← DISGRACELAND
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Double Elvis. You know, every holiday season, I'm hit with this feeling of, oh, man, what am I gonna wear to this event that I have to go to? I'm just going to see my relatives. I don't want to get dressed up, but I haven't seen them in forever. I want to look nice. What am I gonna wear? I don't like the stress of this, but I've got it figured out. I've got a solution. Quince. Quince makes incredible sweaters. Last year when I started working with Quince, I got hooked up with a Mongolian cashmere crew neck sweater, which anytime the the temperature dips below 70 degrees, I'm putting this thing on. Now they have these polo sweaters that are also Mongolian cashmere. Fantastic. And when I say sweater, I don't mean like a big bulky Christmas sweater. I mean it's light, it's kind of fitted, it looks great, it's casual, but it also dresses you up. They've also got these cashmere fisherman quarter zip sweaters as well. These are fantastic. This is just like, I don't know, imagine you're hanging out with Anthony Bourdain or something down in Martha's Vineyard and you know, you're eating oysters. It's kind of chilly, but it's not too, too chilly. You're wearing this quince Mongolian cashmere fisherman quarter zip sweater and you can wear it to the holiday party as well. It's going to look fantastic this season with those cold mornings, those holiday plans. This is when you want your wardrobe to be simple and easy. You want to look good, though. You want to look sharp, you want to feel good. Quince makes clothes that I actually want to wear out. And the bonus quince makes great gifts as well. I can talk about the Mongolian cashmere sweaters until I'm blue in the face, but they're denim nails. The fit and everyday comfort that you're going to be looking for at a fraction of what you'd be expecting to pay. Quality quince has you guys covered for gifting. That goes beyond clothing as well. Okay, you can get home items, bath, kitchen, travel. I mentioned before the great Napa leather duffel bag that I got from my wife from Quint, but that I ended up appropriating for myself. Just awesome stuff. You can't go wrong at Quints. Give and get. Timeless holiday staples that last this season with quints. Go to Quince.com Disgraceland for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Canada Q-U I N C E.com Disgraceland free shipping and 365 day returns Quint.com Disgraceland hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half. The service admit is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means a half day. Yeah, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront.
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Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Merle Haggard are insane. He turned 21 in prison. Not just any prison, but one of the most hardcore prisons in the country, San Quentin. And though he wasn't doing life without parole like the song says, he did serve an indefinite sentence of six months to 15 years. He was what authorities called a repeat offender. He was arrested for riding trains, for skipping school, for stealing cars, for robbing a gas station, for attempting to knock over a restaurant on Christmas Eve. He was committed to juvenile halls, correctional facilities and reform schools 17 times. And every time he escaped. This all happened before Merle Haggard ever made great music. Music that many would consider the platonic ideal of country music. Music that went all the way to number one on the country charts 38 times. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called unpainted Maricopa MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to April Love by Pat Boone. And why would I play you that specific slice of white buck clean cut cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 25, 1957. And that was the day that Merle Haggard was arrested for the last time and sent away to do the hardest time of his life. On this episode, riding trains, skipping school, stealing cars, doing hard time. And country music's repeat offender, Merle Haggard. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgr. He stood at the railroad tracks and waited for the next train. He listened for the lonesome whistle, the rumble of an engine, the high pitched squeak, wheel of steel on steel. He knew those sounds by heart. They were the sounds of escape, of freedom. Sounds that took him far away from here, anywhere but here. When he was just a kid, before he ever stepped foot on a freight, he watched people climb aboard the Southern Pacific. He wondered what life would feel like to just go. Leave everything behind. He imagined it would be just like it was in the Jimmie Rogers songs. He imagined places miles and miles down the track. Places that weren't Oildale. This dirt poor hub of dustbowl migrants, Okies and Arkies too broke to find refuge in nearby Bakersfield. His father was one of those Okies. Proud, hard working, a provider. But his father was dead. Merle Haggard was just nine when his daddy passed. His mama tried to raise him better, but. Well, with his daddy gone and all, she was busy working full time to make ends meet. Merle felt like a loner. Like he was in someone else's skin. Oildale meant nothing to him. He passed the time down at the train tracks, watching the boxcars barrel by. He rode his first boxcar at age 11. Took him all the way to Fresno. That was a day for the books. Not just because it was his first time hopping a freight. It was the first time Merle Haggard wound up police custody. And it would be far from the last. He kept riding. Amarillo, Vegas, Louisiana. He left time and time again with nothing but a guitar on his back. And if leaving home and occasionally getting roughed up by the cops, tossed into the back of a patrol car or thrown into a jail cell, any of that was better than school. Moreau could handle the cops. Cops were a temporary nuisance. Now, the people the cops handed him over to, to the teachers, the truant officers, his mama, they were persistent. They never let up. In turn, they made Merle Haggard persistent in his pursuit of freedom. Why the hell would he sit and listen to a math teacher drone on about A squared minus B squared equals whatever the fuck when he could be out here, really living? Merle Haggard wanted to be turned loose and set free. And it wasn't just school. It was juvenile hall. Or the Fred C. Nels School for Boys or the Preston School of Industry. Any of those quote unquote institutes for lower education, as Merle called them. These places that tried to hold him down and cure him of his restlessness. They were stasis. They were adults who couldn't fucking wait to tell you. Don't do that. They were bullshit. So Merle Haggard escaped from every single one. 17 times. 17 times he broke out of whatever institution he was in, institutionalized in, and he was caught 17 times and broke out again. No one was going to tell Merle Haggard he couldn't run free. Now it was 1957, and he was 20 years old. He stared out at the empty train tracks, and though he was no longer a kid, he still wanted nothing more than to get on a freight and leave everything behind. There was just one problem. It was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve meant that no trains were running. If there were no trains running, then Merle Haggard couldn't get out of town. And if Merle Haggard couldn't get out of town, well, Merle Haggard was fucked. He was still drunk, so drunk that he felt like he was going to be sick. He doubled over in anticipation of spilling his guts all over the dirt ground. He thought about Leona, how he'd just left her in the car with the baby, took off on foot as soon as the patrol car rolled up behind them. He didn't even know why Leona came with him in the the first place. She was in one of those moods where she was busy hating his guts. Not that he could blame her. His life as a struggling musician was constantly being overshadowed by his life as a struggling criminal. He couldn't stop doing dumb shit. Stealing cars, stealing money, even sleeping around. The sleeping around and stealing cars he did. Just a dupe. But the stealing money, that was necessary because he and Leona were broke as shit, with one baby and another baby on the way, and there were no good jobs for an honest man anymore. Merle Haggard was an honest man. But you want to talk honesty? Real honesty? A man's got to do what a man's got to do. To Merle Haggard, that was honesty. And so tonight, Merle and his buddy plan to break into a restaurant after hours and take all the cash in the register. If Leona wanted to tag along. Whatever. He knew better than to argue with a pregnant woman, especially on Christmas Eve. Leona turned out to be the least of Merle's problems. He was so drunk that he thought it was later in the evening than it actually was. He thought the place was closed up and empty. And he realized his mistake. After trying to pry open the back door with a crowbar, he struggled to jimmy the door free. And then suddenly the thing swung wide open, no thanks to Merle's drunken effort. Standing before him was the owner of the joint. Merle peeked inside. The place was packed. The owner laughed. Why don't you boys try the front door? Like everyone else, Merle panicked and ran back to the car. He climbed in the driver's seat. His buddy jumped in the passenger seat. Leona was yelling from the backseat, and the baby was crying. The owner of the restaurant was on the phone to the cops. Merle backed up quickly and then threw it into the first. He slammed his boot down on the gas, the wheels kicked up dirt and the car shot off into the night, leaving behind a plume of California dust. The cop hanging out a few blocks away saw a car fly by without its headlights on. He hit his bright as shit red lights and fired up the siren. Merle knew the police weren't going to arrest the pregnant woman and her child, but they'd throw the book at him if they caught him. And not just for attempting to break into a restaurant. There was that gas station he knocked over a while back. They hadn't fingered him for it yet, but they would. And there was the hard time. He just did nine long months in the Ventura county jail for grand theft auto. At some point, the law was gonna lock him up and throw away the key. Murrell figured he could escape such a fate by doing what he always did. Escape. So as soon as he saw those red lights behind him, Merle hit the brakes, put it in park, opened the door, driver's side door, and ran. But now there was nowhere else to run to. No trains to hop. Nothing to do but accept what he had coming. He turned around the train tracks now at his back, and raised his hands in the air. And then he was taken to a place he knew all too well. A jail cell. The next morning on Christmas Day, kids in Oildale and Bakersfield woke up to presents under their trees, just as they had expected. At the police station, however, cops found not that something had been delivered, but that something was missing. The prison cell was empty. Just like old Santa Claus and just like a train Merle Haggard was.
- [12:49]
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This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios upcoming comedy Ella McKay from Academy Award winning writer director James L. Brooks. Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles family and work in a story about the people you love and how to survive them. Featuring an all star cast including Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon. Two Mile Nanjani, Iowa Debris Julie Kafner. With Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. Ella McKay in theaters December 12 hey.
- [13:19]
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Everyone, I'm Josh Radner and I am so excited to tell you about how we made youe Mother a rewatch podcast looking back at How I Met yout Mother. And I'm here with Craig Thomas who co created the show along with Carter Bayes. Hi Craig. Hey Josh. Somehow it has been 20 years since the show premiered that seem I'm checking the math on that 10 years since it went off the air and we thought that made this a perfect time to look back, see what the hell we did and why the show still seems to resonate with fans around the world today. Follow and listen to How We Made youe Mother Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [13:51]
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- [14:22]
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If he sat perfectly still, the irons clamped around his legs and his wrists would stop rubbing against his skin. Gave him a brief moment to close his eyes and pretend he wasn't here. Then the bus would hit a bump in the road or the guy he was shackled to would wiggle around and he'd feel it again, cold steel biting into his ankles and his hands. And it wasn't just touching his physical body. The irons were clamped around his mind and that was clamped tight. He knew he up. He fucked up when he tried to break into that restaurant, and again when he busted out of that Bakersfield jail cell on Christmas Day. In his defense, the cell door was wide open. He just walked out. He knew that didn't make it right, but it sure as hell made it hard not to do. The chief of police put out an apb. Merle's picture was all over the news. He kept low and made his way to his older brother's house. He rang the doorbell. He could hear carols being sung inside. The door opened and the warm smell of a holiday feast wafted out into the cold night. He looked up. A deputy with a shotgun aimed at Merle's chest wished him a Merry Christmas. The local judge didn't have to look at his rap sheet twice. Shit was as long as a California highway. Merle was Persona non grata, and there was only one place left for him to go. The drive up from Chino took hours. He could see San Quentin for miles there in the distance, a monster of lights and smoke that lurked in the January rain. At one point, the bus stopped for food, but he couldn't eat. His stomach was in knots. He was nine years old again, a boy without a daddy, a stranger in Someone else's skin. Once inside the prison walls, the knots grew tighter. He was still living out those Jimmie Rogers songs, alright. But instead of waiting for a train, he had moved in the jailhouse now. And in the jailhouse, the fear took hold. The fear took hold in the form of those invisible irons clamped around his mind. Even after the ones around his legs and hands were removed. They put him in a 9x5 cell. Catcalls and whistles bounced off the walls. Blood curling screams of absolute terror echoed through the halls. And the screams of violent penetration and subhuman violation had begin to shake him. No one was coming to help. He was on his own in every possible way. Forget about lasting for the entirety of his indefinite sentence, a sentence of six months to 15 years. What the hell was that all about? There was no way in hell he was going to get through one night in this place. But Merle Haggard had an upper hand inside San Quentin that many of the other condemned men did not. He spent the majority of his teenage years locked up somewhere. He knew how to live on the inside. He also knew how to break on through to the outside. And so Merle Haggard did In fact, turn 21 in prison. But not before he found himself once again thinking about freedom and about escape. Sometimes escape was in a few chords on his Martin guitar. The guitar was the only thing he'd brought inside San Quentin. And with good behavior came the chance to play it out in the yard. The music took him somewhere else, somewhere beyond the wall walls of the prison. It took him back to four years earlier, when he was just 16, holding an entirely different guitar in his hands. A guitar with an oversized Gibson J200 body, Bigsby neck Fender headstock. The pick guard with the name of its owner etched in gold. Lefty Frizzell's guitar was as unique as Lefty. Not unlike Merle. Merle could sing just like Lefty. Wasn't a parlor trick, though. It was pure talent. As pure as the sound of his voice. No bum notes, no flats, no sharps. Just pure. Just like Lefty. Merle wasn't supposed to meet Lefty that night. Just watch him perform at the Rainbow Gardens in Bakersfield. But his friend insisted they bust into Lefty's dressing room so that Merle could impress the man with his impression. Merle fully expected Lefty's entourage to kick their asses out the door and onto the street. But Lefty had a few pops in him, and he was curious. Go ahead, son. Let's see what you got. Lefty liked it so Much that he asked Merle to go up on stage right then and there and open his show. But San Quentin wasn't the Rainbow Gardens. Merle picked and grinned for a few minutes in the yard before the party was over. He was a flight risk. Thus he was placed on what they called close custody. That meant back to your cell by four in the afternoon every day. That meant shut the fuck up playing that guitar. That meant you didn't get to sit in with the prison band at the Warden show at night. With no music to take him out of his own mind. Merle was stuck fixating on his tiny cell and this fucked up existence. The roaches under your bunk and that rat shit in your food. The guys who got killed before your very eyes. Not killed the legal way either. Not by the gas chamber. But by the hands of other inmates. They hit, they clawed, they stabbed, they bit. Some asshole got a shake shoved into his chest cause he said the wrong thing. The blood spurted like water from a kinked up garden hose. Someone else was scalded to death in the laundry room. Others just went crazy. Like Shitty Fred, named because he was literally covered in his own shit 24 7. Merle had something else all over him. A fungus multiplying on his fingers from working in the laundry room. It ate holes through his nails. It was fucking gross. He wanted nothing more than to get out. The fact that no one had escaped from san Quentin in 13 years. Only made him want to do it more. And Rabbit's plan seemed foolproof. Rabbit, AKA Jimi Kendrick, was doing time for robbery. He told Merle he was going to break out of the joint at a desk. It was huge, solid wood, heavy as a motherfucker. It was built for a judge by the prison furniture factory. That was rich. That night, the truck was going to pick it up and drive it away. The desk was so heavy that no one was going to notice a couple hundred extra pounds inside. In fact, the desk was so big that two people could fit inside. Seemed like a sure thing. Rabbit, however, wasn't so sure about Merle getting involved. You're welcome to come with me, Rabbit told him. But I think you'd be making a huge mistake. Merle gave him a puzzled look. Look, man, I'm doing life without parole. Rabbit explained. There's no chance I'll ever get out of here. But you have a chance. Six months, 15 years, who knows? But at some point you will get out and you can play guitar and sing. I can't do. Don't this up. Merrell Haggard didn't enjoy being told what to do, even by hardened criminals. But Rabbit's words made him feel uneasy. Rabbit's perspective gave him pause. Suddenly, the sure thing felt like the wrong thing. Merle bailed at the last minute. Rabbit rode that desk out of San Quentin all on his own. A few weeks after his escape, Rabbit shot and killed a cop. He came back to San Quentin a dead man walking. From the yard, Merle looked over towards the north block. Everyone in the yard was watching. The chimney above death row coughed up gray smoke. Gray smoke meant that it was done, that the execution had been carried out. Rabbit's death weighed heavy on Merle's mind. That could have been him. He could have escaped with Rabbit. Maybe he would have been there when Rabbit shot that cop. Maybe he too would have been hauled back here and walked up to that same chamber, that same chair, waiting for that little sack of cyanide to fall into the bucket of acid and then the world would be gas and he'd never see anything again, let alone the outside. Nah, the only way out of this place was the legit way. Parole. But the parole board took one look at his inability to hold down a job inside the prison and decided that he wasn't taking his rehabilitation seriously enough. He was far from ready to walk out the front door. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered, did he even want to see what was waiting for him beyond that door? A daughter who wouldn't recognize him. A son he never met. And Leona, pregnant once again. But not by Merle. By another man. Another man sleeping in Merle's bed, wearing Merle's clothes. Fucking Merle's wife. Merle's head spun. The prison, Leona, his children, they all gave up on him. What did it even matter? Fuck good behavior and a strong work ethic and fuck taking the this shit seriously. If he was going to be in here for the long haul, he might as well make it interesting. Might as well get good and drunk, too. He gathered orange peels and apple cores from the trash, mixed them together with some sugar, yeast and water, and made. Well, I don't know what you'd call it. It wasn't beer and it wasn't wine. It absolutely was some rancid yet potent swill made under extremely unsanitary conditions and served in empty milk cartons. And it fucked you up. Fucked Merle up so good that he stumbled when he walked. The guards could smell him coming before they saw him. And when they did see him, when they saw dozens of prisoners suddenly drinking an unusual amount of milk. They knew exactly what was going on. And Merle Haggard knew exactly where he was going. Isolation. We'll be right back after this.
- [23:41]
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- [24:29]
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- [24:47]
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This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Black Friday Game day on prime is an epic day of live sports. It all starts at 9am Eastern with the Capital One skins game. Then Black Friday football returns with when the Bears take on The Eagles at 3pm and it culminates with the final night of Emirates NBA Cub group play with Bucks Knicks at 7pm and Mavs Lakers at 10pm Black Friday game day only on Prime. Years later, when Merle Haggard was busy sending 38 songs to the top of the country charts, Johnny Cash told him, hag, you're the guy people think I am. Johnny Cash had that outlaw chic on lock. One of the most famous songs, Folsom Prison Blues, is about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But Johnny Cash didn't live the life of a criminal. Not like Merle Haggard. Merle's songs, both his originals and the ones he made his own, were all rooted in truth. A truth that he lived. Merle. Merle Haggard was authentic. Johnny Cash knew this. Merle didn't just sing about being a lonesome fugitive. He was a lonesome fugitive. His mama did try to raise him better. He did turn 21 in prison. Okay, he wasn't doing life without parole, but that sounds a whole lot better as a lyric than doing an indeterminate sentence of six months to 15 years. And as yet another Merle song goes, he'd been everywhere he Talked about. He did it all. He even got arrested. Inside prison. He woke up on a cold cement slab. He tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the tiny room, but his eyes hurt like hell. His head was pounding. That prison hooch may have gotten him good in a shit face, but it left behind one hell of a hangover. He remembered hearing the sound of the 30:30 cocking and then the guard yelling his name from up on the catwalk. But he didn't remember being brought down in here. Didn't matter. He knew where he was. Everyone on the inside knew about this place. They called it the Shelf. The sixth floor of the north block. Sometimes a guard brought him a mattress. Hours later, another guard would come take it away. He didn't have a pillow, so he used the Bible that he found in the corner for a place to lay his head. Seven days of this. Seven days of being stuck inside his own head. But Merle Haggard wasn't alone. He heard voices. Voices that weren't his own. Sometimes they were muffled, and other times they were clear as a bell. Jesus, he was going insane. His own mind finally turned on him, just like the parole board and Leona and everyone else. He tried to think of nothing. Not the fermented orange peels on his wife, not a pair of some other girl's tits, and definitely not a train. Just nothing. That only made things worse, though. The voices got clearer. His eyes scanned the dark room. There was an air vent on the wall. He scooted closer to it, and the voices got louder. Guess what I got in the goddamn mail, the first voice said. A second voice quickly answered. Can't guess. What is it? I got a life insurance policy. Can you believe that? The men's laughter echoed inside the air vent. 100% bonafide, gallows humor. Merle didn't recognize the second voice, but he knew the first. Everyone on the inside knew that voice. Everyone on the outside, too. That voice belonged to the most famous prisoner in America, Carol Chessman, AKA the Red Light Bandit. San Quentin's celebrity death row inmate for nearly a decade. Now he was facing the gas chamber for two counts of sexual assault committed during a crime spree. He said he was innocent. He fought his fate with appeal after appeal. Close to 50 in total. Sometimes he was walked down to the chamber just minutes from death. When a call came through that he'd been given another stay of execution, Merle decided at last to speak up. He was going to go crazy if he did not talk to someone else for seven days. Chessman. Carol Chessman acknowledged Merle's voice. How's your appeal going? Very well, chessman answered. I just talked to my attorney. He isn't worried at all. Chessman sounded so calm, so Zen. The guy had to be off his nut. A place like San Quentin just didn't give up. A guy like Carroll Chessman, it didn't matter if he was guilty or not. He was there now, in the belly of the beast, inside a 9 by 5 room on death row, just prolonging the inevitable. Merle Haggard could see the inevitable more clearly than ever before. It flashed before his eyes. Not his life at first. His death. He thought about 5, 10, 15 more years inside San Quentin, if he ever made it that long. He could catch the end of a sharp knife or a clenched fist. Maybe worse. He saw his own body twitching on the floor of the mess hall, bleeding out from his head. He watched as a withered up shell of his former self wheezed out his final breath. In the corner of the shelf. He heard the hiss of gas in the chamber as the bag of cyanide hit the acid. His eyeballs started to swell until they were too big to fit in their sockets and they just burst wide open. Merle shuddered. He didn't want to ever find out what any of that felt like. He didn't want to end up like Rabbit or like Carol Chessman. Chessman was eventually led inside St. Quentin's infamous gas chamber one last time and never came out. Once again, Merle and the others watched from the yard as gray smoke coughed out of the chimney above death row. He didn't let it get to him. In fact, it galvanized him. He was going to get out of San Quentin. It would be hard doing anything. The honest way was hard, but he wasn't going out. Like Chessman, he took orders and did as he was told. That was some bullshit for sure, but it was necessary. The prison textile factory was the hardest gig on the inside, so he had a focus. Show them he could do the work. He got good marks. His close custody designation was lifted. Soon he had more time with his guitar. He could play in the warden's band. He was becoming a model prisoner, a guy determined to make a second pool. He was living his truth. Anyone could see that, even Johnny Cash. But on New year's day of 1959, Johnny Cash didn't know Merle Haggard from a hole in one of San Quentin's walls. To Cash, Merle was just another criminal doing time, another face in a sea of inmates gathered to listen to Johnny Cash and his Band perform right there in prison. Merle Haggard, on the other hand, knew exactly who Johnny Cash was. Not the iconic country superstar that he would later become and not the good Samaritan who was making a habit of performing at prisons. For a portion of the population that the rest of society ignored, Johnny Cash was the man who made Murrell and every last prisoner in San Quentin forget where they were that day. Backed by the Tennessee 2, Marshall Grant on bass and Luther Perkins on Qatar, along with his future wife, June Carter, Johnny Cash made the walls of the house place disappear. His baritone went into his microphone and it came out of the speakers and the room changed. San Quentin was no longer a prison. There were no blood curdling screams resonating through the hallways. No puffs of gray smoke rising from the chimney above death row. There was no death row. There was just music. And where there was music, there was escape. Merle Haggard sat up front, listened. He heard his escape plan. It was there. And Johnny Cash's voice and the click clacking of Marshall Grant's stand up bass. It sounded like the trains he used to listen to as a kid. Johnny Cash didn't know it, but at that moment he set Merle Haggard. The door to the big Bakersfield house swung wide open and Merle Haggard stood in the doorway, the low California desert at his back. He had to pinch himself as he crossed the threshold and stepped inside. He could hardly believe believe that this place belonged to him. It was a mansion, the fancy kind of home in the nice part of town his family never could have afforded back when Merle was a kid. Back when Okies weren't even welcome on this side of the tracks. Merle Haggard had three things on his side now. Time, fame, and money. The money lined his pockets. The money kept rolling in, just like the Southern Pacific headed east. Merle didn't know know what to do with himself. There was so much of it. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and didn't even recognize the guy looking back at him. Just four years earlier, in November of 1960, he walked through an entirely different front door. Though this time he was headed out and not in. He left San Quentin in the dust, paroled after two years and nine months of that indefinite sentence on account of good behavior and a strong work ethic. Hearing that parole roll the hard way day after day in the textile factory. The work was tough. But with Carol Chessman's departure and Johnny Cash's arrival weighing heavy on his mind, he persevered. He was no longer a lonesome fugitive. He returned home and made an effort to work things out with Leona. In fact, she was pregnant again by Merle this time. But she never really forgave him for doing the things he did. For spending so much of their time together locked up some somewhere. He'd even missed the birth of one of his children while he sat in a cell. And just because he was no longer in prison didn't mean Leona saw much more of him. Merle found work, honest work, playing for guys like Buck Owens and Win Stewart. Playing meant late nights out at the clubs in Bakersfield or even touring around California and Nevada, while Leona was stuck at home playing housewife. She knew what he did on those late nights and long tries. He was. It was an escape in more ways than one. An escape from home, an escape from her. Every time he came home, they fought. Leona didn't give a shit about his sturdy voice, the one that rang pure as a bell and could mimic any of the greats. The one that blew away his hero, Lefty Frizzell. To her, Merle's authenticity was not a selling point, but instead a black mark on his name. Merle knew he could prove her wrong. He was going to make her a believer in him. First, he made Capitol Records a believer. They made a bet on an ex con when they signed Merle to a record deal. And the bet paid off huge. The money started rolling in. One of his first singles, Sing a Sad Song, went to number 19 on the Billboard country chart. My Friends Are Going to Be strangers, released in November 1964, went all the way to number 10. It was his latest hit that Merle was hoping to celebrate as he stepped inside his new Bakersfield home. But something wasn't right. He knew it before he even opened the door. His 57 Chevy was missing from the driveway. The lawn was covered in junk. Papers and toys and debris were everywhere. Inside, the rank smell of ammonia hit his nose. Dirty diapers were splayed all over the floor. Cupboards were emptied and chairs were overturned and trash was strewn on furniture and countertops. And Leona was gone. So were the kids. From outside he heard the sound of a lonesome whistle, the clattering of boxcars banging down the railroad tracks. He wondered where the freight was going. He no longer had the urge to run. He didn't do that anymore, hop trains. But he did move forward. Every day was a song. One that he wrote and another that he lived. There was no turning back, even if the road ahead was bumpy. Forward was the way through, the only way to be free. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com Membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland and ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.