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In today's episode, Lit of War is talking to Marine Corps veteran and author Mack Kaltreider.
He sits down and talks about his memoir, Double Knot, a war memory in seven essays, which approaches
his time in service as an infantryman, but talks about it in a way that might surprise you,
not only the combat aspect, but quieter things as well.
He's a Baltimore-based writer and educator.
He's had award-winning work appear in things like Coffee or Die Magazine, Leathernet Magazine,
and Herbag Magazine, so you're going to find this very interesting and enjoy this Literature of War Foundation podcast.
Welcome to the Lit War podcast by Leighville Mines Journal, where we seek out the moments that made us
who we are today, one story at a time.
I'm your host, Michael Jerome Plunkett.
My guest today is writer and Marine Corps veteran Mack Kaltreider, whose debut memoir, Double Knot,
a war memoir in seven essays, is out this April from Dead Reckoning Collective.
It is a slim but powerful collection of essays that manages to cover several lives lived over the course of a decade.
Poignant and astute, this memoir takes us through being a rifleman in the Marine Corps during one of the deadliest times
during the global war on terror, to being a cop on the streets of Baltimore, to the summit of Mount Rainier.
Mack Kaltreider served in the Marine Corps before receiving his bachelor's degree in history.
His writing has previously appeared in Coffee or Die Magazine, Dirtbag Magazine, Leatherneck Magazine,
and the poetry collection In Love and War, the anthology of poet warriors.
Kaltreider currently teaches English and lives in Baltimore with his wife and children.
He joins us today with a story.
Mack Kaltreider, welcome to the Lit War podcast. Do you have a story for us?
I do.
So you were kind enough to give me a heads up this morning and say, double check in the time and just say,
hey, make sure you have a story for us about a moment that's important in your life.
And that's like asking someone what their favorite movie is.
Like, all of a sudden, every movie you love goes out of your head.
So all day I've been stressing about like an important moment.
And I wanted to have a moment that had some kind of like life lesson or moral at the end of the story.
And that just freaked me out and I couldn't come up with one.
So I'm going to tell you the story of a toy plane that I have and how it came to be in my possession.
This little metal plane was made.
There's no date on it, but sometime in the 30s or 40s, most likely.
But let's see to backtrack a little bit.
My mom was a Navy brat.
And so she was born in Peru, lived in Japan, Hawaii, North Carolina, California, all over the place,
moved around constantly.
But for the last three years of her high school, she lived in Norfolk, Virginia, where my grandfather was stationed.
And while she was living there, her next door neighbor was an English girl in the same grade as her.
And evidently, her dad was serving in the Royal Marines, but was stationed in Norfolk for some kind of extended period.
And they headed off, became best friends throughout high school.
And then after high school, they stayed friends and, you know, would maintain correspondence and whatnot.
And when I was in elementary schools to probably fourth grade or so, fifth grade, maybe,
we took a family trip to England to visit her.
And it was an amazing trip.
I got to meet her dad, who was still alive.
And at the time he had, I don't know exactly how it works.
I think he had retired from the military after like 30 years of service.
Or maybe he was still in and this was some special billet, but he was serving as the Sergeant of Arms for Parliament.
So their family was living in this amazing, like, row home right next to Big Ben,
where they put the people who work in Parliament, I guess.
And he was able to give us like this special backstage tour of Parliament.
And like, they were building the London Eye at the time, which was right outside my bedroom window.
So I got to watch that get built.
It was this incredible, like rare opportunity to see London in a way most people don't get to see.
And I got to meet these amazing people that were important to my mom.
And at the time, I was a little kid, but I was obsessed with World War II.
Like, World War II movies were everything I wanted to watch, everything else seemed boring.
I just wanted more and more stuff about World War II.
And so when we were getting ready to leave London to come back home,
we were saying bye to this family, this woman's dad, the Sergeant of Arms said,
hey, I want to give you something.
And so he went upstairs and came back down with this little toy airplane,
which it's an old timey toy.
So like it's 100 percent metal.
It's like tin or something.
The wheels are metal.
They still spin.
It's got four propellers on it and the little propeller blades are metal, but none of them have been bent.
The paint is like chipping off.
But other than that, it's pristine.
And it still is.
And he gave this plane to me and it was so cool.
And he said, this was mine when I was a little boy, I want you to have it because you're into this kind of stuff.
And before we left, I was looking at the wings and they have the little star that American planes had.
And I asked him, why did you have an American plane instead of a British plane with the little tricolor bullseye looking thing?
And he said, well, an American gave it to me.
And then he goes on to tell me how during the Blitz when London was getting bombed and they would all rush into the underground stations.
And they would wait out the bombing raids down there and he was down there one time.
Little boy terrified because you can hear the bombs landing all around them.
And this man comes up to him and hands him this toy plane.
And he said, you don't have to worry.
There's brave people up there that are putting an end to this.
And then he goes on to tell him that he is an American pilot who had volunteered to fly with RAF during this period.
And that's who gave him this toy plane.
I don't know why the American pilot wasn't up there flying or if he was just like on leave and went underground with everyone else.
But he gave him this toy plane that he had for some reason.
And that's why it's an American plane.
And he gave it to me.
And so there's no moral to this story, but there was a really impactful moment and impactful gift.
And I still have it.
And so behind me, I have this big bookshelf, my basement, and there's a few trinkets on it that aren't books.
And this is one of the things I keep on there.
It's amazing. Yeah, really, really cool story for a little tiny airplane.
Well, I'm a huge fan of relics, too.
I like there's something about objects that they can contain history.
They can contain stories within them.
You know what I mean?
And like, that's now passed through what, three generations right there?
Three generations and like laterally, two, right?
From one country to another, kind of from one American to a British guy, back to an American.
Like, yeah, across the Atlantic twice, probably.
Yeah. Yeah.
There's every time I take it down and just fondle it or whatever, it's it's a pretty cool connection to to history.
Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.
Yeah, I don't think stories need to need to have morals.
Actually, I think I'm this point in my life more interested in the stories that don't are anti moral stories.
Me, too.
All right. Well, thanks for sitting down with us today.
We're, you know, you got a memoir coming out, double knot through dead reckoning collective.
How does it feel?
It feels great.
Thanks so much for having me on the podcast.
I'm a listener, so it's exciting to be here among some people that I look up to.
I feel really excited about this this book.
We were talking about it right before we started recording and I'm really excited.
I'm nervous because it's pretty vulnerable.
There's going to be some negative feedback along with any time you create something.
But overall, I feel like a huge sense of relief because I've been working on it for such a long time
and I'm proud of how it turned out.
So it feels really good.
Yeah. I mean, for for a collection, it's it's only seven essays, right?
And they're in total, it's less than 200 pages.
I think it's only about 170 pages altogether.
And yet the ground that you're able to cover is phenomenal.
In the intro, you know, one of the things that one of the first things that jumped out of me is this.
It seems like this is a long time coming.
It's covering a couple of different lives that you've lived in a couple of different parts of the parts of the world.
And it says here in the beginning that this is whittled down pretty much from a 97000 word manuscript.
Can you talk a little bit about where this project started and how it formed into these seven essays that are going to be getting published soon?
Yeah. So some of the stories, not how they stand now, but like the same topics
I've covered just writing for myself, you know, a long time ago, just to kind of organize my thoughts.
And then, you know, I started writing more and more and I started writing professionally.
And I, you know, I write for a book or wrote for Coffee Rye magazine for about four years.
And so then I got the skills to actually change what was just like word vomit and just like an emotional dump onto pages
and kind of turn it into stories that were worth reading.
And as I started doing that, I realized that that's how that's that was my thought process when I wrote that giant manuscript.
And I got to the end of it and I set it down and I would go back to it periodically and, you know, tighten it up or chip away at it, add to it.
And I just realized like I, parts of it were boring.
And if I thought they were boring, then of course the reader is going to think that it's boring, you know, because I lived it.
But a lot, I find a lot of military memoirs can be boring once you've read a lot of them.
Because, you know, there's only so many ways to describe a firefighter.
So many, you know, things you can say without writing in like tropes and cliches and stuff.
And it just turned it, it was turning into a book that like, I didn't like at all.
I hated it. And I was like, okay, well, what do I really want to say?
And what are the stories that are really important to me?
It's not, you know, repetitive firefights or, you know, how hard is boot camp or the things you find in most military memoirs.
And I was like, you know, I can chop all that stuff out.
And then what's left are these moments that are impactful for me.
And I'm not sure why some of them are and why some of them aren't, but I can turn those into stories.
And as I did that, it kind of became clear and clear as I worked on these stories.
And I wanted to distill it down into something that was small and digestible, but packed a bunch.
And you didn't have to read 400 pages of stuff you can find in other books.
Right. I mean, exactly. Like when you're talking about experiencing trauma, whether it's combat or anything that's really like acting on the nerves, right?
You can overwhelm to a person to the point where they become numb.
It actually happens surprisingly quickly. You know, you watch the beginning of Saving Private Ryan by the third time somebody's getting their head blown off.
It kind of weirdly enough, it loses its impact, right?
And that's not actually the way to have an emotional impact, sustained emotional impact throughout an entire narrative arc throughout entire story.
So why don't you choose to focus on the particular moments that you did? Because like you said, like you were trying to stay away from the typical military stuff.
But this actually starts with your military experience, kind of goes into why you joined the Marine Corps, and then goes through the various careers you had afterwards.
Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, if I had to summarize it, like it's a war memoir, that is the point of it.
Not every essay is about that.
So the first essay takes you right there. And, you know, it starts off just describing what standing post is like, which is sounds like you might as well read a dictionary.
But that's just kind of the setting to get into what I really wanted to talk about, which is a day that my best friend lost both of his legs.
And so that, you know, moment stuck with me, I think for obvious reasons. And so I kind of just wanted to get that out of the way.
Not get it out of the way is the wrong way of saying that, but like I didn't want to have that later in the book and felt like it had to be something more than it was.
So I just started the book off with that. I think it sets the tone well and it's, it's an essay I'm pretty proud of.
And yeah, there's a reason the other six aren't just other similar moments to that because I think once is enough and anything I said, if I wrote another essay about a similar moment, you know, there's not much else to say about it other than repeating myself.
So.
Like the opening essay, it does so much because like you said, this is in country, it's kind of subverting the idea of what typical military action moment is because you spend most of it standing posts literally staring out on into nothing, right, which gets boring very quickly.
You go into the ways that you kind of pass that time and how you how you deal with that. And yet there's, you drop into these really traumatic moments of like the worst, you know, your worst day on a deployment is when one of your friends gets really badly injured, kind of the
experience like that, while also kind of jumping forward into what, you know, returning home is like and how that experience can kind of linger with you for a while.
But you also we've like you managed to take, take it back to like the humorous moments to, you know, I don't want to give too much away but there's a lot of ways that somehow you make the most boring thing possible which is just to stand and stare out into nothing.
You like any good Marine find a way to, you know, come up with things to do with with your time.
And.
Welcome to the Lit War podcast by lethal Minds Journal, where we seek out the moments that made us who we are today. One story at a time.
I'm your host Michael Jerome Plunkett. My guest today is writer and Marine Corps veteran Mac Colt writer, whose debut memoir double not a war memoir and seven essays is out this April from dead reckoning collective.
It is a slim but powerful collection of essays that manages to cover several lives lived over the course of a decade. Point yet an astute.
This memoir takes us through being a rifleman in the Marine Corps during one of the deadliest times during the global war on terror to being a cop on the streets of Baltimore to the summit of Mount Rainier.
Mac Colt writer served in the Marine Corps before receiving his bachelor's degree in history.
His writing is previously appeared in coffee or die magazine, dirtbag magazine, Leatherneck magazine and the poetry collection in love and war, the anthology of poet warriors.
Colt writer currently teaches English and lives in Baltimore with his wife and children.
He joins us today with a story.
Mac Colt writer, welcome to the Lit War podcast. Do you have a story for us?
I do. So you were kind enough to give me a heads up this morning and say, you know, double check in the time and just say, hey, make sure you have a story for us about a moment that's important in your life.
And that's like asking someone what their favorite movie is, like, all of a sudden every movie you love goes out of your head. So all day I've been stressing about like an important moments.
And I wanted to have a moment that had some kind of like life lesson or moral at the end of the story.
And that just freaked me out and I couldn't come up with one.
So I'm going to tell you the story of a toy plane that I have and how it came to be in my possession.
This little metal plane was made. There's no date on it, but sometime in the 30s or 40s, most likely.
But let's see to backtrack a little bit.
My mom was a Navy brat. And so she was born in Peru, lived in Japan, Hawaii, North Carolina, California, all over the place.
Moved around constantly, but for the last three years of her high school, she lived in Norfolk, Virginia, where my grandfather was stationed.
And while she was living there, her next door neighbor was an English girl in the same grade as her.
And evidently her dad was serving in the Royal Marines, but was stationed in Norfolk for some kind of extended period.
And they hit it off, became best friends throughout high school and then after high school, they stayed friends and, you know, would maintain correspondence and whatnot.
And when I was in elementary schools, so probably fourth grade or so, fifth grade, maybe, we took a family trip to England to visit her.
And it was an amazing trip. I got to meet her dad, who was still alive.
And at the time he had, I don't know exactly how it works. I think he had retired from the military after like 30 years of service.
Or maybe he was still in and this was some special billet, but he was serving as the sergeant of arms for Parliament.
So he was their family was living in this amazing like row home right next to Big Ben where they put the people who work in Parliament, I guess.
And he was able to give us like this special backstage tour of Parliament and like they were building the London Eye at the time which was right outside my bedroom window.
So I got to watch that get built. It was this incredible, incredible, like rare opportunity to see London and away most people don't get to see and I got to meet these amazing people that were important to my mom.
And at the time, I was a little kid, but I was obsessed with World War II, like World War II movies where everything I wanted to watch, everything else seemed boring.
I just wanted more and more stuff about World War II.
And so when I was when we were getting ready to leave London to come back home, we were saying bye to this family.
This woman's dad, the sergeant of arms said, Hey, I want to give you something.
And so he went upstairs and came back down with this little toy airplane, which it's an old timey toy.
So like it's 100% metal. It's like 10 or something. The wheels are metal. They still spin.
It's got four propellers on it and little propeller blades are metal, but none of them have been bent.
The paint is like chipping off. But other than that, it's pristine.
And it still is. And he gave this plane to me and it was so cool. And he said, this was mine when I was a little boy, I want you to have it because you're into this kind of stuff.
And before we left, I was looking at the wings and they have the little star that American planes had.
And I asked him, why did you have an American plane instead of a British plane with the little tri-color bullseye looking thing?
And he said, well, an American gave it to me. And then he goes on to tell me how during the Blitz when London was getting bombed and they would all rush into the underground stations.
And they would, you know, wait out the bombing raids down there. And he was down there one time, little boy terrified because you can hear the bombs landing all around them.
And this man comes up to him and hands him this toy plane. And he said, you know, you don't have to worry. There's brave people up there that are like, you know, putting an end to this.
And then he goes on to tell him that he is an American pilot who had volunteered to fly with RAF during this period. And that's who gave him this toy plane.
I don't know why the American pilot wasn't up there flying or if he was just like on leave and, you know, went underground with everyone else.
But he gave him this toy plane that he had for some reason. And that's why it's an American plane. And he gave it to me.
So there's no mortal to this story, but it was a really impactful moment and impactful gift and I still have it. And so behind me I have this big bookshelf my basement and there's a few trinkets on it that aren't books and this is one of the things I keep on there.
Amazing.
Yeah, really, really cool story for a little tiny airplane.
Well, I'm a huge fan of relics to I like, there's something about objects, right that they can contain history they can contain stories within them, you know what I mean and like, that's now passed through what three generations right there.
Three generations and like laterally to right from one country to another kind of from one American to a British guy back to an American like.
Yeah, across the Atlantic twice probably.
Yeah, there's a every time I take it down and just fondle it or whatever it's, it's a pretty cool connection to, to history. Yeah.
Yeah, excellent. Yeah, I don't think stories need to need to have morals actually I think I'm this point in my life more interested in the stories that don't are anti moral stories.
Me too.
All right, well thanks for sitting down with us today where you know you got a memoir coming out double knot through dead reckoning collective.
It feels great thanks so much for having me on the podcast.
I'm a listener so it's exciting to be here among some people that I look up to.
I feel really excited about this this book we were talking about right before we started recording and I'm really excited.
I'm nervous because it's pretty vulnerable. There's going to be some negative feedback along with anytime you create something, but overall I'd feel like a huge sense of relief because I've been working on it for such a long time and I'm proud of how it turned out so it feels really good.
Yeah, I mean for for a collection it's it's only seven essays right and they're in total it's less than 200 pages I think it's only about 170 pages altogether and yet the ground that you're able to cover is phenomenal.
In the intro, you know one of the things that one of the first things that jumped out of me is this it seems like this is a long time coming it's covering a couple of different lives that you've lived in a couple different parts of the parts of the world.
And it says here in the beginning that this is whittled down pretty much from a 97,000 word manuscript. Can you talk a little bit about like where this project started and how it formed into these seven essays that are going to be getting published soon.
Yeah, so some of the stories, not how they stand now but like the same topics I've covered.
Just writing for myself, you know a long time ago, just to kind of organize my thoughts. And then, you know I started writing more and more and I started writing professionally.
I've write for a call or wrote for coffee or magazine for about four years. And so then I got the skills to actually change. What was just like word vomit and just like an emotional dump on the pages and kind of turned it into stories that were worth reading.
And as I started doing that I realized that that's how that's that was my thought process when I wrote that giant manuscript and I got to the end of it. And I set it down and I would go back to it periodically and you know tighten it up or chip away at it.
And I just realized like I, parts of it were boring.
And if I thought they were boring, then of course the reader is going to think that it's boring, you know, because I lived it, but a lot I find a lot of military memoirs can be boring once you've read a lot of them because you know there's only so many ways to describe a firefighter so many,
you know, things you can say without writing in like tropes and cliches and stuff and it just turned it was turning into a book that like I didn't like at all I hated it.
And I was like okay well what do I really want to say.
And what are the stories that are really important to me it's not you know repetitive firefights or, you know how hard is boot camp or the things you find in most military memoirs.
Like, you know I can chop all that stuff out. And then what's left are these moments that are impactful for me and I'm not sure why some of them are and why some of them aren't but I can turn those into stories.
And as I did that kind of became clear and clear as I worked on these stories and I wanted to distill it down into something that was small and digestible but packed a punch.
And you didn't have to read 400 pages of stuff you can find in other books.
Right. Now I mean, exactly like when you're talking about experiencing trauma whether it's a combat or, or anything that's really like acting on the on the nerves right you can overwhelm to a person to to the point where they become numb.
And it actually happens surprisingly quickly you know he.
You watch the beginning of saving Private Ryan by the third time somebody's getting their head blown off it kind of weirdly enough it loses its its impact right and that's not actually the way to have an emotional impact sustained emotional impact throughout throughout an entire narrative arc throughout
entire story.
Why did you choose to focus on the particular moments that you did because like you said like you were trying to stay away from the typical military stuff but this actually starts with your military experience kind of goes into why you joined the Marine Corps, and then goes through the various
careers you had afterwards.
Oh man.
Yeah, I mean,
if I had to summarize it like it's a war memoir that is the point of it. Not every essay is about that.
So the first essay takes you right there. And,
you know, it starts off just describing what standing post is like which is sounds like you might as well read a dictionary, but that's just kind of the setting to get into what I really wanted to talk about which is a day that
my best friend lost both of his legs. And so that, you know, moments stuck with me I think for obvious reasons. And so I kind of just wanted to get that out of the way.
Not get it out of the way is the wrong way of saying that but like I didn't want to have that later in the book and felt like it had to be something more than it was so I just started the book off with that I think it sets the tone well and it's it's an essay I'm pretty proud of, but
yeah, there's a reason the other six aren't just other similar moments to that because I think once is enough and anything I said, if I wrote another essay about a similar moment, you know, there's not much else to say about it other than repeating myself.
So.
Like the opening I say it does so much because like you said, this is in country, it's kind of subverting the idea of what typical military action moment is because you spend most of it standing posts literally staring out on into nothing, right which gets boring very
quickly. You go into the ways that you kind of pass that time and how you how you deal with that. And yet there's you drop into these really traumatic moments of like the worst, you know your worst day on a deployment when one of your friends gets really badly injured, kind of the
experience like that, while also kind of jumping forward into what you know returning home is like and how that experience can kind of linger with you for a while. But you also we've like you managed to take, take it back to like the humorous moments
too. You know I don't want to give too much away but there's a lot of ways that somehow you make the most boring thing possible which is just to stand and stare out into nothing. You like any good Marine find a way to, you know, come up with things to do with with your time.
And somehow you still managed against some shenanigans literally doing nothing but standing there staring out into into nothing. And then very, very quickly you kind of pivot into more like the later later parts of your time in the Marine
Corps, kind of what really glossing over what that deployment was like, besides the you know the events that you give away in the in the first essay. And very quickly we start to get into like returning to civilian life and the career paths you took afterwards.
Maybe talk a little bit about like what brought you to the Marine Corps, and then what where you want to go afterwards.
Yeah, well first I want to talk about some of the things you brought up about that first essay. I intentionally tried to inject humor anywhere I could because I think it just was a more honest depiction of military services weaving in the you know those hard times with really just how funny
most of it is. Now overall my memories of serving are really positive because it was really funny.
And then also, I intentionally started on post, you know which is one of the most boring things and we sexy things you can do because if I had picked you know the coolest story I have or like the sexiest like a helicopter raid or some crazy like,
whatever you could think would be like a really cool military story like it's not honest because, you know, as in the infantry so a lot of my time was spent standing posts and patrolling and nothing happening and patrolling back.
And so to just have like a highlight reel of the coolest moments would feel dishonest to me and I think would come through as dishonest to the reader as well.
So, I tried to paint a realistic picture so I included those those boring parts I included the humor, and I included the traumatic parts without dwelling on those.
I think it's pretty common and it's almost easier to write if you were to just throw trauma in people's faces and turn it into like look how horrible, you know, this can be like we all know war is hell right everyone always says that.
There are certainly glimpses of that in this book but the book isn't just beating you over the head with that fact because it's just not the kind of thing I want to read not the kind of want to not the kind of thing I want to ask other people to read.
So, yeah.
What do you think, what do you think is like the most the common.
What annoys you most when you're reading books about war or seeing movies about war like is there something that really like you feels like just totally missing the mark.
Um,
well, yeah, I could go down a rabbit hole in the movies because I was just having an argument with a teenager the other day, but so whatever runs me the wrong way is when I can tell the person's being dishonest, right, it can be like 400 pages of pure trauma and how horrible life has been to them and if it's honest, I can
tell and I can appreciate it and on the flip side if it's just them, you know, doing John Wayne shit but like that is true to their experience and like I'm into it I'll read it.
But when someone is trying too hard to like go for like cheap points and like they'll know if I had this detail then like the reader is going to feel so bad for me like and I put it in there or they're going to think this is so cool so I put it in there like I feel like
myself and most readers can sniff that out pretty quickly and I just have no stomach for that.
Yeah, people can people can sense that even if they haven't served in the military or haven't been to war.
I don't know I think it if it's at times yeah, I think there's definitely times where they can kind of pull one over on people and I'm not going to name books but I'm reading one right now it's driving me up a wall because it's been recommended to me about 10,000 times from
co workers and anyone I've ever met who likes to read and finds out I served in the military like you've got to read this book and I'm reading it now and I can't stand it and I think it's because they're just going for cheap shots the whole time.
But yeah enough ranting about that because I don't want to.
Yeah, well let's go. What brought you to the Marine Corps.
Let's see like I said I was a little kid and I was obsessed with World War two so the military service was always attractive. My grandfather's both served in the Navy.
So see service in some way was another level of something that attracted to me.
Yeah I wanted to I wanted to serve in some capacity I wanted to do something different than most of my peers.
And I also wanted to be like tested.
I think is a pretty common desire but I had this notion of who I was as a person and hadn't been able to display that in normal life or verify that to myself in normal life.
And I knew that the military, if I chose the right pathway could do that and it did.
So that's why I chose the Marine Corps. And that's why I chose to enlist instead of trying to go for an officer route.
And that's why I chose the infantry too. I wanted to be somewhere where I knew no matter what the cards had for you like it would be difficult and you would be tested.
And I was like, I don't know. So I had your parents feel about it.
They were not pleased. It's been about two years trying to convince me not to do it. And then as I got close to my senior year and I said, I'm doing this. Then they just they changed tactics and they were like, Well, why don't you try and, you know, my mom was like, Why don't you be a Navy seal you love to swim.
But like the thing about seals, they don't just like it swim all the time.
So anyways, they tried like to get me to do you should be, you know, this or that. And I was like, I don't know, I want to be a grunt. I don't want to be anything else.
And it's for the reasons like, you know, we just talked about.
Yeah, they weren't pleased. But then, you know, once I did it, and graduate from boot camp, they were very proud of me, very supportive.
And they both still are. Yeah. And that desire that you talked about, like, there is that desire to be tested, right. And I think that comes across in this in this book as well as even post Marine Corps, you have several experiences that you touch on, you know, like literally climbing a
mountain, since with, you know, in less than ideal conditions. And in there, you kind of comment on how that experience of going up the side of this mountain, things do not go well.
The situation deteriorates pretty quickly due to the weather. Everybody's cold, wet and tired, things are falling apart. But you said that there was like, there was still this this, you were kind of being woken back up to this feeling that you hadn't really felt since you were in the Marine
Corps experience a little bit. Yeah, so I went and through PB about a which I think you've brought up on this podcast before. If not, go check them out there amazing.
And maybe a quick backstory of how I got there is I met Tom Schumann a few months before PB about they got off the ground, we were having a beer, he told me this brilliant idea for this organization. I was like, you got to do it. This is incredible.
I leave there and then he follows up with a text at some point or maybe the next time I saw my camera, he's like, Hey, we're going to send some guys to climb Mount Rainier and like I know you like reading into thin air and you know other books like that you want to do it.
Yeah, I'm in let's let's climb our near so I start researching it and like okay I've got skinny little legs I got to train. So there's like a ski slope near my house that I'm like rucking up and down to get back in shape and putting all this prep work in by my gear.
I'm like, I'm going to touch base with Tom like right before not right before but as it's closer to the time we're supposed to do this. I'm like hey how's your training going like I'm so pumped. And he goes oh yeah I'm not going. You know life got in the way but you're going to have a great time like, All right.
So I go out there don't know anybody.
Yeah. And I'm socially awkward so it was you know a nightmare situation but this is Tom's new organization and probably the only chance I'll get to climb our near so I'm in meet some awesome people.
We climb up the mountain and we're about, you know the first day you climb to Cammy or which I think is 12,000 feet or so I can't. That could be way off.
Forget I said the elevation I have no idea. It's pretty far it takes like all day to get up there.
And we're like halfway up and the weather turns and it just gets worse and worse and it's raining and it's snowing and the wind is insane. And you know the sun sets and it's dark and everyone soaked and it is just a horrible turn of events.
No one was injured but it definitely sucked but as it sucked more and more you know this group kind of suffering builds camaraderie and that definitely came back to life on the mountain.
And by the time we were in this shelter together, shivering trying to like get warm enough that we could fall asleep. People were cracking jokes and laughing, even though it was like, if that shelter wasn't there hypothermia was a serious problem.
But it was like the most at home. Any of us had felt in a long time because of just how ridiculous the situation was and I think what made it even better was that none of us had to be there, but somehow like through like poor life choices we'd all ended up again in this same situation and it was a blast it was a really really great time.
Yeah and so I owe Tom and P. V. A. V. A. T. much thanks for sending me up there and it was a really really great experience.
I mean yeah the parallel is obvious between serving in the military of any branch really and an experience like that. I mean did you miss that in that moment? Did you know that you had missed that? Did you go to the mountain looking for that or is it one of these things where it's like wow I didn't realize this till I'm soaked through to the bone and freezing that it kind of occurred to you?
It didn't occur to me until I was starting to like slow down on the shivering. As soon as I realized the shivering was eventually going to stop then I just had this huge smile on my face and I was like I feel so at home right now and I didn't even realize I hadn't been feeling this.
I went because climbing the mountain would be amazing. Dipping my toes into this organization, amazing. So those are the reasons I went but I didn't realize I had missed that shared bond that really you can only get in tough spots until we were in it and kind of coming out the other end of it.
How do you think you, is it necessary to go climb the tallest mountain in the worst conditions possible to find that? No. To grab onto that and maybe harness some of that because I know what you're talking about.
I know that. Yeah. There's definitely, you don't have to go subject yourself to something horrible or dangerous to feel connected to other human beings. No, you don't. It just happened it to become crystal clear in that moment but also being involved in the PB Vatae Book Club,
just reconnecting with high school friends and putting effort into old relationships that I had neglected, just being a more social person, all that starts to come back to certain extents.
Being on the mountain in the cold certainly has a bigger impact than meeting a friend for a beer or something like that.
Yeah, I think the PB Vatae Book Club has been huge for me and at the same kind of bonds and all we do is sit on Zoom and talk about books so that no one is being subjected to horrible weather or anything dangerous yet the bonds are just as strong.
Yeah, that's the post-2020 world, right? Like it's kind of wild to me how many people I've become friends with who I actually still haven't met in person. Only like relatively few of them have I actually spent extended in person time with.
Yeah, most of your listeners probably don't know this but you and me are good friends and we've only hung out in person two times, three times?
Three times.
Yeah, three times.
Three times, it's kind of funny.
Yeah, it's crazy but I consider you a very close friend.
Yeah, no, I agree, I second that. It's interesting that like, so you go to the military, you get thrown into a situation where you're with all the, like, I mean it is the middle cut of America right there.
You find yourself interacting with people, you never would have met had you not gone through that. In some ways it's like, because I went to undergrad as well and I went to like liberal arts college and I made some really good friends there.
But the, like the cut across the entire platoon feeling is a lot different than your like freshman class at a liberal arts college.
Now, probably a conversation we had as to why that, like, that diversity or whatever you want to call it is more found commonly with a bunch of 18 year olds in the military than, then, you know, like a higher learning institution but I think a part of it is like you're a lot of that individuality is taken away right at the
outset and you really are forced to kind of bond with each other and I mean that's exactly what patrol base about is trying to achieve right it's like Tom found that one of the biggest contributors to all the issues that are within the veteran community or is that sense of isolation that you're talking about is like
not it's kind of coming up into your own world and not not getting back and connecting with your friends.
Yeah, and I'll add that like, I made it like a choice when I went to college like I'm not going to be that grumpy vet in the background who hates everyone and like, wears the hats and patches that make sure everyone stays 10 feet away right like I was like I'm I have no issue with like this freshman who's like a skater kid or
whatever like I want to be friends with these guys. And I did that but what I didn't rise is like just like any relationship like you have to put effort into it so like I'd be nice to everyone around me in class and then like I go home and be like man I'm isolated and like oh yeah I didn't text anyone to see if they wanted to hang out or like study together or like join a club I so I didn't intentionally isolate
myself. But I just, it took me a few years to realize like oh you got to like put the effort in. And it's not going to be 5050 like you got to reach farther and then then it'll get easier and easier with everybody.
Yeah. No, yeah, I should probably clarify I went to college before I went to the Marine for two I did everything.
There's a lot of things. So I had the experience of like I almost didn't like have the opportunity to be the grumpy angry vet guy because like I'd already kind of done the college thing before. And I think you're right like there's also kind of want to get your thoughts on, because
in here you touch on like after getting back and sort of social media and the growing presence of veterans on social media. And kind of the effect that that has at large people's perceptions of veterans.
What do you think, what do you think about that.
Just what I think about veterans on social media in general, the growing sort of there's been a lot of attention, let's say over like last say five years or so where there's been like a lot of active duty serving military as well as as veterans kind of growing as that as that being like the main focus of
their identity.
Yeah, I think that can be very dangerous on I speak to it.
And then I think that's very, very, very important.
Pointedly, I guess, in the book.
And the potential ramifications of like trying to create an identity through like an online persona.
And it's really, really dangerous because people stop being authentic because it's so easy to just start getting gratification from, I don't know, followers or just a bigger presence or interactions with people and that's not really genuine. But I don't want to just sit on social media because social media has been amazing I probably
wouldn't have this book completed. If it wasn't for social media and meeting people through through platforms like Instagram.
You know, not totally I mean like literally half the guests have had on this podcast have been just from sliding into the ends and just saying, you know, yeah.
Yeah. So yeah, it's like, it's a little incredible resource and an incredible way to fight against that isolation we were just talking about.
But the danger is when people kind of lose a sense of who they are or they put too much weight into what other people see on Instagram and lose a sense of like who they are if the internet goes out, you know, right.
Yeah, which is, it's always a possibility.
But let's go back to this. So you serve in the Marine Corps, you go you deploy two times.
Yep.
See combat, come back, get out of the Marine Corps you go to college and then you end up becoming a police officer for a little while. What led you down that route.
Well the short answer is they called me before the fire department got back to me.
The real answer is that is true, but also before I ended up getting, you know, majoring in history but before that, when I was a freshman, I was a social work major and I really enjoyed it but decided I didn't want to be a social worker.
But I had really liked the coursework and you know the the field experience things that they send you on.
You know, on paper I was like, okay, on one end, I'm a grunt. I was, you know, decent at that. On the other end, I really like social work. I feel like I'd be decent at that somewhere in the middle would be police officer right like okay I can handle stressful situations.
I can handle a gun. Blood doesn't make me squeamish. Great.
On the other hand, like social worker you got to help people, you know, you're going to be a marriage counselor and you're going to be, you know, a parent in a way and you're going to do all these things that are what social workers have to do.
And in the middle like great police officer. And I still think that makes sense.
But on paper, it was better than the reality and I got out there and realized this is not for me.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, was there a, I mean you talk about in the book there's a kind of one moment where it's really brought to the forefront but was it that specific moment or was it an accumulation of things?
It was an accumulation that moment definitely like I had already been having some very serious conversations with myself about what I was going to do in the future and if I was going to stick with it.
And that was just kind of the final straw.
For one, being a police officer is super lonely, you know, in a movie you have a partner in the passenger seat and you build a bond and you go to every call together and things are great.
In reality, at least where I worked, you go to calls by yourself and if you, you know, are in a fight or something or you're going to make an arrest then someone you call and someone else will show up and back you up.
But like your average call like a shoplifter or whatever like it's just you by yourself.
So it was very isolating. And also, I just didn't really like the work. I didn't like, I didn't like arresting people.
I didn't like arresting people when they deserved it. I didn't like arresting people when my hands were tied and they had done something.
You know, they've broken the law and so I had to do what I had to do. Like I just know part of that brought me satisfaction even if I was locking up like these horrible people.
I still was just like I wish someone else was doing this. I hate this.
So yeah, and every the atmosphere of the police department I worked in and I think nationally was just everybody was burnt out.
Everybody felt like no one was grateful for what they were doing, which is true.
And almost anyone who'd been on the job for more than 10 years said man, if I were you, I'd get out now because once you put in 10 like you're too close to your pension, you're going to want to stick it out.
And I was like, man, I've already like been in the military and college like I don't have a lot of time to be like jumping careers.
And I'd already asked my wife, you know, to marry me when I was in the military. She stood by me through deployments and then I was like, you know, I'm going to go be a student and a bartender.
Please stay married to me. You know, and I was like, all right, I'm going to be a cop and then she was with me during the police academy and then with me when I'm out on these calls and then to come home and have to be like, hey, this isn't it.
I'm quitting or I want to quit.
What do you think? Luckily, my wife is the most amazing person ever and was fully supportive convinced me it was the right thing to do.
And once again, you know, shouldered the extra burden of me jumping jobs but yeah, it just no one nothing was convincing me to stay, not the police, not my friends on my family like no one was like, you know, you should really think twice anytime I brought it up to my family or they were like,
yeah, if that's how you feel like get the fuck out of there. So like, all right, enough. I'm out.
But the problem is not a problem but when I tell people I was a cop and that I left because I didn't like it they immediately assume a bunch of things about police or about me.
And they're usually incorrect.
Most all of the cops I worked with were great people were great at their job. I have a much deeper appreciation for policing than I did before I took the job.
So it wasn't like I had some sort of issue with police as a whole. It just was not for me.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything, anything wrong with that. I mean, it's kind of crazy how there's such a focus I feel like with even point when kids are little is like you got to figure out what you want to do by basically the age of 18 go get a college degree or something and
like qualified somehow to go do that thing and then spend the next 34 years of your life. Like who the hell knows what they wanted to like I envy those people because I certainly had no idea. And sometimes it takes experiences of like figuring out what you don't want to do before you can really go in the direction of what you actually
would actually interest you or what motivates you to get out of get out of bed.
So you when you left the police department did you have something lined up or was it like retreat and let's regroup and figure out what's going on.
Yeah, it was probably the
my entire life that was probably the most unprepared I was making a decision. You know normally I at least try and have like, at least like one step ahead of what I'm going to do if I do, you know if I do x I'm going to do this next but like at this point it was literally just get out and figure it out.
It was the point where like, I felt like I couldn't exhale, like just dreading my next shift.
Like, just, yeah, it was horrible.
And so I left with zero plan of what I was going to do next. I had bartended in a certain bar the whole time I was in college, and I knew that I could go there and get some job. So I went there and got a job as a bouncer checking IDs.
Even after I had bartended for five years was just they were like, well, you know, we don't want to bump anybody but you can be, you know, bouncer so I did that for a few months until I was able to land some writing jobs, which then landed to a permanent position with coffee or
magazine.
And not that changed changed everything but yeah until then it was just picking up like jobs at the bar after I left, which would be embarrassing too because if someone like pick up a job,
because if someone like picked a fight or whatever and I had to kick them out and like the police show up, I'm like, people I just worked with and I'm wearing like a triple XL, like shirt that says security on the back.
And they're like, dude, what the hell happened to you like, I don't know man, don't judge me.
So then you, you, you started pursuing writing writing in earnest, and you got the job at coffee or diet. What was that tell us about that experience.
That was like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
I think the magazine had been around for like a year at that point.
So they were still getting their feet under them I was like part of a really big hire to make the magazine bigger and work there for a few years and most of that period was incredible I got to work with editors with very different perspectives on what makes good
people.
Then, then I had originally and I learned a lot and they were not gentle. And thank goodness for that.
Because it's just you're not going to be a good writer of people don't teach you up the whole time I think. But yeah, the editor in chief there Marty Scovland took a took a chance with me gave me a job.
And I worked my ass off. I think I, I proved myself.
Working just with a very talented and small group of writers and editors really made me a capable writer I think. Yeah, it was amazing period.
And after after that experience now. Now you work as an English teacher.
Yeah. That's been a whole new set of skills I'm working on, but it's been it's been deeply satisfying to work with people who like to read and want to write and to work with young people is just always, always nice.
Yeah, and what's interesting about your memoir here is that.
So you've got quite a few different life experiences we just outlined everything from the military bartender being a police officer back to bartending writer for pretty prominent magazine now an English teacher.
And yet you kind of weave. There's a narrative structure to this like you were saying before one of the other thing it doesn't have just be firefight after firefight to bore somebody right it could just be like a meandering wandering
that doesn't that doesn't really tie everything together but I really like the way that you kind of weave a narrative through line through this and bring it all back to all back to kind of like kind of comes full circle in some ways.
Can you tell us can you speak a little bit about the last essay in the book where you kind of talk about going cigarette.
Definitely talk about that. One thing I want to add that I forgot to bring up earlier when you were saying like I could have just, you know, firefight after firefight.
One, it's boring to.
I would have to include every firefight I was in to fill a book out. And so while it would do that it would give the impression that my deployments were nothing but firefights.
It would have been honest because it would have just been the firefights I was in like it would have given the wrong impression.
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