Trouble at The Car Wash

29 Jan, 2025

Summary:

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Tom: Alright!

Hello everyone, and welcome. It's a beautiful Monday and I'm here with my uncle Paul Harpole, and we're on The Harps Collective.

We're excited to have him. I heard a story recently about, uh, my Uncle Paul, and so we have to ask him about it. It was a mishap, a disaster, uh, perhaps an adventure. And so we're very excited to have him on the show. Paul, how are you doing?

[00:00:22] Paul: Doing great. How are you, sir?

[00:00:24] Tom: Great!. I, I appreciate you coming on a whim here.

My goal with The Harps Collective is to just capture great stories that are told, uh, across family, friends, all industries, whether comedic or traumatic. And, uh, I think we have something on our hands.

[00:00:39] Paul: This captures ...this captures... this kinda captures both of those.

[00:00:42] Tom: Yes, yes. I, I perhaps...

I think that you may have been laughing while this was happening.

I hope, uh, or...?

[00:00:49] Paul: I was wondering if it could get worse, but, you know.

[00:00:52] Tom: This is, so this is an all- time story because I was just thinking about this the other week when I was going through a car wash, looking at the colored suds that, uh, hit the windshield. Yeah. So my dad told me, uh, a bit of this story, but the gist that we're gonna have from my Uncle Paul is, uh, he had a little disaster at the carwash.

We'll call it "Wet in the wash."

And, uh, I want you to take us through, um, your setup, your rv, your Jeep, and how [sure] how all this came about.

[00:01:20] Paul: Well, you know, we, we bought a used rv and I've been sort of tinkering, fixing it. I'm kind of like your dad, I like to fix little things. Okay. So I've been fixing it for about five months and getting things ready and getting ready for summer to come and for the COVID to be gone enough that we could travel. So I also bought the fellow's Jeep that he pulls behind there. So, working on both these things, one of the things we plan to do is some friends and I are gonna do some bike touring. I had a little heart mishap and ended up getting a defibrillator about a year ago, about the beginning of the covid, and so I put an electric motor on my bike, to use to get out of problems, if I get in a problem. And I've now decided with their help, these five guys that I ride with, that we would load the bikes up on the motor home in the Jeep. Okay. There's five different places, and we would take them up to a starting point. And I would drop 'em off and I'll go up to the next campsite about 80, 90 miles away, and I'll work my way back to 'em and ride whatever I can ride that day.

So anyway, plan was getting in place and I got some bike racks for the roof of the Jeep. I also have got one on the back of the Jeep and I've got sort of a Christmas tree rack on the back between the RV and the Jeep. So there's a place to put five bikes.

[00:02:37] Tom: It's Jeep Wrangler, right?

[00:02:39] Paul: It's a Jeep Wrangler, and we put two high on the roof.

So, uh, sort of a silly thing to do, but I put those on the Jeep and I really didn't want to take 'em off each time I was gonna try and do a car wash, but I thought I'm gonna have to.

[00:02:52] Tom: Wow. So the bike is sitting vertical.

They would sit on top, right?

[00:02:55] Paul: Yeah. But just the racks of course are there. And they're, they're up there locked down pretty much.

I can take 'em off, but it's a, it's a pain in the rear to do it. [Yep].

So I, um, I went to the carwash that I normally go to about 7 30 in the morning when they were opening. And I saw a young man, their manager, and I said, "Hey, can I drive through the carwash with these racks on top? It looks like they might be a little tough."

"Oh, no sir. They'll be fine . They won't, don't worry about it. They'll be fine." Sure. And I said, "well, okay, so you think they're okay?" And he said, "yeah, we do it all the time. It's fine."

And sure enough, I went through later that day. I didn't wanna get to the front of the line with 30 cars and find out I was dismissed and had to leave.

So I'd made that call early.

[00:03:39] Tom: So you asked, you got the full clearance?

[00:03:41] Paul: I asked. I got the full clearance [with the bikes].

And then by golly, I got in line that day and went through the car wash with no mishap and I thought, man, that went pretty good. No problem. So I went through, again about two weeks later and I went through again about two weeks later.

I've been through there three times. So now I nonchalantly pull into the carwash on the way home. And, uh, pulled into the carwash as I normally would. [Sure.]

And about five feet into the carwash. Of course, the water's hitting the car and the noise is getting worse, and you, you can't do anything. The noise is astounding.

And about another five feet, so about 10 feet in this carwash, which is probably 200 feet long. I hear this bang, crash, boom!

And one of the, uh, rollers with the rags tied to it, had caught my bike rack and ripped it up and the roof off the Jeep.

Now, I sent a couple pictures to you to see how that Jeep looked.

[00:04:34] Tom: Yes.

[00:04:34] Paul: It came out the other end completely.

But sitting inside, I just, all of a sudden I saw more light at the top, and then I saw it come crashing back down and banging every time the thing went around and.... there was also a tremendous amount of water inside that carwash that was flooding over the top of me and down into the, uh...

I got those really nice weather tech floor mats....

[00:04:55] Tom: Oh yeah, sure.

[00:04:56] Paul: Yeah. And they retain a lot of water! I had about two inches of water in the bottom of the Jeep's floorboard from the weather tech deals. They worked great.

Um, and so, I proceeded down the carwash thinking, what in the heck am I gonna do? This thing is banging on me.

[00:05:11] Tom: So did the roof come off clean?

Was it a clean, like just ripped off in one go, or it was kind of...

[00:05:16] Paul: No, there's two. There's two front pieces at the front of a Renegade Jeep. Yeah. That will come off and you can put 'em, I've never taken 'em off. I've had this Jeep about four months, so it ripped those out of the sockets. And it ripped up the carwash and it started slamming it on the windshield and on the foot you'll see that in front of the pictures, and it kept slamming and coming up and down every time those brushes went around and it was just banging on the roof and the water just flooding in on me and I thought, "my God, I hope they turn this thing off."

And so we had another.

Probably 190 feet to go at that point. And the water's just flooding in.

[00:05:51] Tom: And it's just you in the car?

[00:05:53] Paul: Just me and the car. Good. I'm so glad my wife wasn't with me. Sure.

[00:05:56] Tom: Yeah. That would've been ov-

[00:05:57] Paul: it would've been over. It would've been over, it would've been done.

[00:06:00] Tom: You'd be sleeping in the garage for months.

[00:06:02] Paul: Well, I don't know if I'd have made it in the garage, but the uh,

...but the suds are coming in now and they're really nice and foamy. And the water's pouring.

[00:06:10] Tom: Is it warm water?

[00:06:12] Paul: No, it was... it was just nasty water, you know?

It wasn't

[00:06:14] Tom: Oh, really?

[00:06:15] Paul: Yeah. And so I reached up to grab part of the roof because it, it looked like it was gonna bang down on top of me.

And I wear this, uh, This armband that has a medical deal on it. It ripped it off my arm. It took it back up through the roof. Oh, and I'm going, geez, this thing is powerful.

So I'm scratching down in the seat trying to get back by the headrest, so it's kind of protected a little bit.

This thing gets banging and water flooding in.

So I'm proceeding through the carwash... and I got to the solid suds and it was just suds everywhere inside the car.

[00:06:48] Tom: Oh, so the first phase was just the water, like rinsing and washing?

[00:06:52] Paul: Yeah. Water.

And water and suds. Then? Yeah,

[00:06:54] Tom: Just like aggressive-

[00:06:55] Paul: Then a lot more suds.

[00:06:56] Tom: Right. Okay.

[00:06:56] Paul: And then some really nice kinda rainbow colored suds.

[00:06:59] Tom: Right, right.

[00:06:59] Paul: Then. Then some spray...

Some really nice warm spray that came in, and I'm hoping that they'll turn this thing off and I'm thinking, "God, there's nothing I can do, just ride this out."

There's two really nice kids at the end that didn't see any of this going on. And there was nobody in between where the guy rinses it at the first part.

So they didn't see it.

They just, and so I... I'm just down there riding this thing and trying to hold it down and it's banging and the water's flushing in. I get to the end and, um, I know I got simonized. I'm not sure exactly what that does to you, but I know that I'd done the simonizing, the wax.... coating.

And so I got simonized, it really. Made my hair kind of nice and fresh.

[00:07:39] Tom: And you got, you got the three suds, like the, uh, the, the pink, yellow and the green or something like that.

[00:07:45] Paul: Yeah. And I think I got black- walled too. I think.

You know where it cleans the black walls on your tires...?

[00:07:50] Tom: Oh yeah.

[00:07:51] Paul: I think I got a bit of that.

And then I got a little further down there and the water's just pouring in and all of a sudden the water sort of shuts off and these blowers start blowing and it's banging the roof cuz the blowers are blowing the roof up and down. Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's still water blowing off of everywhere off of me.

Uh, there's water on the inside of the car. My phone had fallen down in the floor mat, uh, cuz I have it on a little magnetic deal right there.

And it's floating around on the floor.

I just had put on new hearing aids and. Last year during Covid, I ended up with a heart problem with this bicycling.

And so I got a defibrillator and I'm thinking, man, that thing's gonna go off. This is crazy!

And so I'm riding this thing and then the, the noise is just getting worse and worse because then you get to these things where there's probably 40 of these, um, tubes that come out on both sides and just blow, blow air at you. And so about that time, this kid on the end, on my side at the end, sees me and his eyes get wide open and he's looking at me and he's looking at the front of the cat, the front of the Jeep is just... the roof is up there banging on it.

He sees I'm just dripping wet. I mean, I'm soaked to the bottom.

[00:08:57] Tom: You got waxed too, right? At this point?

[00:08:59] Paul: My, yeah, my, my socks were wet and every part of my underwear was wet. I was soaked and uh, so he just kind of comes up to the car and the worst part was over, but the noise was still there. Those blowers were still trying to blow.

[00:09:14] Tom: Oh, so he's looking at you while you're getting in the drying.

[00:09:17] Paul: The kid on the other side, he's pointing to the kid and I said, "look, look, what are we gonna do?" And he comes up to me and he says, he says, "Mr, are you okay!?" Screaming, "are you okay?" Cuz you can't hear with all that noise.

I said, "I don't really know."

And I couldn't get the door open because it had banged over the door.

So I'm just kind of leaning up against the window and the door going, "geez, this is over. I made it."

So he says, "what happened? What happened?" I said, "I don't know. The roof came off way back at the beginning" and he could see, I mean, I was just dripping water everywhere.

My shoes were sloshing when I'd step, and so he, he says there wasn't many cars at the carwash at that time of day for some reason, which is unusual, but he says, "oh man, can you drive the car?"

And I said, "no, I don't know if I can."

I said, "I, I, I gotta check and make sure my, get my phone out of the floorboard and make sure my hearing aids are still working, and geez, I got this defibrillator, I dunno, heart stuff to shut off."

Yeah. And he, and he's, okay, "well lemme go get the manager."

And so nice kids, I mean, they were young kids that were there. So the manager comes out and we get to tell the story again and he sees all this roof pulled apart with the bike racks and it just all jumbled up on my roof.

You'll see in the pictures.

And uh, so the manager just couldn't have been nicer.

The kids couldn't have been nicer. They all were very helpful.

We finally pulled the Jeep around.

We took everything apart and put it in the back and went on about my business.

The next day I went to the body shop to get it checked and thinking I'd file insurance, and the guy at the carwash said, "you know, we, we don't like cars getting damaged."

The general man, the manager of the carwash said, "we don't like cars getting damaged. We understand racks and things. We don't really take care of those, but we don't like cars getting damaged".

He didn't, he said, "I can't say we'll fix this, but. We don't, we just, I'll have my owner call you."

And I said, okay.

Couldn't have been nicer. So I get the bid at the body shop and take back him a copy and it was pretty astounding. It was like $3,400 in damage to the roofs and the tops and around the windshield.

And, uh, I get a call about two o'clock the next day and this man says, my name is Dick Jones.

And I'm, uh, with the carwash. He's one of the owners.

Apparently it's a bunch of retired teachers and coaches that went together and, oh, interesting, okay. Put this in.

And he says, "uh, Mr. Harpole, we're gonna take care of this."

And I said, well, you know, I was kind of astounded.

I, they obviously couldn't have been nicer when it happened. And he said, "well, you were really nice to those young kids, and they were scared to death. They didn't know what to do."

And I said, "well, what am I gonna do?"

The damage was done.

[00:11:55] Tom: I'm in suds, I just wanna go home.

[00:11:58] Paul: Just wanna go home and dry off.

So we were.... You know, we, it took about a half hour to get the car apart and people were coming over and trying to help anyway, so he said he'd pay for it and by golly they did.

I took it to my friend that has a body shop.

You know, I used to be in the automobile business.

Right. And uh, so we have a friend that has a really great body shop.

They just couldn't have been nicer. It's all fixed and I'm back on the road. Put the bikes back up there and we're ready tomorrow. We're gonna take off on our little bicycle. First trek on the bicycle.

[00:12:27] Tom: Really?

[00:12:28] Paul: Yeah. So we're taking the RV with, with, uh, four bikes this time, four of us. And we're gonna ride up through Oklahoma and into Kansas.

These little state park lakes. And we're camping along the way at this time in the comfort of the rv. Prior times we've always carried our gear and just camped along the way. So, we're trying this new deal since I, uh, have this new revived heart deal and we'll see how that works. And that's really about the whole story-

[00:12:53] Tom: You already lived through the, the, the greatest carwash debacle that I've ever heard of.

[00:12:58] Paul: It was.

[00:12:58] Tom: 7 phase-

[00:13:00] Paul: and I... I told him, I said, I feel somewhat responsible because you never feel good when you have to. I, I should've known better. I'm 70 years old. I should have known better. If I had to go up and ask them if it was okay to go through...

If I had to ask him, I should have just not. Done. But, and I told the fellow that, and I said, I don't feel good about this. I think maybe I should just pay the deductible if you're gonna pay the rest. He says, "Nope, we're taking care of this." Really was a, a gentleman who handled it well, so...

[00:13:25] Tom: That's awesome. Yeah. Did he know that you were the former mayor of Amarillo?

[00:13:29] Paul: At the very end he said that, he said, "Paul, we're taking care of this Mr. Mayor." And, uh, I said, oh, geez.

So, you know, he was, he was very, uh, he was very gentle about that.

So then he tells me that our cousin, um, he wasn't sure if it was our daughter Amy, or our cousins Megan and Mo, but he said, "I had your daughter, I think in, uh, AP history at Amarillo High School."

And really I was coached there and taught AP history. And he said, "I remember her clearly. She was really a good student."

It ends up that it was Mo Harpole and uh, she actually toured Europe with he and his wife and they were part of the chaperone group that took a bunch of kids to Europe and uh, so he had some, he had some knowledge about our family, but he just couldn't have been nicer.

It all ended up good, I'm not... I, I took the rack off and went back through the car wash this time.

[00:14:24] Tom: That's great. So you've now had changed your process [enough sense] getting the-

[00:14:27] Paul: Yeah, yeah. Enough, enough. You know, my dad used to tell us that if you don't have common in horse sense, it's a tough old life. And I think it, it kinda lapsed on me for a few minutes and it was, Wow.

It wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.

[00:14:39] Tom: Well, that's, that's a great story. And uh, when I heard it, I just couldn't believe it. I've always wondered if somebody had ever walked through a carwash or driven through one.

[00:14:48] Paul: Well, I don't know if you could walk through. I think it had kind of knocked the heck outta you, but you can ride through 'em and successfully, you know, I, I, I didn't have to do the backstroke or anything.

I just kinda had to get down close and kinda cower for a while before it turned off.

[00:15:06] Tom: Wow. Well that's, that's a fantastic story. I really appreciate hearing it. I wanted to ask you, so you've spent some time as the mayor of Amarillo, Texas, and one thing that I'd like to- on the- I think that something that's worth sharing about Amarillo, in my experience of going there, And sort of the weird bizarreness of some of the things that I saw there, right?

um, is around, uh, Stanley Marsh, right? That's Stanley Marsh?

[00:15:34] Paul: Mr. Marsh is passed now, and yes, he had a lot of eccentricities, but one of the things that he did was he put in the Cadillac Ranch years ago, Uhhuh, and they actually, the, when they did that, they put them at the same angle as the pyramid. I'm not sure why.

But these nine Cadillacs are lined up in the prairie. And when it was getting too close, Amarillo was kind of growing out to the edge. He decided it was too close to town, so he moved it. A section is about a mile. He moved it two sections out west. He was a pretty wealthy fella. Uh, and he came by it honestly, inherited everything.

And he, he, he was pretty, uh, eccentric, I would say. He, um, yeah

[00:16:15] Tom: Did you have run into him a bit? Through-

[00:16:17] Paul: We knew him.

We knew him. He was, yeah, he was a character. He had a few, uh, legal problems in the end of his life. Um, there were some things that he'd done with young kids that really were [yeah] pretty horrible. So-

[00:16:30] Tom: Yeah, it's kind of a more of an infamous character in, in Amarillo history,

I guess.

[00:16:35] Paul: Yeah. And yet he's got a, a son that I think is a good guy and his wife, Wendy Marsh is really a wonderful person. And um, but there's those things. He built a TV station downtown. And never really put the roof on it.

It just looks like an erector set kinda sitting there.

And, uh, so there's a sub-roof down on the bottom but it's just really, really different.

It's hard to-

[00:16:58] Tom: And let me ask you, so for those people that don't know, Stanley Marsh, was, was he a billionaire or just a multi- multimillionaire?

[00:17:05] Paul: He, he and two other guys found most of the gas fields north of Amarillo and made a fortune back in the thirties and forties.

His father did, excuse me. He was the heir to that. And, uh, so, um, owned a lot of land around the area, pioneer family, and uh, he was the, um, heir that took care of all that and, and, um, now most of it has been sold off, I think, to settle some of his problems. But, um, interesting guy.

[00:17:37] Tom: So he was, so, he inherited a lot of money and had a desire to create, he, you could call them art pieces or, uh, stuff?

[00:17:45] Paul: Yes.

[00:17:45] Tom: He had acts around the city.

[00:17:47] Paul: Yeah, he had a floating mesa,

[00:17:49] Tom: so yeah. I've seen the Floating Mesa... explain that to the people that have never-

[00:17:52] Paul: Well, the Floating Mesa is out there on the way between Amarillo and Boys Ranch as you're going up to Dalhart and onto Denver. And if you look off to the side, there's a, uh, mesa that looks like it's floating in mid-air.

And what he did is he constructed plywood. Below it, below the rim, all the way around it, and then painted it so it would reflect the color of the sky. So it really looks like the mesa's just floating in midair. And so he calls that the Floating Mesa. He also apparently put a, uh, took a bunch of boulders and painted them like you would, rounded them off and painted them as pool balls or pool billiard balls.

[00:18:34] Tom: Oh, really?

[00:18:35] Paul: And that's up on another mesa. And he built a pool table on top of that. And I said that you can only see if you're flying over. You can't see it from any road. You couldn't tell what it was. You have to be flying over.

[00:18:48] Tom: Did he do anything for the basket holes or is it just the balls together?

[00:18:52] Paul: Well, honestly, although I, you know, I've had aircraft in the past, both helicopter and a plane. Yeah. And, uh, I can't find it. I don't know where it's, And I don't know if it's a myth, but most of the things about him are not myths. So it's up there somewhere.

I just never found it. Right.

[00:19:07] Tom: Okay, so he's done. So he is essentially done Cadillac Henge, where he's buried Cadillacs vertically half, are they halfway buried?

[00:19:17] Paul: They're about halfway buried on the rear, rear part. And then you can go in and graffiti anytime you want. There's still. Um, now I think there's actually a place where people leave spray paint.

[00:19:28] Tom: Oh, really?

[00:19:28] Paul: Visitors by, yeah. We went by there the other day, about three days ago, and there had to be 40 cars parked on I 40.

In this field, then you just kind of go through this gate, this semi gate deal, because there are at times cattle that graze in that pasture. And it's, you know, just a field. It's rather than a pasture, it's a field. And these Cadillacs are out there planted in the, in the field. And every once in a while somebody will go out there from, uh, they call it the ant farm, is this group of people that do the work on his projects.

Okay. And, uh, they go through and paint. Entirely paint the Cadillacs with some kind of spray paint, either pink or black or orange or whatever. And then people just start graffitiing over 'em again. Right? So he had the, when we first moved here, being in the auto business, he would bring his cars in for service and, uh, One day I saw this truck and it had this big sign on the doors on the side of this truck.

This is back in about 82 or 83, and these big letters that were about two foot tall, it said truck on the side. And on the other side of the truck it said truck. And then a few days later, somebody came in with a driver to pick it up and they came in in a car. And on the side of that car it said, car. Well, the story is apparently one of his workers, one day he told 'em to take the truck into town and get something and he took the car by the mistake.

So he painted car and truck on there. So nobody confused those in the future.

[00:20:56] Tom: What? Okay. Wow. And then what about the street signs? Cuz I, he put up some strange signs.

[00:21:01] Paul: You know, those are those, for those of us that. Feel we have any couth and culture. They were the bane of our existence. He'd put these signs that looked like yield signs [Yeah.].

Or looked like, like diamond shaped signs. Huge. And he'd put 'em on these really heavy poles and bury 'em deep in the earth and put 'em in people's front yards with these crazy sayings on 'em.

[00:21:23] Tom: And he would sign them like, like what? Like what were the, what were the sayings? Like alligator crossing or something like that?

[00:21:27] Paul: Yeah. Things like that or that. The road that never ends. That was one of his famous ones. Uhhuh and all these different Route 66 and other kinds of things. It just, anybody made one up, you could actually create your own and he'd paint it on there and he'd bring it out. He'd sign a lease with you that was apparently unbreakable and he, you put it in the ground for eternity and, and somebody would really have trouble if they wanted to destroy it.

You could. Drive your Cadillac into it to knock it over and you'd end up with the Cadillac planted around it cuz the pole was so strong. Oh my, nobody, nobody messed with his signs. And apparently some kids one time did mess with his signs graffitied over the top of his signs or something, and that's where he got into some problems.

There was a. I don't know the truth of it, but there was a story floating around, don't know if it's true, about a chicken coop that he locks some kids in and he threatened them with a hammer and, and then some other kids came down and let 'em out. Who knows what happened. I don't know what's true. He lived in a house out by this country club where he had a big sign that said, uh, world famous Rattlesnake farm.

And so he kept his. People that might want to visit him away with that sort of thing. He called this place Toad Hall, and apparently it was really, you know, kinda like Alice in Wonderland and he kept some really strange things there. Yeah.

Strange animals and things like that. Yeah. He had

llamas and he had camels and he had things like that all over the land back in the eighties.

And, uh, nothing, you know, nothing like, um, a dangerous animal, but a lot of grazing animals. Yeah. So it was quirky stuff. It was quirky stuff.

[00:23:09] Tom: The signs that he put around the city, were those legal? Or, or was there-

No. I mean, how do you, how do you approach?

[00:23:16] Paul: There was no, the city, there was no, uh, ordinance, although in some areas there were covenants that wouldn't allow them.

But that only happened later in the 2000. And on that somebody decided if we're gonna have this nice neighborhood, we don't want some nut moving in and putting up a Stanley Marsh sign in the middle of the neighborhood. So there were covenants that were designed by the developers that kept that sort of thing out, but Okay.

[00:23:40] Tom: So he did this only if people asked, or did he just place them on random?

[00:23:44] Paul: Well, he'd do. He, he only did it if he had permission. Okay. But he would also encourage people to... Contact him and he'd get permission and he'd do all the legal things to make it last no matter who bought the house in the future.

And, uh, it was just amazing. [Are they still alive?] One of the, we heard, I don't know if this is true either, but we heard that one of the settlement pieces of him trying to get out of trouble on these things he'd done was he, the, the kids that he attacked with, allegedly attacked with a hammer, were another famous family in town that had..

A lot of legal resources, including a couple lawyers in the family, and I think they made an arrangement that he would stop putting those dang signs up around town. Wow. If they let him off the, I don't know. You know, there's a lot of myth and there's a lot of, of course, so we really don't know the facts of this, but, um, it's kind of an interesting history in Amarillo.

One of the things you gotta know when you move, we moved here in 82. Moved from Albuquerque, uh, where Jenny and I, my wife and I went to college there and met in college. We moved here in the opportunity to be in a business, a Ford business, that later we expanded to Ford and Hyundai. Uh, but one of the first things we learned when we moved to Amarillo is somebody told us, don't ever critique or criticize anybody else cuz you're talking about somebody's cousin.

And it's true. Everybody's related to everybody here. Wow. The, uh, you know, the, the, the book's about six removed and what's the current basis? Oh yes. Six degrees of separation. It's, yeah, it's one or two degrees here.

It's not six. Right. And it all floats, flows back to Stanley Marsh.

Well, he and a couple other.

Yeah.

[00:25:26] Tom: Uh, so did he end up getting in, was he truly a convicted child abuser or something like that? At the end of the,

[00:25:34] Paul: he passed away during that whole mess, and I don't really remember the, uh, You know, the chronological order of what happened because with Stanley, and he loved this. There was myth and there was fiction, and there was truth, and there was surprise, and there was artistry.

So who knows what it all was. I don't.

[00:25:58] Tom: Yeah, I don't, I have not read, I just remember recently he faced a lot of legal troubles at the end of his life around he did child abuse or something. Quite

[00:26:06] Paul: sadly. Well, I think that was the accusation. I don't know if it was proven. I think there was some settlements, but his, uh, you know, his wife was a sweetheart.

She just a really nice person that was very involved and still. Involved in the community. I understand his son is, um, very active in doing good things in the community. So, you know, we're from a big family, Thomas, so. Who knows what we'll learn about our big old family in the next hundred

years.

[00:26:34] Tom: Yeah. Right. Well that's, it's still fascinating for Amarillo lore and history.

[00:26:41] Paul: It's true there. Seeing these art pieces and thinking there is something, lots of things to see when you come here. Like the big Texas State Ranch, and That's right. And the, uh, 72 ounce steak

[00:26:51] Tom: that also the ladybug bush,

[00:26:53] Paul: ladybug bush.

And I, I never heard. Well, that's up at Capulin, you know, on the way. Yes. Between here and Denver. Yeah. You can climb up to Mount Capulin, which is a conical shaped, um, volcano. And it's a national park area, and there for some reason is a volcano. That's, or I mean, a uh, bush that's about three feet by Three feet by three feet.

Just this little ramp. Yeah. Yes, it has. I've seen it. Hundreds of thousands of ladybugs all over it. It looks red. Why they all go to that one tree? Nobody, I don't know.

[00:27:27] Tom: Yeah, nobody's figured it out. There's always

[00:27:29] Paul: I don't think Stanley Marsh had anything to do with that though.

[00:27:32] Tom: Are you sure about that? Because it's just another strange thing that you find on the way.

[00:27:35] Paul: true. I'm not, I guess I'm not sure of any of that. We don't know what we'll find out. I'm not sure of any of the things I've told you. I think I know about the car wash, but I'm not sure about that.

[00:27:44] Tom: That's true. But I think with all of these strange occurrences, there could be a good Netflix show that takes place in Amarillo about weird happenings around the city. I've already, I've already thought of it. And the mayor. The mayor is one of the stars-

[00:27:58] Paul: former, former, former, former mayor. Former, no, no. I don't wanna be the star of anything. I just, just telling you this,

[00:28:03] Tom: there's some great shows on, on Netflix that have popped up about strange towns and occurrences-

[00:28:09] Paul: well, you know, we don't like to consider ourselves strange, but we went to visit our cousins in Ireland when I was doing the mayor gig, and they were talking about this song, "Do You Know The Road to Amarillo", and it's this famous song in England that's just a goofy song that everybody sings and you know, really?

Yeah, it's really, you need to research that because it's really a strange song to come from Britain and be about Amarillo, Texas. And it was famous in all the UK and today, if you, The Road to Amarillo, you'll have to look it up, check, you, check. You can play it in the background. I don't know if there's any copyrights on it, but, um,

[00:28:49] Tom: okay.

Yeah. I use it as, I could use it as intro music to the

[00:28:53] Paul: So the guy that's singing it kind of sounds like Neil Sedaka to me, but it isn't Neil Sedaka, I'm probably getting in all kinds of trouble. Talking about this stuff, but

[00:29:01] Tom: Well, I could use a little snippet of it.

[00:29:03] Paul: Yeah. The, The Road to Amarillo. You have to look that way.

[00:29:06] Tom: Alright. Well, thank you so much for sharing [Okay] stories. It's awesome. I really appreciate it, and you're just helping me with my collection of good stuff.

[00:29:14] Paul: There you go. There you go.

[00:29:15] Tom: Hey, I hope you have a great Monday. Enjoy the rest.

[00:29:17] Paul: You too. Take care.

[00:29:18] Tom: And uh, stay dry... Paul.

[00:29:20] Paul: Alright. Take care. I will. Bye.

#blog