The Reckon Yard Podcast

New episode of The Reckon Yard is up. This one’s got a broke down Avalanche, a Tulsa cemetery, a Volkswagen collection I stumbled into, and a lesson about spinning plates I’m still chewing on a year later. Give it a listen.

Also, new chapter of Duwali Bottoms Texas is up. Sheriff Garza’s got a car worth talking about, an old friend running out of chances, and Tony’s about to find out Amber doesn’t scare easy. Grab a chair.

I recall an eventful week in Southern California with lots of milestones and folks that show up.

I drove through tent city on the Fourth of July and couldn’t get it out of my head. The SoCal run, the anxiety, and what happens when you start doing the math on your own life at a red light.

This week on Duwali Bottoms :

A mother knows when to talk and when to just hold on. A father shows up with ribeyes and an agenda. Things are about to get complicated in Duwali Bottoms.

I take you through the particular fury of modern travel, the quiet rage my father carried like a second engine, and what my wife accidentally revealed about the distance between the two men. Also: what Enya has to do with any of it.

This week on duwali Bottoms Texas

Three people. Three mornings. One small East Texas town that keeps drawing everybody back whether they mean to come or not. Season Two of Duwali Bottoms Texas is rolling, and the ground is shifting beneath all of it.

Join me in Denver while I recount an adventurous three days of travel with the family. I've also included bonus footage of one of the Fort Collins shows where I'm telling the Harry story on stage for my original Reckon Crew.

I got the opportunity to interview Pulitzer nominated poet, author and publisher Charles Clifford Brooks III. It’s a lively conversation about writing and a short dive into the majesty of Faulkner.

Back in Duwali Bottoms,

Carl Sr. has a plan. Alana already knows about it. Two young men from Houston who came to Duwali Bottoms because a hurricane left them no choice are about to find out that sometimes the storm knows where you need to be.

A hundred episodes in and I’m still figuring it out in public. Tonight I talk about the way music finds you through a crack you didn’t know was open. Keep your receptors open.

In Duwali Bottoms Texas, Sheriff Garza gets his first real look at what he inherited in Rusk County, Carl Sr. takes the boys fishing on Lake of the Pines, and Matt Swindon reminds everybody exactly who he is.

History’s been lied about from both directions and I’m tired of it. Edison, Ford, and Diamond Jim Brady none of them are who you think. This week on Duwali Bottoms, Tony and Dusty get out of jail, Alana shows up, Dave Tilton pays the sheriff a visit, and somebody comes flying around a curve on the two lane who has no business being there.

This week, I talk about two days in a row when the world said no, and I kept going anyway, a flat tire in the rain, a camera on the concrete floor. I’ve been asking myself ever since whether the thing in me that always chooses the harder path is strength or scar tissue. I don’t have an answer, and I’m starting to think that might be the point.

A hard call. The fella in me who ain’t a friend of reason wanted to hoist the black flag. The wiser part asked me to slow down and do right by the folks counting on me. This one’s about knowing when to swing and when to walk away clean. Two wolves. Both still in the room.

Back in Duwali Bottoms,

A fog-thick morning on the Bong Song plain, 1966. Carl Sr. hears something in an empty village he can’t unhear, and the choice he makes there will follow him into the dark. Back home...

Some lines get people killed. Some just keep us small. From the Driftless region of Minnesota to a joint that’s legal on one bank of the Mississippi and a criminal act on the other, JW walks through the imaginary lines men drew with rulers, and the smaller ones we draw inside ourselves.

Plus a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas. Sixteen hours out of a flooded Houston, Tony and Dusty roll up on Duwali Bottoms in the dark, and the homecoming Tony spent a decade trying to aviod is waiting for him on a farm road.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The five labors of growth are complete. But before we close the series out JW has one more thing to tell you — the part he hasn’t said yet. These tools won’t fix everything. The world is full of people stomping around in their meat suits leaving wreckage behind them and a subscription to dogmatic belief doesn’t insure their humanity. What the toolbox does is give you a foundation that doesn’t move when those people show up. And they will show up. A man on a plane between Wisconsin and Houston trying to use what he’s been build...

I charged into trust thinking I had it figured out. Confucius stopped me in my tracks. From Jesus to Hemingway to Epictetus a deep dive into what trust actually is, what distrust actually costs, and why the wall you build to protect yourself might be the most expensive thing you own.

Plus a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas.

Hurricane Ike is hours from landfall. Tony rides out the storm in the Heights with Dusty and Tinker, a joint, a Weber grill, and the Martin. Eighteen floors above the city, Amber sends her friends home...

Humility was supposed to be the easy episode. It wasn’t. JW traces the concept from Aristotle to Augustine to a back porch in East Texas, then takes his own road to Damascus in the middle of writing it. Two sides of the humble coin, some stories about getting knocked off the horse, and a hard look at the difference between real humility and the fear that’s been wearing its clothes. Plus a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas Season Two: as the storm draws closer, two displaced souls find themselves in the same Houston bar on the same...

Mercy is a word we think we understand until life puts us in a room where we have to actually practice it. JW explores what Jesus, the Stoics, Dostoevsky, Schopenhauer, and Twain had to say about mercy, then tells the story of a hospital room, a dying woman, and what happens when mercy gets corrupted into self-protection and called something else. The second labor of growth starts here.

In Duwali Bottoms, a bloody nosed Tony Haines finds his way back to his papaw and an old man who knows that sometimes the most merciful thing you can...

I was handed a broken blueprint for love early on. Spent a lot of years building damaged things with it. This episode is about the people and moments that handed me a better plan and why love isn’t a feeling you fall into, it’s a labor you pick up. Season Four starts here. We return to Duwali Bottoms just in time for season two, Hurricane Ike is still just a disturbance in the Atlantic, but the storm is already building closer to home.

There’s a woman from Laird Hill you haven’t met yet. Her husband spends his evenings covered in grease keeping their Cavalier running. She’s quiet. A preacher’s wife. The kind of person you pass in a hardware store and don’t think twice about.

She knows exactly where she’s going this morning.

Danny Ware has been carrying something since Korea that most men never have to carry. He’s made his peace with most of it. An old soldier knows what he knows.

Tom Levins is running out of road.

An...

With the Reckon Yard Podcast on hiatus for a couple of weeks, Duwali Bottoms must go on,

1977. A stolen Pontiac. A state trooper on Sexton Road. A jail cell in Rusk County where two former best friends finally tell each other the truth. 1987. A phone call Tiffany wasn’t supposed to hear. A confession Danny was never supposed to get.

JW closes out the season with stories about every time technology made his skills obsolete,the print shop, NDT, foundation repair, what he did about it. Plus a trip to Fredericksburg, the S10 Lot Legends video, a 4L60E update, a new episode of Duwali Bottoms Texas.

Why JW makes fun of brands, the truth behind Dawn soap and the Exxon Valdez, and why you don’t need the right boots to be worthy. Plus a road trip, the Austin show, Avalanche updates, and a new Duwali Bottoms. All are welcome in the house of internal combustion.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

JW talks friendships and the complexity of favors, the fear that pervades us all regardless of station or occupation.

This week in Duwali Bottoms, healing does not always mean mending.

As Carl Jr recovers and the Haines family tries to steady themselves after tragedy, old friendships strain under the weight of silence and distance. Around town, life carries on in the summer heat but something restless is beginning to move beneath the surface.

JW revisits a brief fling with a ’92 Toyota pickup and the chaos that surrounded it in the early 2000’s. Late nights and a hard look in the mirror at a version of himself he didn’t much like.

This week in Duwali Bottoms, TX:

After two boys end up dead and a case gets filed away, Red can’t shake the feeling something doesn’t add up. Danny refuses to sit still, Tom learns the noise is spreading, and the line between justice and vengeance starts to blur. In Duwali Bottoms, nobody waits forever.

This week on The Reckon Yard, JW remembers his first Valentine’s Day with Rachael, then reflects on his paternal grandfather’s life and the weight of expectations and how a man learns to carry them.

Then we return to Duwali Bottoms, Texas. In the long heat of an East Texas summer, a single afternoon drifts along slow and easy… right up until it doesn’t, and the roads and pastures fill with the restless energy of youth, old grudges, and choices made a little too fast for good sense to keep up.

This week on The Reckon Yard, JW remembers his first Valentine’s Day with Rachael, then reflects on his paternal grandfather’s life and the weight of expectations and how a man learns to carry them.

Then we return to Duwali Bottoms, Texas. In the long heat of an East Texas summer, a single afternoon drifts along slow and easy… right up until it doesn’t, and the roads and pastures fill with the restless energy of youth, old grudges, and choices made a little too fast for good sense to keep up.

There’s a beauty in knowing we’re all mostly trying to get home.

Blaze Foley helped me stumble across a truth so deep it could only have been hiding in plain sight the whole time.

Episode Six of Duwali Bottoms, Texas finds Carl Jr. trying to outrun a summer that’s already slipping away. Sometimes the people you thought you understood best are the ones you don’t recognize anymore.

The Mazda has left the building while JW falls into a rabbit hole of Americana through the grace and talent of Hoyt Axton. In Duwali Bottoms episode five leans into atmosphere and character, living in the long pauses between decisions and the weight carried by men shaped by place, memory, and unfinished business. The story narrows, the silence grows louder, and Duwali Bottoms keeps moving forward.

What do Epictetus and Helge Meyer have in common? Who knows, but let's try to make the connection anyway. Also episode four of Duwali Bottoms Texas is a humdinger.

This week is about the things we hold onto long after they stop serving us. From a stalled truck restoration to fallen empires and failed institutions, this episode asks when consistency turns into stubbornness. If you’ve ever stayed put just to avoid admitting the season ended, this one’s for you.

How much advice do you give on subjects you’re not knowledgeable about?

I try like hell to avoid it.

Trouble is, the waters are full of ignorant sharks.

We return to Duwali Bottoms to learn a little more about the land, and what it asks of the people standing on it.

This week on TRYP, JW talks about the revenge mindset, and how living on borrowed anger can drain you dry. Plus, the debut episode of a new fictional series “Duwali Bottoms, Texas.”

JW recounts a quiet Christmas at home and getting the opportunity to spend some time in the service of others.

A road weary JW tells a few tales behind his recent exploits on the Christmas tour before delving off into deep analysis of the precipice in his life.

JW explores the difference in niceness and kindness while recounting a recent trip to East Texas.

An overdue visit with a childhood friend from Alief helps JW reframe his parameters for success.

This week on The Reckon Yard, JW digs into chaos, change, and the strange comfort of looking back. A sharp, heartfelt ride you don’t want to miss.

Some goodbyes don’t blow up.

They just whisper.

An inch of distance here, a missed call there, a silence that grows until the friendship you loved becomes a ghost.

JW gives a short primer on how to launch a wall stud over your neighbor's house using a 68 Ford Bronco before recalling the rise and fall of the greatest fictional Cover band you've never heard.

How important are the little things? The longer I'm here, the more their value seems to climb. There's even historical precedent.

How much wood could a Woodchuck chuck if a Woodchuck could chuck wood? A whole mess of it with the right pills. The devil don't come in an angry man, he's charismatic, gregarious, helpful even.

JW takes us back to 2011 when he was called upon to deal with a beast of truly mythic proportions.