About this Episode

In episode #004, The Ferocious Fort Frenzy, the brothers reminisce about earlier, simpler times when a man’s worth was only as good as his ability to keep his word… and also the number of paintballs he could fit in his hopper. Is one’s participation in a Paintball Arms Race a good indicator of future success in life, or a GREAT indicator of future success in life? You be the judge. (…but the answer is ‘great indicator’.) Finally, Josh discusses the dire consequences of letting children study war histories…

Find our website on Podbean!

And don’t miss this episode’s Alternate Reality…

Episode Links

• Willark Park, now known as Bob Newton Park apparently…
• The paintball grounds where all the magic happened. From the long, golden strands of uncut grass fields, to the dense, food-item named terrain of the woods.
• Camp Rilea, Oregon Army National Guard. Make a difference in your community. Find your recruiter and join the fight.
• Jon Heder, who?
• Black Path. The thick woods full of stinging nettle, Fir trees, pits, trips, and falls that used to be a child’s never-ending playground of outdoor adventure, mystery, and danger, now appears to be a real blight on Keizer’s landscape.
• Read the first Kindle Vella episode of The Young Adventurers’ Guide: Into the Woods, by pseudo Kyle Weston.

Transcript

The following transcript was in part created using the Deepgram API:

[00:00:00] This Week on Another Brother

[00:00:28] Another Brother Theme Song

[00:00:51] Stewnerds Segment

Josh: Yeah. How did our love affair with paintball even begin?

Jacob: I assume it started with Alex.

Alex: No.

Josh: I would imagine it did too.

Alex: No. I don’t think so.

Jacob: Out of the 3 of us, you weren’t the first to pick it up. Was it Josh?

Alex: I think it was Josh.

Jacob: Really

Josh: So-

Alex: I think it was you and your friends-

Jacob: And Max and Adam-

Alex: that started the paintball. I mean, I guess-

Josh: I can’t imagine why we would have.

Alex: You could say that maybe it started with, like, laser tag. And before that, Super Soakers.

Jacob: That’s true

Josh: Yeah.

Jacob: Yeah. That’s fair.

Josh: Yeah. Okay. So that probably- that probably would be us.

Jacob: So who took that step to paintball?

Alex: Honestly, I’m pretty sure Josh went there first.

Josh: It might have been me. I do remember because I remember getting the what do they call them? Brass Eagle. I think the brand was Brass Eagle.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: The tiny little Like 10 shot pump action, 5 ounce CO2 cartridge.

Alex: Yeah that little 10 gram cartridge.

Josh: Yeah. 10 gram cartridge from Walmart. They were, like, 25 bucks or something. And-

Jacob: 25 for a single-?

Josh: Well, for the gun, so it was a gun. Plus-

Alex: A tiny little 50 round hopper.

Jacob: Yeah. These pump action things were so-

Josh: But it was such a blast because, like, we’d play at- we’d go down to Willark Park.

Alex: You’d have to lob the balls at each other.

Jacob: You played at Willark Park?

Alex: Yeah. Exactly. Yes. They played at Willark.

Jacob: Are you kidding me?

Josh: Yeah. Well, because these are so underpowered. Like, you you would you’d have to, like, arc it and try to be, like, what’s the optimal pitch on this that I can to get the for this distance?

Jacob: Oh my gosh.

Alex: Like like someone that’s just 30 yards away, you’d have to lob it at them. It was so fun.

Jacob: But also account for wind. They would just go all over the place.

Josh: Yeah. I remember trying to, like, trying to do, like, trick shots between, like, the branches in the trees and, like-

Alex: Yes. This is how I remember the paintball starting. It was you guys at Willark. I don’t know when or why I got into it because none of my friends ever did.

Josh: Yeah. It was mostly my friends. Like Max, Chris, Eric.

Alex: Okay. I mean — Okay, “none of my friends” is a little much. Greg was into paintball. Sorry, Greg, if you’re listening. But, like but Russell, Danny, Kurt.

Josh: Oh, yeah, they didn’t

Alex: None of them got into paintball.

Josh: I think I might not have either if we hadn’t started the way we did because starting off with that super low tech-

Jacob: Grassroots.

Josh: Yeah. You kind of you know, you could dodge.

Alex: Right.

Josh: And you could you could avoid the pain pretty easily. So I think as we kept stepping it up to the next level, it was kind of a I don’t know. That foundation kinda helped me, like, mentally prepare.

Jacob: And this is where being the youngest brother sucked because I always stepped it up to the next level. Well, it was delayed. I would say that.

Alex: Yeah. Right.

Jacob: So I was then left with the pump actions once they got real guns and-

Alex: But- But I felt- I felt like it was good for you.

Jacob: Builds character.

Alex: Yes. I I was I mean, I think I probably still feel this way about a lot of things, but especially back then when I had to learn how to draft with old school drafting machines and no computers, at all. I never got to do any computer drafting in high school.

Josh: Wow.

Alex: In my head, it was like this noble thing you did to, like, gain respect for the way things used to be so that you could fully respect what you had available to you. And it’s like, it’s paintball, dude. Get over it. But it was so fun playing out in those really tall grass fields with those pump action guns because, like, you felt like you were in the matrix like dodging bullets as they were coming at you. It was so fun.

Jacob: I keep wanting to call it Alex Olsen’s property, but he hadn’t bought it yet.

Alex: He hadn’t yet. We were- That was just trespassing probably.

Jacob: Yeah. But it was the perfect spot, and it was so close.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: Well, I like how it offered so much different varied terrain to play in. Because you had the grass, you had the barn,

Jacob: Trees.

Josh: -you had the creek, and the really dense thickets.

Alex: Once you go over the farming land, once someone was had the balls to go traipsing through this person’s field and farmland, to get to that thicket that grove out there.

Josh: Yeah. How did that start? How did we I think was that was that the Nelson’s? Did they show us that property?

Alex: I don’t remember.

Jacob: I I wouldn’t be surprised.

Alex: Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised either. They are the ones that lived out there.

Jacob: And and their dad now has their tractor out there.

Alex: Oh, really?

Jacob: Come on, let’s put those pieces together.

Josh: Yeah. Well, I mean because I remember in high school doing the video production class, we would- a lot of our filming was, like, based out there just because it was so cool with those overland railroad tracks.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: And the old rustic barn that was falling apart.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: But I think we were already paintballing out there before-

Jacob: The videos?

Josh: -My friends started filming out there. Yeah. I think we were maybe just kind of adventuring into this trespassed land. And then we eventually found that thicket of trees and went back there and it was just perfect. It’s like it was destined for paintball.

Alex: And I think I’m not sure if I had graduated high school yet by that point in time, but I think-

Jacob: So It straddled, I think. Because you used your Sportsman’s warehouse discount.

Alex: Yeah. And I didn’t have that job until I graduated. I got myself that’s when the arms race between you and I, Josh, started.

Josh: Because Alex and you had money to do it. I didn’t.

Jacob: And this is where I started getting usable guns. Yeah. That’s true. He had a job.

Josh: So how the heck was I even buying that stuff?

Alex: I don’t know.

Josh: Maybe that’s where my lunch money was going to.

Alex: Christmas, birthday, saving up. I don’t know.

Jacob: That 16 inch spiraled barrel though.

Alex: 14. Yeah. That was that was my coup de grace, I guess. I don’t know.

Josh: But again, going back to our video game episode, Alex, very much you, like, very much leaned into that, like, covert-

Alex: Sniper. That archetype.

Josh: Yeah. You got the what was that brand of cammo?

Alex: Mossy Oak. It was specifically their Turkey hunting cammo because it was extra green. Yeah. Gloves. I had it on gloves, a long sleeve t shirt, a pair of pants, and I was really depressed this year because I had no friends. Everybody was gone to school. And I was left at home. So I was watching all kinds of crazy stuff. And 1 of the things I watched on the history channel was the history of camouflage. And so I then hand painted my mask. To be camouflage.

Jacob: I forgot about that.

Alex: Hand painted my hopper, to match. My gun itself was green.

Josh: Yeah.

Alex: And then, yeah, I got those the perforated sticker to go on to the visor that was in a like an old school army forest cammo.

Jacob: And your helmet was fully encased. Right? Covered your back the back of the head too?

Alex: No. That was Josh’s.

Josh: Mine did. Mine did.

Jacob: Okay.

Josh: Well, because Alex starts- Right, do we’re talking about paintball arms race. So Alex starts getting like super OP equipment.

Alex: The first 1 of us to get a semi automatic, I think.

Josh: Yeah. Probably.

Alex: And, like, a 200 round hopper.

Josh: The halo? Yeah. You got a halo hopper with the force feed didn’t you?

Alex: No. No. The only 1 that ever had the only 1 that ever had 1 of those was Eric because he had the fully automatic.

Josh: Yes he did.

Josh: The fully electric trigger. I think it was a double trigger. Halo hopper. Yeah.

Alex: You had an electric trigger too, but-

Jacob: you did. Yeah. I remember that you had the batteries that went in the handle.

Josh: Yeah. And I it had a little LED/LCD display. The only thing I remember was I programmed it to say, “C”- “Courage Grows Stronger at the Wound.” So whenever I’d pick up my paintball gun and I’d and turn it on, I’d look at it and be like, Yeah! Courage does grow stronger at the wound! Just to psych myself up. It was a crazy game.

Alex: Good point. A lot of stuff was going on at that point in time, like, we were we were really starting to get into the fact that our heritage was Scottish at that point in time too. Man, that was a good time.

Josh: Yeah. And we were, like, really getting in, I think, our our meshing with Anberlin.

Jacob: No. Not yet. That was after your freshman year of college. You brought it home from BYU.

Alex: I didn’t hear any until after my mission. Mhmm.

Josh: What?

Jacob: It came that late to us.

Josh: No way.

Jacob: Yeah. You discovered them on, like, Pandora or something.

Josh: It was probably me and Chris because we were roommates.

Alex: Right. Yeah.

Josh: It was probably a combination of that. Wild.

Jacob: But Linkin Park-

Alex: Linkin Park for me, Jimmy Eat World-

Jacob: Oh, yeah.

Josh: Jimmy Eat World.

Jacob: Big.

Josh: Franz Ferdinand.

Alex: What?

Jacob: Yeah. That was- I bought that one. That was mine.

Josh: It was Jacob’s. They’re Scottish, I think, or British of some sort.

Alex: Metallica. I listened to a lot of Metallica.

Jacob: Well, slowly throughout this whole time, I was probably the biggest beneficiary. I spent no money, but eventually got a full kit out of out of the arms race.

Alex: Yeah. Man, we went crazy. I had like a proper gun carrying case.

Josh: Yes you did.

Alex: It’s like the egg carton foam in it, and I cut it so that everything fit just right, my barrel, my gun. My I think I even got my CO2 in there. Man, I miss being able to, like, know that gun inside and out, take it apart, fully redo all the the O-rings so there were no leaks, afterward. That was scary to begin with, though, figuring that out.

Josh: Yeah. It’s probably more probably felt more terrifying than it really needed to be-

Jacob: Yeah.

Josh: -in hindsight. I guess. So like, yeah, I knew my gun so well when I do get to BYU and started doing my mechanical engineering, we had to do a project where we had to build like a complex machine, and I was able to completely 3D recreate my entire gun down to the O-ring.

Jacob: I remember those renders.

Josh: Yeah.

Alex: Sweet.

Josh: I totally made up the measurements, you know.

Alex: Sure.

Josh: But man, I remember once we were doing this so broadly amongst us and our small group of friends and then integrating it within the young men.

Alex: Yeah. That’s when it got really interesting. It’s like, when Dad was playing-

Jacob: Oh, right right right.

Alex: -as a sanctioned young men’s activity.

Josh: On someone else’s land, that we don’t even know.

Alex: You know, we never Right. Right. We have no idea who owns this barn. That, I know you guys did this a few times. I can only remember playing with dad once. And I think it was probably the first time.

Josh: Yeah. I think we played twice at least, but I I only remember the 1 time.

Jacob: Yeah. Dad took us man, it was someone’s birthday.

Josh: Oh, it was-

Jacob: He took us to an actual outdoor arena.

Alex: And uncle Bob went too, and I didn’t get to go.

Josh: Yeah. It was Trevor’s it was Trevor’s birthday party.

Alex: It sounded awesome. Oh, and Camp Rilea.

Josh: Oh, yeah. Camp Rilea.

Jacob: You guys you guys took them to Camp Rilea?

Alex: I never went to Camp Rilea.

Josh: That was just me. Oh, yeah, baby.

Jacob: You took the guns?

Josh: Yes.

Jacob: Oh, man.

Josh: Because they have they have a full on-

Jacob: I mean, yeah, that’s what the city’s for-

Josh: You’ve been there. Right?

Jacob: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh: So now now having been in the Army, it’s called a MOUT- MOUT city.

Jacob: Mhmm. Not mock. MOUT?

Josh: Or mock, but we we’d do it for MOUT- MOUT training. Still 1 of the best cities of the kind that I’ve been through. That was a blast too. Oh my gosh. I can’t believe we got the Oregon Guard to, like, let us do that.

Alex: Pretty sweet.

Jacob: So cool.

Alex: I think 1 of the best things about paintballing was, yes, it was really fun to play. But it was almost more fun at the end of a round of playing to just start recounting all of your war stories to everybody. I don’t know why that was so fun, but it was so fun to just be talking about what you just did with everybody.

Josh: Well it came, I think for us, because we were, you know, related and or friends for so long. It was like it wasn’t a macho ego driven thing-

Jacob: Or boasting.

Josh: It was like “dude, you freaking nailed me right here, I can’t believe you were you were so cool.” Like, “you were good enough to do that.”

Jacob: That’s totally what the spirit of it was. Yeah. It was no like trying to brag or show each other up.

Alex: Right. We were not what some people might say are traditional paintballers, I guess, because there are some really douchey paintballers out there, man.

Josh: Well, yeah, at Trevor’s birthday party.

Alex: Oh, yeah.

Josh: Yeah. We had to deal with a bunch of drama. Dad Dad was yeah. By the end, well, because someone because we ended we were there and then they can’t just close it down to 1 group because they have to make their money. So another group of like 4 or 5 teenage guys showed up. Someone was down. It might have been wasn’t dad. I can’t remember who it was, but someone was down, like, in, like, thick ferns. And 1 of these kids was just shooting into it, And the guy was trying to wave off, like, okay I’m hit. I’m hit. But the guy just kept unloading. And then, of course, me being a hot head, I just, like, ran up right up to his kid and, like, pushed him hard and was getting ready to, like, throw down fists, you know?

Alex: Fisticuffs.

Josh: And and then all the adults, Bob and dad, and everyone shows up and they’re like, “what’s going on?!”. And then, you know, dad, “We’re done. We’re out of here!” This you know, “Trevor’s birthday party’s over!”

Josh: It was big. Dad got dad got really, really mad. It might have been him that was getting shot. I don’t know- I think it was dad! I think- I got so- I was, like, murderous. Like, I am going to murder this teenager right now. That was a hard one for me.

Alex: I don’t know how, but our group of friends, we just had this innate sense of fairness for fun.

Josh: Yeah.

Alex: That nobody would ever think of taking advantage of it because it wasn’t fun at that point.

Josh: Yeah.

Alex: Fairness made it more fun and we never we never had to talk about the rules really. Yeah. Like if there were any any game has basic rules that make it the game. But like, as far as rules to make the game fair, we never had to talk about those. Like, everybody just got it. We just did it. And that’s what made paintball with us so much fun. I’ve seen some YouTube videos from a guy who does either air soft or paintball. I can’t remember which. I think probably air soft. But maybe paintball. I don’t remember. Anyway, and his videos are always full of drama because people just don’t want to play fair they wanna win and show that they’re better than everybody, but we just wanted to have fun.

Jacob: I remember- I won’t name names, but I remember 1 or 2 occasions of a a certain individual who we’d have to put back in line or, like, get on their case for being stupid. Like, shooting at someone with their mask off. Any any names coming to mind?

Josh: Yes. For for a minute there, I was thinking a little bit but, yeah, I definitely, a hundred percent know what you’re talking about. Yeah. And you’re just like, what?

Jacob: He’s he’s Yeah. Anyway. But That’s true. Overall.

Josh: Like, we didn’t wanna play for, like, you know, 1 hit you’re out because then you’re, like, Oh, man. But then that person’s not having fun anymore.

Jacob: Yeah. So we play for pain!

Alex: So much fun!

Josh: So we willingly- Yeah, “we’re gonna play for pain!” And like, you can give up once you’re done. Like, once that pain threshold is met, you can walk off the field. No. You know, no issues.

Alex: But then, you just you just go back in somewhere else. Yeah.

Jacob: Oh I don’t remember that, really?

Alex: Yeah. We would- we would say we would we would head out with it- usually wasn’t the gas. The gas wasn’t usually the limiting issue as much as the number of rounds.

Jacob: The hopper. Yeah.

Alex: But we would go out each person with a certain number of rounds. We’d talk about how many rounds everybody has and we’d be like, okay, let’s just go play, like, maybe 500 rounds. And we would just kind of stop once someone had run out of rounds.

Jacob: That brings me to another thing I remember kind of the communal feel of it. Like, you’d all throw your balls up. Throw our paint balls out there. And if someone was low and someone else was, like, loaded, like we would communally share those paint balls to make sure we could keep playing. We had enough rounds to go around the party.

Alex: If everyone wanted to keep playing, then we’d Yeah. Make it happen. Yeah. Especially, since I got a discount on paint and gas at At Sportsmans. I got really good prices on paint when I was working there.

Josh: That was- it was meant to be that job coalesced, perfectly.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: I just remember who was the I think a lot of the genius behind a lot of this stuff is Chris, but also I think Alex too. Like, when did we start giving names to, like, the key terrain features within our wooded zone? I remember hamburger Hill

Alex: And there was a- I think there was a stump somewhere that we called Corn Dog.

Josh: Yeah. Corn Dog. There was medicine- or the cabinet- or-

Alex: Yeah. Because there was an actual medicine cabinet. That someone had thrown out there for some reason. Oh, that’s right. We weren’t the first people. To be out there using it for this kind of activity.

Josh: Yeah. Someone else had been there and put some, like, yeah, some furniture elements out there, cabinets and things.

Alex: I think we could find old paint markings too.

Josh: Yep.

Alex: So it wasn’t just like a homeless person had been living out there.

Josh: But for all that time. Like, we never came across anybody else, which tells me there must have been, like like a generation behind us.

Jacob: Yeah. Or the Nelson’s put up target practice. Right.

Josh: No. Because we were like yeah. Because we had, like, stumbled on this because we were tired of just playing in the tall grass. There’s trees over there. Let’s hike out there and see and then as we’re walking through, there’s like this cabinet there and everything. You’re like, what the hey.

Alex: It was a perfect perfect place to play. It was iconic for our group. Just it was just the perfect size with the perfect variety of spaces. I remember what I what I considered in my mind to be, like, the front area, it was, like, gently sloped. And there were trees around the perimeter all the way around. And then a couple of trees, a few trees widely spaced out in the middle of this gentle slope that created what was kind of like a round circular area. That I considered to be kind of the main battlefield. That was usually where we were.

Josh: Yep.

Alex: And there were foxholes here and there. And that’s where I think the medicine cabinet was.

Josh: Yeah from root systems. So I think these trees that just created little hovels like-

Alex: But, like, the the trees were spaced out enough that it felt really open, but you were you didn’t always have perfect lines from every spot to every other spot because there were trees out there in the middle. Oh my gosh. It was so good.

Josh: So good.

Jacob: Do you guys remember you you glued little clickers to the side of your guns, so you could signal-

Alex: Oh yeah. I absolutely remember that.

Jacob: -via clicking.

Alex: We got those from Earlene. At a halloween party.

Jacob: Oh really?

Josh: From Christmas? Or, no, not Christmas. Halloween.

Alex: Yeah. They used to be little white ghosts. And we just, like, filed and shaved off all the plastic until it was just the clicker. Because that’s we were we were gonna play a night game at Jon Heders’ parents’ house in West Salem. Yes. That Jon Heder.

Jacob: Napoleon Dynamite.

Josh: That’s right. Name drop!

Alex: We never met him or anything, but

Josh: but that backyard was freaking dope.

Alex: Yeah. We were gonna play a night game, and we- another thing that I think I had seen watching a lot of history channel- I was either watching History Channel, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings.

Josh: That’s all you need.

Alex: I learned about D Day paratroopers that dropped in the night before from the gliders, they all had these, like, Snapple lids, and they would click at each other. 2 clicks to question, and then 1 click in response. To say “I’m a friendly”.

Jacob: That’s right.

Alex: And so I was like, oh, my gosh. These would be perfect for that. Then we hot glued them to the side of our guns. So they’d be right within reach of your thumb.

Josh: Right. For your thumb. Yep.

Alex: That’s not all. Like, you and I, Josh, we went- the 2 of us went really crazy with our paintballing. Like, we came up with so many drills to drill each other in very specific ways to to to “increase our skills!” And it was because I had been drum major my senior year and I I had it in my head to be thinking of new ways to drill marching fundamentals into the band. And I came up with some exercises of my own that I thought were really good. But yeah. So that was just kind of in my head to be thinking that way at that point. So we didn’t just play for pain all the time. Sometimes we did play, you get hit, you you’re out. Yeah. Sometimes we would do that. But other times, we would play these other game modes that came from these drills that Josh and I came up with. I think we called 1 “Hunter and the Hunted”.

Josh: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Alex: That was my favorite drill.

Josh: I totally forgot about that.

Alex: Really? Oh, yeah. We played that out in the grass first. And 1 of us would have a gun, the other would have a helmet. The 1 with the gun would close their eyes, plug their ears, and count to a certain number that was determined ahead of time.

Josh: You could change it, yeah.

Alex: And the other person with the helmet had that much time to hide themselves. The other person once they were done counting would open their eyes and they would have 1 shot to shoot the other person.

Jacob: 1 round?

Alex: 1 round.

Jacob: Wow.

Alex: And that was only if they could see them. And we would play, I think, variations where you could move and others where you couldn’t.

Josh: Yeah. The Hunter would get to walk around and and yeah.

Jacob: You’re saying that that base mode, both stationary.

Alex: Yeah. Right.

Jacob: So it’s like a pretty limited amount of time you’re counting.

Alex: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah. We’re talking like, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. Yeah.

Alex: Yeah. Sometimes 10 or 5. I think we went all the way down to 5 seconds.

Josh: I just remember I remember, like, hiding behind roots or something. Because I think we did it in the tree stands too.

Alex: We did. That was the 1 we would play, like, as a full game mode with other people.

Josh: Yeah. I just remember, like, hiding somewhere, like, tucking all of my limbs in and just be- closing my eyes and being like, don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.

Alex: I can’t believe I don’t remember ever playing this because that’s, like, absolutely the kind of game you guys would convince me to be the the Hunted on.

Alex: We would trade. We’d totally trade.

Josh: Yeah. Oh, that game was great. Well, and Alex in his Mossy Oak cammo and you’re like, gosh, dang it. Where the heck are you?

Alex: Yeah. I had I definitely had an advantage there.

Josh: Remember when we- So as we’re ramping up in how we were playing, we started integrating radio systems too.

Alex: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Josh: Push to talk radio. And I don’t remember if Alex if you were the first 1 to get 1, but didn’t you get a throat mic?

Alex: Yes. I also got that from Sportsmans Warehouse.

Josh: Yeah. So a vox- voice activated throat mic onto his little 2 way radio.

Alex: Clear your voice to start the broadcast and keep talking.

Josh: To turn the vox on, yeah.

Jacob: No way.

Josh: Yeah. Oh, dude. It was awesome. Because that’s when we started, like, distributing. That’s when we we had, like, identified Hotdog or Corn Dog and Hamburger Hill. And so we’re like, now we’re, like, dispersed across this entire area, and we’re still trying to, like, totally force the other side to capitulate from just the pain. Right?

Alex: Right.

Josh: And so we’re really trying to, like, trying to try to canalize the the entire other team into an area where both of us can just, like, lay down fire until they run away. And so you had to be able to communicate. That was awesome.

Jacob: 1 closing thought. I can’t wait until our kids are old enough. Not- where I’m at currently not paintball, but the new, like, the gel bead blasters they have.

Josh: Oh?

Jacob: Have you not seen those? Oh, man.

Josh: No.

Jacob: I think it would be dope. So, like I mean, we’re talking a hopper the size of like a phone, 800 rounds in that bad boy.

Alex: Dang.

Jacob: So you know Orbeez? It’s it’s basically the Orbeez only really small. Right? So they’re about the size of an air soft round-

Alex: but it goes squish.

Jacob: Yeah. But you can still feel it. They they leave little little marks from what I’ve seen. So you just throw on some glasses and you know, it’s so it’s obviously more comparable to airsoft, but it’s biodegradable. It’s just gel.

Alex: Yes. That’s the best part.

Jacob: So you can go play anywhere and you’re not leaving paint or these pellets or whatever.

Alex: I mean, the paint was biodegradable.

Jacob: That’s true. It was. And some air soft rounds are, but they’re cheap too.

Josh: Dang.

[00:26:20] Interstitial Joke

Jacob: So someone asks, so what does “POC” mean? So, you know, someone says a “proof of concept”. So someone else thinking they’re funny, he says, yeah, it has something to do with an “MVP”. So that same person who said what what a POC is, he clarified MVP means “minimum viable product”. So I respond, “that really changes my understanding of the award I got back in tee ball.

Alex: Because you were short.

Jacob: Minimum viable to be a T Ball player.

[00:27:02] Storytime Segment

Soundbite: Hey, kids. Do you know what time it is? Storytime!

Josh: Okay. So back when I was in elementary school, all of my friends, minus 1, lived roughly in the same neighborhood area in Keizer. And so during the summers, you know, it wasn’t uncommon to just head over to 1 of the houses over there usually Max’s, and that kinda became like our base of operations for whatever fun we were gonna be having.

Jacob: Shenanigans.

Josh: Yeah. But this was this was probably the fundamental start of my shenanigans. Like the, yeah, the origin story of sorts. So we were, you know, Cub Scouts, and it’s Oregon. So we’re very interested in the outdoors, and we feel very comfortable being in, like, the forest and exploring on our own and stuff. And on the way out there, if you’re heading out to that neighborhood, like hitting towards Gubser or up 14th Street. At the time, you’re not gonna find it anymore, unfortunately. But as you get close to Marigold, I think it’s Marigold or Meadowlark, you’d come across what we called Black Path. Because there was a black paved pathway that came off the sidewalk that went past this grassy, open grassy field, and then eventually, it sloped pretty severely down to a creek. And that entire creek area was just really heavily forested and Black Path would take you down and would wrap around this little subdivision and flow along the next to the creek. And there were a bunch of, like, wild onions and stuff down there. Yeah. We’d pick them and you’d smell them and they’d, you know, just smell good and you’d suck on them and whatever. Or we’d even, like-

Alex: Mmmmm onion!

Josh: I mean it’s cool!

Jacob: Some of us would suck on them, apparently.

Josh: Come on. Come on. You’re a kid, you’re out, you’re foraging. Like, it’s a cool feeling. We were pretty young.

Alex: Alright. Alright.

Josh: And and we’d even, like, try to stew some, like, campfire soup stuff.

Jacob: That’s what I remember. Taking them back to the to the Breedlove’s house and, yeah, try to cook with them.

Josh: Yeah. That never tasted good because we had no concept of seasoning. But anyway, 1 summer well, so then this forested area was, like, really thickly forested the trees were so big and like old. So they’re like really just good strong Fir trees. And 1 summer, we decided to really explore the Black Path area, and we’d go out there, and we noticed in 1 tree, like, really, really high up in the tree, there were some wood, like, stepping, kinda like, you know, old school kid tree forts, a ladder up in the tree. You just hammer a board in. So, like, really high up in the tree, there were maybe 4 or 5 of these. You know, like, what the heck? How do you even get there? And you’d notice some, like, scrap wood up there in some of the the tree canopies. So very clearly, we’re like, Oh, this is a forest fort. This is “our” forest fort, and we started, like, renovating and improving and building our forts and stuff. And, like, we’d get up. We’d get, like, either a 5 gallon bucket or, like, I think we had a wagon at 1 point. And we’d fill it with scrap wood from whoever’s house, some nails and hammer, and we would just haul these things down the neighborhoods over to Black Path. And we-

Alex: How old were you at this point again?

Josh: Gosh. Well, Max moved in. In fifth grade, and I think it was probably that summer. So probably the summer of my 5th grade year.

Alex: So you were like 11?

Josh: Yeah. [actually, Josh was 10]

Jacob: 11, yeah.

Josh: So we’re just renovating. And then I’m pretty sure it was my idea because I’m the 1 that was, like, really into war and like like the historicity’s of war and stuff. And I remember learning about Vietnam. And-

Alex: Okay…

Jacob: I don’t remember that in my fifth grade course work.

Alex: Yeah. No kidding.

Josh: So I had remembered, like, the Vietcong would build, like, punji pits and stuff and booby traps, and so we’d start- So this was just a concept at this point. Right? We’re just like I’m just conceptualizing like, man, this is a for. Like, we gotta defend it. Right? There’s all these options we have. So anyway, as we’re really developing this place out, 1 day, we start going back and we’re crossing the really long grass field that leads to the tree line. And it’s just like any other normal, sunny, summer day and as we were approaching the tree line, no kidding, there I was, diving for my life, as the snap of some projectile flies past my ear over and over again. There was another kid gang in town, and these guys were sling shotting nails at us.

Jacob: Nails?

Alex: What the freak!

Josh: Nails. Like, big thick construction nails. So we hit the dirt.

Jacob: Sorry, did did you say you hadn’t even made it to the tree line yet? You’re still in the field?

Josh: No, we were completely in the open.

Jacob: Are you kidding me?

Josh: So they’re they’re in the tree line. Snapping these things-

Jacob: Oh my gosh.

Josh: -at us. So of course, well, and this field has like a bunch of stinging nettle in it. And the grass isn’t very thick. Like, it’s not the best cover or it’s it’s not no cover.

Jacob: It’s not even watered so it’s yellow and sharp and pokey on its own.

Josh: Yeah. So we hightailed it out. And my group of friends is not 1 to just, like, capitulate, and, like, roll over. Yeah. So we’re like, you know, “are you kidding me either an hour our forest, we claimed it as our ownership” and thus started the epic battles of for Black Forest. Long story short, we did put punji pits in, And we had determined that these kids were coming from the other side of the creek, and they were crossing the creek.

Jacob: What? Clearlakers?

Josh: Yeah.

Jacob: Coming into Gubser territory.

Alex: That’s so-

Jacob: No way.

Josh: We had found these little, like, board bridges to bridge over the creek, and we’d remove them, and they would just find a way to put them back. And so, oh, my gosh. We found barbed wire, and we strung barbed wire along the length of the bottom of the creek.

Jacob: Oh my gosh.

Alex: What the freak?

Josh: We- this is, like, what happens when you let your kids read real history. It’s like the reality of war meets this unknown reality of childhood.

Jacob: Alright. But let’s let’s get this out there. Who all who all were you? Did you have the 2 Chris’s? Obviously you and Max.

Josh: Yeah. So it was mostly me, Max and Adam.

Jacob: Was Adam around by now?

Josh: Maybe he wasn’t-

Alex: Maybe he was for that.

Jacob: I can’t remember when they moved in.

Josh: No. He must not have been. He must not have been because it was a while before he came in after Max came in. So yeah, it was probably me and Max, a lot of this we did on our own. Yeah. And at least Chris for some of it. I don’t think Curry was ever there. A lot of this stuff is is me and Max, But anyway, that that was kind of like the initial foray into just so many shenanigans. Yeah. And funny, interesting to note. I’m actually writing a series of children’s books loosely based on my childhood.

Jacob: Yes! What? No way.

Josh: Yeah. I’m putting them on Amazon Kindle because you can do these- So I’m trying this serial- There’s a serial- a way to like, release stories in serial. So you can, like, release it episode at a time or, like, chapter at a time. And-

Jacob: Are these audio or or text?

Josh: No. It’s text.

Jacob: Okay. Are you gonna, like, use Midjourney or DALL-E?

Josh: I use DALL-E for the- so for this platform, it’s not you don’t input images, like, in line with the text.

Jacob: Oh, okay.

Josh: So just an episode. So it’s, like, just a wall of text, But you can get it on your app your phone app and everything. But then the story itself has a, like, a book cover image. And I use DALL-E for that, and it’s actually pretty cool.

[00:35:45] Another Brother Outro