excellent. I mean, look,
I never even focused on the fancy shots or anything. I just you know,
focused on the fundamentals and did the best I could. And quite frankly,
it was a matter of survival. I could earn enough money to eat,
okay, if I did that, because Mom didn't have a lot of
money. She was at the bar. But that's another story, you know.
So I had to come up with my own chips and stuff. I
mean, they gave me the soda for free, thankfully, but everything else
I had to earn for the day. I also find it funny about the
shoeshine thing, because I'm very sure you had packs of matches in your shoeshine
box so you could light people's cigarettes. That was a big thing. Another
thing people questioned when I told the story about it that I used to actually
get occasionally pieces of change just for lighting a cigarette or having a single cigarette
on me, even though I was a little kid. Somebody didn't want to
get up from the bar, I could sell them that cigarette for a premium
at that time. Well that's how they get him, That's how they get
him in jail. So they're used to that. Yeah. And that was
the other thing is that they were very accustomed to it. Even though a
quarter was a lot of more money than it is today. A quarter for
a cigarette was fine if you didn't want to get up from that bar and
you really needed a cigarette, so I'd have matches to light it. You
get a cigarette, I'd lighted for you. The ladies would always blush,
Oh what a little gentleman. And I got tips, you know, So
any which way you can, you got to hustle up money. So you
never use pool to hustle money. Huh No. But I did shine a
lot of shoes, and I have to tell you that one of the secrets
my brother showed me was five day deodorant pads. You shine your shoes and
you run a five day deodorant pad over him, and it really brings out
the gloss. And then you take a match and kind of melt at wax.
You hold the shoe upside down and it does a really nice job.
I have to say, I feel really sorry for all the shoeshine man,
because no one wears shoes to shine anymore. Everybody wears tennis shoes. The
shine man as a man of the past. Yeah, there's no such thing
as the shoe shine boy anymore. You know because again, like you said,
who wears shiny shoes. I'll tell you another thing I used to get
and I used to make quarters. That was the thing is a lot of
orders in the nineteen seventies. Was was plenty. I put a few of
those together and I got a meal. You know. It wasn't too bad,
you know. So waitresses would come in right and I don't know how
it started to happen, but I ended up giving foot rubs to some of
the waitresses sitting on the little rail. You know, the little rail there's
like a foot If you're not familiar with going to a bar, folks,
I know a lot of people don't go to bars anymore because you know,
COVID and whatnot. But believe me, there used to be these little rails
around the bars that were where people rested their feet a lot. And these
waitresses would come in after twelve hours, and yeah, I wound up giving
foot rubs for twenty five or fifty cents, and it was plenty of money,
and it made them happy, and they were really hurting because they had
been, you know, on their feet for twelve sixteen hours. Sometimes that's
not a bad way to make a Carter, I might be willing to do
that at this time. Yeah, hey, hey, nothing wrong, nothing
wrong with it for a bunch of different reasons, but just sitting and you
want to talk about conversations waitresses. See, now you were in a place
that might actually had waitresses that worked there. The place I was at,
the waitresses came into drink because you just needed a bartender, and really they
should have had some bouncers, but they never hired those people. It would
be one or two or three bartenders depending on how busy the place was.
And that was it. But anyway, getting away from that just for a
moment. So you have this historical fiction. When did you have you written
about your childhood, like in a full long form book or has it only
been in short stories because I'm not I'm not sure how much you put into
that is directly relatable to your childhood. I have several stories on my website
that are directly related to my childhood experiences, and I tell two stories on
stage that are on Facebook that you can the videos are on there that you
can watch, and those are all stories from my childhood. I have four
of those on my Facebook page, but there's several on my website that you
can look at, and I will compile those into my autobiography at some point.
I have the book I just finished. You mentioned Westerns. I just
finished a book on early California about a haunted house, and I think it's
my best book so for. It's not available yet. It's in editing right
now, and I've started. I have twelve chapters for a book on World
War two, which is a precursor to my spy novel that is called Grandpa
Ernie's Secrets, which takes place in Italy during the Iraq War. And it's
a group of people. It's a family history of people who all belonged in
the CIA over three three generations. Okay, that's an interesting tale. I'd
love to see how that turns out, you know, because they I'm very
interested in the CIA and such. But let me get back to some of
the other curiosities that are rolling around in my brain as I speak to you.
You know, another thought I had is, frankly, here here's a
book idea I had, and I'm gonna throw it at you because I'm not
going to write it. Okay. I started to work on it and decided,
no, good, you can have this if you want it. Every
bar, okay, every gin mill. I forget how I titled it the
first time, but it was really a snappy sounding title. Every gin mill
is haunted. Now Why do I say that? Because it seemed to me
like every place when I went and I traveled as a musician later in life,
so I went to a lot of bars, different places New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania up to Canada. It seemed to me like every drinking
establishment has a supernatural story. Now I don't know if that's just my experience
and that's some places I was attracted to, but it seemed to me like
and also over the years, as I've talked to people about their favorite bars,
the places they went to listen to live music, whatever it is.
If they had a situation where there was a bar that they liked to frequent,
apparently there's always a legendary story. If it's been there for a little
while. You know, it can't be something that just opened last week.
But if it's been there for a little while, if it's been there for
a couple of years, every joint has a ghost. Every bar or every
gym mill is haunted. I don't remember how I titled it, But it
just seemed to me like a series of short stories could be told about actual
stuff, legends one way or another, or honestly goodness stuff where you got
bartenders to tell you this place is haunted, there's a guy that died,
and that he comes here still to drink. We think whatever. Whatever,
So tell me now that I'm nuts and that you never encountered that. Now
you're right on target. Our building. Our building was built in the nineteen
twenties. It had been a bar for many, many years. And besides
the whine I was talking to the dead owner, we had in our in
our large dance hall. In the back as you entered it from the bar
to the right was a raised platform about an eight foot high stairwell, and
the back of that for him, there was a shadow box created with a
shepherd and a flock of sheep, and it was three dimensional with several layers
of animals. And I would walk in there it would scare the bejeebers out
of me every time. And the ceiling this place was probably as big as
three or four tennis courts, so it's pretty good size place. It woul
whole three hundred and fifty people. We'd sell fifty cases of beer on a
Saturday night. And this is the dancehall area just to dancehall are just a
dancehall had a separate bar and a bandstand. And my dad stapled the whole
ceiling of this place with tinfoil and painted it with psychedelic glow in the dark
paint the nice so you had lots of stuff for the lights to bounce off.
That was It was probably a really good economical way, although maybe it
was a little dangerous. I mean, I'm thinking back to one of the
fires not too long ago where they had weird stuff on the ceiling that got
lit up through pyro. Well, this was all made This was all made
from tinfoil, so it wouldn't burn, no good thing, good thing.
But when they came in, the breeze blew through that tinfoil would rattle up
on that ceiling and our dogs would not go in that room. So there's
something that happened in that room. And every time I went into it,
I was scared to death. And also people would go in there. They
could, they had access to it during the week because the restrooms were there,
and they would go back in there and go to the dark corners and
shoot heroin and so now and then you'd wander in there to do some sleeping
or clean a bathroom and you see some guy wrapped up with a rubber band
on his arms shooting heroin. So that was always a little creepy while you
were there. I'm sorry I passed away while you were there in that place,
not that I know of. We we had a shooting and other things,
but I don't think anybody anybody passed away there. This was probably the
poor. Okay. Well, and there's one other question that could tie into
the legend thing. I'm not done with that. You know, you mentioned
it was open in the twenties. Now, is there any prohibition stories attack
to the place? Was it at one time to speak easier or anything like
that. I wouldn't doubt it. I don't know of any stories in particular.
Again, because of its Hispanic background, it wouldn't be a part of
the mainstream stories of the area. And it was also out on the edge
of town. The police wouldn't even venture into this place. It was the
last place on the planet they wanted to come into because of its reputation,
and any person who was passing by and stopped in for a drink was in
for a very rude awakening. If they came in and sat down. It
was not what you would It looked quite different from the outside than what it
was inside once you got inside. Oh yeah, but you know, no
matter what neighborhood it's in, it could have been part of you know,
bootlegging and stuff. And because you were in construction, I figured maybe you
would have encountered weird things like hollow walls and stuff about the history. Yeah,
okay, so you are correct about that. We discovered an outside entrance
into the attic space and everyone in the neighborhood knew about it, but we
didn't. And we used to stack We used to stack our empty beer cartons
out there, and the neighborhood kids would climb up those beer cartons, and
I mean kids, I mean gang members. They would go into the attic,
drop down and get free beer. And we had a few incidences of
vandalism and so forth, and it didn't It took us years to find out
where they were getting in at My dad actually put flour on the floor to
try and catch the footprints because he thought the place was haunted and We never
got footprints where he put the flower because they were dropping down in behind in
the cloak room that we didn't realize how to access from the attic into the
back cloak room, which we didn't use. Nice. Nice, There's an
element you could add to any story right there. I mean, you could
create a fictional crime situation and have the problem of they couldn't find the entrance
because they're looking for ghosts. That that's very interesting. One of those old
ghost hunter tricks where they put powder on the floor to see in baby powder
or flower or whatever to see if anything makes contact even though nobody's supposed to
be there. I don't know how often that's successful, but I know it's
a common thing done though. That's that's really interesting. So, Okay,
we maybe have a history, but I'm telling you, everywhere I go there
was always some sort of legend tied to any long standing saloon or tavern or
you know, just straight up bar. It always seemed to have a legend
attached to it where somebody was haunting it. I mean, you could take
that story just as you related it, right, You got the guy who's
talking to the dead guy there. Well, you know what, maybe he's
not delusional. The guy's really there. You could write the story that way.
Maybe it's got something to do with I mean, right there, there's
story elements right in front of you. Then you could assemble you the listener,
not you, RC. You're a better storyteller than me, obviously,
but I mean, I'm just saying, right there, you've got automatic pieces
that you could assemble into something really fascinating just telling this little story. So
all right, um, next question and last one that I want to get
into before you tell us about a few places where people can find your work
and purchase it support what you're doing. Oh also, I gotta remember your
Facebook page. Is it just RC hand on Facebook? That's correct? And
I'm on Instagram also, Okay, so Facebook Instagram. You probably haven't gotten
around a thread yet. That's a new thing through Instagram. But either way,
Facebook, Instagram, Do you have a Twitter? Also? Not yet
nor at no problem, listen, I hate social media. I hate trying
to work it out. I've got a few, I got accounts I forgot
I even have. But either way, you can find ourc hand on Facebook
and also on Instagram. Will give you links in the show notes along with
a link to his website, which I mentioned earlier, and you can find
his books on Amazon. If you're a lazy and don't mind going through you
can find them on Amazon. But if not, go over to Cowboy Productions
fifty two dot com. That's all one word together, okay, Cowboy Productions
fifty two dot com, and you can explore and also see a couple of
stories in short about some of the things that we've talked about. But get
in touch with our shand explorers work. There's a photo gallery over there,
there's a blog, a few other things. I will give you the link
to that in the show notes as well. If I get a minute,
I'll drop it in the live chat room at Ocelli dot com. But if
you don't see it there, look at the show notes on them. Wherever
you're getting this podcast from, whether it's on rockfin where you see the video
and such, or it is anywhere else, we always give you notes.
So Cowboy Productions fifty two dot com. That's his website. But again,
continuing the conversation without you know, interrupting with a plug again, when was
the first time that you wrote about the experiences that I've been focused on here
the early childhood stuff. And again, there's probably a few parallel universe things
here. I'm rubbing feet, you're shining shoes. You can make a parallel
there. I'm on one side of the bar, you were on the other.
At some point, though, you end up going a little bit full
spectrum, you know what I mean. You end up telling more than one
story. In a story, you have to introduce characters and things like that.
At what point did you first write about those early experiences that I do
find fascinating And I'm glad to hear that I'm not, you know, just
totally insane and living in an alternate reality, because a lot of people have
told me, well, this kind of stuff doesn't happen that you talked about
here. You know, I knocked out a guy with a pool queue.
That's how I got the attention to the local Italian businessman. I knocked a
guy down with a pool queue because he was coming after me, because he
was angry, he lost two three dollars. He was ready to crack.
My eight year old head opened for that. And a guy who I wound
up, a guy who I wound up calling uncle Joey Okay, came and
gave me a fifty dollars bills the first time I ever saw it for being
a man and not backing down. There's a story in short right there?
But when is it? They? And I didn't decide to tell stories like
this until last year or two years ago something like that on the podcast.
And that was long after I told many other stories about many other things.
I didn't think my life was even interesting. I thought that it's no big
deal. It's just that's where I was and it was commonplace. And now
I get people telling me it didn't really happen because things like that don't actually
happen. That's New Jersey. New Jersey doesn't allow for Yeah, okay,
because it's illegal, it doesn't happen, right alrighty then sure? Anyway,
when did you decide to write about that and have it? Has it ever?
You said you have short stories on the website, But have you utilized
it for anything else or have you memorialized it somewhere else? Or are we
waiting for the autobiography to get at all that those stories. A lot of
those stories are on my website, and I have a book of short stories
on there called Sunrise Sunset. It's also on audible. But it's not a
book necessarily about my life, but there are some interesting characters there. And
again these characters are composites of people that I have met. I have another
book of short stories I'm working on that I just need to compile that will
be more closely related to my life as a young person. But I retired
twelve years ago and I had a seizure and I went on a medication that
affects your imagination. And I started writing continuously from that time twelve years ago,
and I've written a nine or ten novels since then. And I decided
that in order to help perpetuate my book sales, I should do a little
on stage storytelling, and so I began doing that, and that's where I've
told these stories here in locally near my area. And I had my wife
videoed those and put them on my Facebook page. Oh that's great. And
many other titles by the way, by RC and just so you know,
uh, the Adventures of the Smith Family, we reference that, Sailing Away,
We referenced that Grandpa Ernie's Secrets. I don't know what's all in there
novel, that's your spine novel, okay um, And there there's many others,
dreams of Costa Rica. I'm just going down the list. By the
way, on his website, which you should go over to Cowboy Productions fifty
two five two That is dot com. All those words are together, no
dots in between, just Cowboy Productions fifty two dot com. Uh kazoos son
of Oshida Kamasaki. Uh wow, there's a mouthful judge day yeah about it.
That's about a a Asian feudal Asian uh land that is going through revolution.
It's an adventure, exciting love story with some twists and turns Asian culture
in there. What would be the you know, you didn't wind up wind
up writing about conquistadors. I can see yet, you weren't writing about the
Mexican Revolution or the fight for the Republic of Texas. Interesting. You choose
to go and do Asian culture there? Why is that? Well? I've
traveled to eighty three countries, including North Korea, and I find the Asian
cultures very interesting and very very different. So I have friends that are Japanese
that came over as exchange students, and that helped us become more interested in
their culture. I watched Japanese television and I got involved in learning more about
that, and I somehow came up with this idea for this story. And
I think it's it's an interesting left story with a little bit of intrigue and
spycraft also, so a bit of an affinity and an affection for Asian culture
in gen role sort of led you to create this. And did you have
to do a bit of research on some of the historical parts of that would
be referenced here or not? Really, that's what's nice about fiction. It's
not quite as hard to do. My book that I'm working on now about
World War Two, I have twelve chapters, and now I have to get
my people into Europe and into certain battles. That's mixed with life with the
real characters and my fictional characters. That's going to require some more research.
I've read three novels or three books on the CIA recently, so I'm building
my knowledge based on the CIA, which is an interesting institution. And so
I enjoy doing the research. And I learned something. Every time I write
a book, I learned a lot of interesting history, no matter what the
book is about. Yeah, well, look it's difficult, but it might
be worth it too. If you get yourself someone that you can have a
couple of conversations with who you know, they say they're formerly with the CIA.
I don't believe in the early no one's ever formally with the CIA,
right, But I've interacted with those people because of my research on the Kennedy
assassination, and you know, sometimes I want to know how to read their
documents a little bit better, you know what I mean? So I do
go to the source and ask a guy who I know worked in the agency,
you know, what is this actually? Like? I do stuff like
that. You might, you might do that sometime. I wouldn't always advise
it for everybody, but you seem like the kind of guy who could pull
it off anyway. Sunrise Sunset, which you mentioned earlier, that's a bunch
of short stories. Judgment Day though, you know what, I didn't read
the descriptor on that, and somehow I didn't see that title. Judgment Day
is that part of something or what is that? It's about a detective in
Santa Monica that goes undercover and loses his real identity and takes over the character
of this persona he's portraying. He infiltrates a motorcycle gang and gets involved in
the drugs ails and murders and has to keep in touch with the authorities and
send information to them and preparing a case for trial. I have a degree,
and I have a two year degree in the administration of criminal justice,
and I thought at one time I was going to be an attorney. So
I do have a fascination for detective novels, which Atlanta is a detective novel
also, So I find that I find those characters interesting. And again,
what do we have. We have a group of people who make bad decisions
and hurt other people and hopefully get brought to task for it. Well,
that's interesting because it sounds to me like you're tackling more than one I don't
know what they call this exactly, it's not a genre, but it sounds
to me like some of your stuff is psychological, some of it is situational.
You got quite quite an eclectic sort of way of going about things.
Absolutely, Yeah, you're not pigeonholed here. And I didn't even get into
your education where you went, you know, outside of your grammar school age,
you know, did you go to college, etc. Didn't even go
on to all that because I'd rather hear about your life experiences, you know,
and you spend time, uh, you know, in construction and those
sorts of trades. That's one thing. The early childhood experiences are another.
Relationships. I mean, that's the only thing missing from your mixed bag here,
probably unless probably it is there and I just don't know it. You
don't have anything that's you know, really hard focused on, like a very
sort of narrow relationship kind of innes you know, a situation where you establish
a relationship and you follow a small group of people, whether that be two
or well, no, you do have the family. They're going through a
situation, don't you. Well, I guess that's a relationship kind of thing.
Go ahead. But all my books are like that. All my books
have familiar relationships, love interests and friendships. I mostly am a character driven
author. It's not there's action, but I think the development of the characters
is more interesting for me and I because of my background. I I put
a lot of input into those people and try and make them as real as
possible, excellently. And look, it's a very interesting you know. Again,
I don't even talk to a lot of authors. You write fiction to
be honest with you, I am much more interested in historical preservation and U
you know, revisionism, uh, stuff like that. Let's get into truth.
What do we know that wasn't classified or is classified today? Things like
that is usually what I focus on. But let me ask let me ask
you a question. Yeah, you know who who are Russell Proudy? L
Russell Proudy. Was you're talking about Fletcher? Yeah? L L. Fletcher
Proudy Yeah. Yeah, So we're on the same page on the Kennedy assassination.
I've done a lot of research on that and this book that I'm writing
now, it's called Prelude to Rome. It's the precursor to Granpa Ernie's Secrets.
It's following the path of his of Ernie's father, who is an assassin,
and he comes out of World War Two and he's going to be involved
in several different political assassinations around the planet. Ah, little little teaser there
is that. That's okay, okay, that sounds good. Now, a
little bit of a blend of fiction and non fiction there. Well, isn't
that how the world operates? That was? Yeah? That was My next
question is actually, what is the difference at this point right, because nothing
ever is entirely revealed, even the most you know, direct, Hey,
we're being honest for being up front. The second somebody says that, all
I can think of is that old adage about I think you do protest a
bit too much when you're making a point. You know, when somebody's yelling
you I'm telling the truth. I'm telling the truth and you didn't ask them
if they were telling the truth, kind of leads me to believe they're in
an automatic defensive position because they're full of crap, you know. So that's
one of those things. If they keep shoving the story at you even though
you didn't ask for it, they're probably covering something up. And yes,
so that is exactly the way the world works. Or do I sound like
I'm talking crazy to you or what? Well, you may sound crazy to
some people. AH appreciate that, And he's like, look, I don't
want to make judgments here because I've only talked to you for a little while.
It could be you're a complete nut, but yeah, I got you,
and that's good. Reserve judgment at all times. Now, you can't
judge books by their cover. The covers of these books, I don't really,
you know, whatever it is, it is, I want people to
go see RC hand again. You can find them on Amazon and his website,
okay, Cowboy Productions fifty two dot com. Right, altogether, there'll
be links in with the show notes, so you guys who want to you
can follow up. So I'll give you the website, I'll give you a
couple of Amazon links. I'll see if I can find your Facebook page.
I hate Facebook, by the way. I'm on there. I don't even
know if I'm your friend. I'm not sure. Maybe i am. It's
because I don't like it. It's yeah, I gave up on that some
years ago. You know, when it was simpler and real people wanted to
talk to me from my life, I was happy. But nowadays, you
know, God knows, people get me mixed up with somebody else. I
get a lot of add I get a lot of ads for hookers and stuff
like that, so it kind of lost its appeal. Yeah, I mean.
And that's the other thing is that every single social media, at some
point there is the virtual hooker set one way or another. Hey baby,
I love you, I love your face. By the way, I have
a webcam show. Now that's your online virtual hooker. Then you have others
that didn't want to scam you and fall in love with you on the computer
because they think that you know, you're just They send a thousand of those
to a guy doesn't even have to be a real girl, doesn't have to
be a real person even but either way, they're trying to scam yet with
this and that, and hey, I got some naked pictures and really they
got it from some porno actress. They play those games. Even your stipe
account. If you ever use Skype occasionally, you'll find people that contact you.
Oh hello, sweetie, I saw you on the Skype directory. I
am recently. They're all recently out of university. They're all twenty five years
old, they're all lonely, and they want to talk to you archie.
Yeah, a seventy one year old guy who's been married for forty years.
I don't of course, of course, but if you look like you have
a lot of money, didn't they really want to talk to you? And
after all, it could be as innocent as a webcam show that they'll invite
you to because you're special. Now, yeah, well, look, sometimes
you got to monetize what you have to work with and all the time.
And I'm not judging people. I'm just saying it's annoying for me. We're
all delta hand. We're all delta hand. We've got to play at the
best we can. Absolutely and interesting stuff your life experiences from the beginning and
then ever on. I didn't even get into you know, your adult life,
your travels. You mentioned you went to many different countries. We didn't
go there. There's a ton of stuff I could ask you about. But
you know what, I've already taken up enough of your time today pretty much.
So I know that I'm all over the place and I'm rude and interrupting
you and things, But I really appreciate you having this conversation with me,
and I wonder if there's anything that you'd like to sort of, you know,
give to people on the way out the door, outside of obviously,
go buy your books, go look at your stuff online. Check out these
live performances. I have to go check those out because I didn't want to
contaminate my thoughts about what it is we were going to talk about by seeing
your presentations. But I was aware that there are videos. I'm gonna go
check those out after the show probably tonight when I'm doing some work. But
you know what, interesting guy, you got a million stories to tell.
There's probably a million more stories in every naked city. But the city is
really in your mind. It's not really where you live. Guys, and
this guy went to so many different cities, so many different ways, and
walk through so many lives. It's probably endless the amount of resources you have
to populate multiple universes of literary creation. So ourc hand okay, And that
is the way that you find them online. Ray, You know, I
really appreciate this that you take in this time. But let me just shut
up and give you a parting sentiment here. Anything you want to drop or
point people to or warn them about, go right ahead. First of all,
I like to say I enjoyed being on your show. I'd be more
than happy to come back and talk about travel or any other thing you want
to talk about. The Kennedy assassination. I want everybody out there remember that
we should treat each other like we want to be treated. That every culture
has valuable things you can learn from and take a trip. If you can
afford, Let's go someplace and learn something. That'd be nice to everybody you
come across. Right, So you are the kind of guy who believes like
I do, that random acts of kindness are an essential part of what we
should be doing in this world. And judging people because of some preconceived notion
about where they came from, who their people are, what the color of
their skin is, etc. Is a complete waste of time. Not because
you should be kind to them, but you're actually being cruel to yourself if
you function that way and you judge and discount people. Right, you can
learn something from everybody. That's been my experience. There you have it.
You can learn something from just about anyone you know. Telly effect is done.
My guest tonight, RC Hand, author of multiple books, links in
the show notes. I hope you follow up and go to Cowboy Productions fifty
two dot com again link in the notes. But if you're just listening to
me and can remember it, go there, do it. Check out his
work. Fascinating guy, fascinating books, a lot of interesting stuff, dynamic
and collect it and there you go. Rc Hand my guests on the Ocelli
effect. And remember this, no matter who you are, where you are,
when you are, I'm merely o'ceelly, all of you are. Indeed
the effect you support Chuck o'chilli at Chili dot com. There's no money in
it. So yeah, that is that's the problem. That's the biggest problem,
I think. And you know, some people would say that, look,
you're in an age when you can be independently supported, but quite frankly,
I'm on that business model too, And look, I'm not going to
complain, but but I'm gonna complain, okay, because people want to support
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and this is a very unsettling question, support to damn show, and I
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Achilli Apports one of a few places where Greg Palace can get is the stuff
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um it nice to be a regular on CNN and on MSTNC, but
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