Animals Past and Present

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary: RISK! – "Animals Past and Present"

Release Date: July 15, 2025

Hosts: Kevin Allison and Dr. Ray Christian

In this captivating episode of RISK!, titled "Animals Past and Present," host Kevin Allison sits down with his dear friend Dr. Ray Christian to delve into a series of gripping and heartfelt stories from Ray's childhood in Churchill, Richmond, Virginia. The episode weaves together tales of animal interactions, the macabre backdrop of a funeral home, and the enduring impact of these experiences on Ray's life.

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Setting the Stage: Childhood in Churchill

Kevin Allison introduces the episode by setting the scene of Ray Christian's upbringing in Churchill, a neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. Ray recounts how living directly behind a funeral home profoundly influenced his youth, exposing him to the somber realities of life and death from an early age.

Ray Christian [00:31]: "I lived behind a funeral home... You could see the bodies coming in through the back alley, maybe two or three times a year."

Playing with Mortality: Burying Animals

Growing up near the funeral home, Ray and his friends often encountered funerals and learned to grapple with mortality. Their play often involved burying dead animals—birds, rats, and even larger creatures like squirrels and rabbits. This morbid pastime was both a reflection of their environment and a way to process the constant presence of death.

Ray Christian [12:45]: "We'd bury dead birds, rats, grasshoppers... It was our way of playing with the harsh realities around us."

The Dead Peacock Incident

One pivotal story Ray shares involves a dead peacock he found being maimed by a dog. Determined to preserve the dignity of the majestic bird, Ray embarks on a mission to rescue and bury it. His attempt to save the peacock leads to unexpected revelations about a missing child in the community, intertwining the fate of the animal with that of a young boy.

Ray Christian [15:23]: "I saw a dead peacock being chewed by a dog... I thought I could bury that. But when I came back, the monkey was gone."

The Mysterious Monkey in the Alley

Ray's narrative takes a mysterious turn when he encounters a distressed monkey in an alley. His compassionate effort to rescue the animal culminates in the discovery of the monkey’s lifeless body under a makeshift tombstone, raising questions about the true nature of the incident and its connection to the missing child.

Ray Christian [16:12]: "I found the dead monkey... I buried it in the cemetery with the word 'monkey.' It’s a mystery whether it was really a monkey or something else."

Reflections on Trauma and Community

The conversation delves deeper into the psychological impact of these childhood experiences. Ray reflects on how witnessing death and engaging in such dark play shaped his understanding of life and loss. The community's response to events, such as the missing child, added layers of fear and mystery to his memories.

Ray Christian [24:09]: "He was three. It was a major upheaval in the community over this missing boy."

Kevin's Personal Interlude: Basal Cell Surgery

Interwoven with Ray's tales, Kevin shares a personal story about undergoing basal cell surgery. His humorous yet vulnerable recounting of the procedure adds a relatable dimension to the episode, highlighting the hosts' comfort and camaraderie.

Kevin Allison [07:39]: "I have this strange looking bandage on my head because I had basal cell surgery yesterday... There's good news though; my face has so many wrinkles we can hide the scar."

Animal Encounters: Goats and More

Ray shares another intense encounter involving a goat that nearly costs him his life. His candid description of fighting off the aggressive animal underscores the unpredictable nature of interacting with animals, even those that appear harmless.

Ray Christian [31:26]: "My goat almost tried to kill me. Goats can break your legs, snap your kneecap."

Nostalgia and Changing Neighborhoods

Towards the end of the episode, both Kevin and Ray reflect nostalgically on their childhood neighborhood, discussing how time and change have altered the landscape and community dynamics. They express a bittersweet longing for the past, recognizing the unique yet troubled fabric of their early environments.

Ray Christian [48:05]: "Whenever I get to Richmond a couple of times a year, I always have to drive by... a lot of weird shit happened there."

Closing Reflections and Apologies

In the episode's conclusion, Kevin extends apologies to the chimpanzee community for mislabeling a chimp as a monkey during their discussion. He also provides listeners with resource links to related stories and information about Ray's own podcast, "What's Ray Saying?", which explores the intersection of personal narratives with Black culture and history in America.

Kevin Allison [54:23]: "I need to apologize to the entire chimpanzee community for referring to chimps as monkeys... Thank you, Dr. Ray Christian, for sharing your incredible stories."

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Notable Quotes:

• Ray Christian [15:24]: "I ran with his damn dead peacock in my hands, looking crazy, had to dodge people."
• Kevin Allison [25:00]: "Therein lies the mystery. Whether or not I found the monkey or whether or not."
• Ray Christian [31:26]: "My goat almost tried to kill me. They can butt you and break your legs."

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Conclusion:

"Animals Past and Present" is a compelling episode that intertwines childhood innocence with the grim realities of life, all through the lens of animal interactions. Kevin and Ray's honest and unfiltered storytelling provides listeners with a profound exploration of how formative experiences shape our perceptions and relationships with the world around us. The episode balances dark narratives with moments of humor and reflection, making it a quintessential RISK! experience.

Listeners can connect with Ray Christian's broader work through his podcast, "What's Ray Saying?", and engage with the RISK! community via their Facebook and Reddit groups or by submitting their own stories on risk-show.com.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Kevin Allison]

On this episode of Risk.

[Ray Christian]

One day I am going walking through the alley and I look up in a damn tree and I see a monkey in Churchill in Richmond, Virginia, in the city. What the hell is it? Real monkey.

[Kevin Allison]

Hello, folks. Folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison and this is one of our conversation story episodes where someone tells me a story and we chat about it. Simple as that. Now, if you want to watch this episode, there's a link to that in the show notes, but all of our audio episodes going back over 15 years are at risk-show.com or or wherever you get your podcast. Today we're going to be hearing a story from my dear friend Ray Christian. He told me this this past March about some of the animals he spent time with as a young kid growing up in Churchill, a neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia. And from there we ended up kind of spiraling and swapping out all kinds of other stories with each other. You know, you know, the way that friends can do, but animals, past, present, all that sort of thing. Now, I do have to warn you though, that we do mention animal harm, animal abuse, and even animal death. You know, just as facts of life in these stories, especially, you know, when we talk about childhood and like half a century ago, some of these things happening. You can even hear a story where I am the bad guy, right? Or you can decide. So after the break, I'll be joined by Ray Christian sharing a story he calls Animals Past and Present. We'll be right back.

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[Kevin Allison]

We're back. Hey, folks, this is Kevin and we're having one of these conversation style stories today. This time we're doing it on video. So it's a little, you know, new for us, this new format. I have this strange looking bandage on my head because I had basal cell surgery yesterday. Um, the doctor said it's probably nothing to worry about. Although I have heard from people who have to have this. You know, it pops up again and again for a lot of people of my fair skin especially. So we'll see about that. But the, the dermatologist, she did tell me that there was a real risk of one of my eyebrows being forever raised if they didn't get the stitches just right. And, and she was, she said, there's good news though. My face is so profoundly wrinkled that we can probably hide the scar deep within one of the gigantic wrinkles on it. So, folks, I'm so glad that I have a little respite from the. From all the insanity of today to be talking to our dear friend Dr. Ray Christian. Ray, how you doing?

[Ray Christian]

I'm doing all right, man. Compared to you. Damn, bro, keep your ass out the sun, man.

[Kevin Allison]

Well, you know what it is? It's childhood. I used to deliberately burn myself, you know, back in the 70s it was, you know. Yeah, you're fair skinned. It looks better to have a tan. So just roast yourself. And I would put sun in. I still use sun in. It's like a 1985 project or product. And I still am able to find it at certain parts of the world to like make my hair a little bit brighter, you know, but man. Yeah, I think the childhood basil cell stuff is going to keep popping up.

[Ray Christian]

Well, survive, man. Damn.

[Kevin Allison]

That's the name of the game nowadays, huh?

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least, you know, it won't. No brain tumor or nothing.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, well. Jesus Christ. No, this is. That this is the least dangerous of all of them. Of all the cancers.

[Ray Christian]

You know, one never knows.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, maybe science has yet to discover. Maybe I'm a special exception.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, it's you. You be your patient, X. Yeah.

[Kevin Allison]

You know, it might be a relief.

[Ray Christian]

All this comes from Kevin Allison. This one Gerb.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, goodness gracious. So you're gonna tell me a story today that I've never heard before. So this is kind of unique. You know, we've been doing some experiments where people tell me a story that I've already kind of gone through some of it with them. But I like this because you and I have a sort of a friendship, you know, So I feel comfortable enough being like, yeah, tell me something I've never heard before.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. So, you know, a lot of the stories that I've told on risks are centered around the little, small area that I actually lived in, area Richmond, called Churchill. I bring that up all the time. But one of the factors where some stories come from is the fact that I lived behind a funeral home.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, I never knew that.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, Directly behind the funeral home. And you could look out the back window in the day or nighttime and see stuff like the bodies that had to come in through the back alley. Maybe two or three times a year. If you were looking out the window at night at the right time, you might see the frosty window pane open and then Bomber doing his work, smoking a cigarette on the phone, talking shit to somebody, flirting with girls, kissing them up, feeling them up while they at work. You know, it's late at night, and I'm like, you know. So us little kids, you know, we would see probably sometimes five, six funerals a day. You know, it was the largest black funeral home in the city. And across from the funeral home was this big, empty lot that we played in. We stomped in, we cut the grass down. So, you know, we saw funerals all the time. So, you know, as part of our play, we'd pretend to. To have funerals. You know, we would. We would bury dead birds, rats and grasshoppers and, you know, whatever. Whatever kind of animals we could find. But I and another kid, we were really into it more than other kids because when it came to, like, bigger animals, some kids didn't want to play because it meant you had to touch them, right? Or. Oh, yeah, you know, various stages of decomposition you don't find on the street. So beyond our basics, you know, of small things. Rat, hamster, such a chiller or something like that. Chinchilla. But whatever that other mouse thing is, was the big. The pig, the guinea pig, whatever it is, right? Whatever the little mousey things is, you know, somebody had a pet, some goldfish, you know, which we thought they were special that you could bury, but you really couldn't find anything exotic. Once got a squirrel and I think once a rabbit. Because a lot of the animals, you know, they'd be destroyed, run over by cars. You know, that's the carcass. And then at a Certain point, a lot of the kids in a little, small circle of us that interacted together, you know, maybe a group of seven or eight kids. It changes frequently as we play around in the streets. But a lot of kids, they don't want to do that no more. It's like they got older, it got boring. And when you started getting to bigger animals, the biggest animal would have been, like, a big dog. Yeah. You know, it kind of tested, you know, how much people wanted to play. So people started ebbing out of the game. But me and this other kid were still into it, you know, to the point where we were trying to put up little markers. We used to find these posters that would be advertising different singing groups and bands coming. We'd rip those posters down, you know, and cut them up to try to make them look like tombstone. And it got to a point where it looked like a serious cemetery out there, man. And people would be bugging out, you know, walking by, going like, oh, it's cardboard. You know, what the. You know, he Dumb kids doing, you know? Huh. So it wasn't a lot of exotic animals, like I said. And people had a habit, an old habit of keeping peacocks in the backyard. They're just like, yeah, they were a leftover remnant of another era. You know, the. These. These peacocks probably originated probably around the 1900s. People of class and gentry would have these peacocks, and they survived, you know, the community turning into a ghetto. And. And there was few surviving peacocks. Usually they were in somebody's backyard, you find a feather or two. And because so many feral cats and dogs and crazy people who killed peacocks thinking they was turkeys, which. That happened three or four times, you know, somebody killed it, like. So if they survived that, you know, people who had them, they kept them fenced in in the backyard. Occasionally a peacock, you might pass a yard and there's a peacock on the fence, which would quickly, you know, jump back in the yard. But that rarely ever happened. So you heard peacocks, but you didn't see them. One day I'm walking and I see a peacock, and a dog is just, like, chewing on it, you know, it's clearly dead. The dog just. I went after that dog. I'm going like, wow, it's a peacock. You know, I could. I could. I can bury that. And so the dog, man, the dog wanted it too, you know, so we had a little struggle. He tried to pull it out and run with it and growl, but I got it from him. So I got this dead peacock, and it's all like, spread out. I mean, it's fluffed out, pulled, pulled out and fluffy and. Because the dog mauling on it and. And feathers all over the place and me trying to get it up in my arms. But as I'm trying to walk with it, people on the streets are like, hey, hey, what's that? Hey, hey, boy. Hey, hey, kid. What about, hey, man, what's that? And I'm going like, nah, you know, people trying to stop me. So I started walking faster, and more people were like, what you got, man? What do you got? Hey, kid, what you got?

[Kevin Allison]

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

[Ray Christian]

And then more people, you know, started, and I had to run, you know, So I ran with his damn dead peacock in my hands, looking crazy, you know, had to dodge people. I couldn't actually go all the way home because I knew they would come to my house. So I. I went through this whole, you know, trial of running with the peacock. But I did get it to the. To the graveyard and I buried him. And I wrote, you know, peacock, you know, real complicated, man. Yeah. This was also a period of time, and we're talking in 60s and 70s, it was still legal to buy and acquire those small squirrel monkeys. I don't know what they're specifically called, the little ones you see on somebody's shoulder.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

And, you know, whatever other different varieties them call it was still a novelty as a classy thing, to own one of these little monkeys. You got them at the fair or you got them from a specialty pet shop that may have two or three. So if somebody had one of those monkeys in their house, it would be the thing. Everybody would want to come over to look at it. And when I was a kid, this was so big a deal that people we didn't even know if we heard they had a monkey. You could go up to their door and knock and say, hello, can we see the monkey? Sure. Come right on in. Because you want to. People with the monkey want to show off the monkey.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

But it would go in several phases, like in the early stages of somebody showing off the monkey. The monkeys already traumatized, you know, for however they got it from whatever country came from, however starved it was. So phase one, the best scenario was you come over, there's a monkey in the cage, and he's in a corner just shivering, just looking at you, and he don't really do much. Occasionally they'll be shaking the cage and doing stuff, and people poke them and putting stuff in there, trying to get them to eat. That's phase One, phase two, the monkey is going crazy. The monkey is masturbating. The monk is throwing. The monk is howling. The monkey is pulling it down, fur all. The monkey just insane, you know, just going psychotic. Now, phase three, the monkey cage now is in the corner with a sheet or a towel over it.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, wow.

[Ray Christian]

So now you come over, you hear the monkey making no pitiful sounds. And if you. If you were brave enough to lift the towel or sheet, you cheat is pathetic, crazy, insane creature just, you know, going, you know, they would kill you if it got out of the damn thing. And the final phase is the monkey in the monkey cage would be on the back porch. And then you never hear about the monkey again. Now, knowing that one day I am going walking through the alley and I look up in a damn tree and I see a monkey in Churchill, in Richmond, Virginia, in the city. What the hell is it? Real monkey. And so I was staring at it, and I got closer, and that monkey was hissing and he was wet and shivering and just scratching and going crazy. I think, man, I'd love to have a monkey. I love animals. I probably could take care of it, and I probably could get this monkey to calm down. And I. I love animals. I'm not going to be like those other people. I'm going to have me a monkey. He can go to school with me, maybe carry some books, you know, somebody. Somebody to roll with, you know. So every time I got close enough to the tree to where I could thought I could get at the monkey, he just went crazy. There's no way in hell. He who head monkey was like, if you touch me, I'm gonna gnaw through your neck. So I didn't want to tell anybody about it because I didn't want other people to want to try to get the monkey. So I went home and I concocted this plan. And the plan was I was going to take the sheet and cover the monkey and just wrap him up and just bring him home, calm him down, right? And put him in a cage, wash him up, give him some food, and he'd be good to go. I even bought some bananas, you know, and anticipating, you know, what I was going to do with the monkey. But when I came back with the sheet, the monkey was gone. And I looked all around a couple of days, maybe a week, no monkey. It's what I pretty much expected, you know?

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

You know, like the monkey was going to wait for me. Yeah. So several weeks passed. You remember I told you about those cardboard things that we used to use to make the headstones. Yeah, I saw a couple of them in the alley in a pile and I pulled some of them off and underneath it was clearly to me was the monkey, the dead monkey. Oh, at least I figured it was the monkey the dogs had probably mauled on it. But you know, the monkey sure got like little, little baby hands. Sure, you know, and you, you know, if you don't know, you. So about that time, during the same time there was a kid in the neighborhood that had went missing. I was walking by the alley one day and I heard some dudes saying, hey man, how long you think they gonna let that kid's body lay there before somebody do something? Wow. And I didn't say a word.

[Kevin Allison]

God damn. Holy shit. Oh, you hanging in there? Stick around and I'll be back to talk with Ray a little bit more about his story. And we'll have more stories from each of us about cats, dogs, mice, goats and apes. We'll be right back.

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I just.

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That's what they said.

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[Kevin Allison]

We're back. When you heard rumors that there was a kid missing, did people say around about how old he was?

[Ray Christian]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was three.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[Ray Christian]

It was like a major upheaval in the community over this missing boy.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, man. Yeah. And. And I. I wonder if someone somehow, or maybe even a dog like you said, like, got. Got the idea to take. Take the corpse to where there were other animal bodies.

[Ray Christian]

Well, I didn't cover it up. I'm saying somebody covered it up.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

So somebody. Well, clearly they saw it.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

But it made me feel. Question whether or not it was the monkey.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess you can't know for sure, right?

[Ray Christian]

And therein lies the mystery. Whether or not I found the monkey or whether or not. So that's not quite the end of the story.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, okay.

[Ray Christian]

Because whatever it was, I bagged it up.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh my God. Jesus Christ.

[Ray Christian]

And I buried it in the cemetery with the word monkey. Oh. So one day of some anthropologist 300 years from now. They're early humans, you know. Yeah.

[Kevin Allison]

Holy shit. Wow. And do you think. How old were you? Would you say.

[Ray Christian]

12?

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. I wonder if especially because you have so much experience with animals now, I wonder if you would be better able to identify from looking at the cadaver there whether or not it was human or monkey.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't. I. I assume monkey. But then I started thinking about it differently because I heard that and people were just talking about it and I was going back and forth in my head. At one point I thought about digging it up, looking at it and taking it back where it was, which would have been even more insane.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

But Such is the 12 year old brain, you know, at work. You know, maybe there's a lesson in there why you should own primates, you know, as an aside, but.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

They're too much like people if they lock your ass in a cage.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Oh, yeah. You know.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. You know, it's funny, there was a movie that came out a couple of years ago by Jordan Peele called Nope. And the central theme of it is we're all addicted to spectacle. And a lot of spectacle is created by taking living beings and kind of exploiting and abusing them. So. So the, the movie is about animal wranglers in Hollywood. And there's a storyline in the movie where this chimpanzee is on a sitcom on television in the 80s and something sets that chimp off and he literally just like murders the fucking cast of this sitcom. And it's a terrifying sequence. It's absolutely terrifying. But it was a match for a story that we've run on risk. There's a story, a fella named Alex Wilkie, I think his brother was an animal wrangler for reality television around the tri state era, New York, New Jersey and all. And his brother like, was drunk or something one day and he was like, oh, I can't make it to work. Can you take this monkey on set of this reality show of this, you know, this, you know, like we Housewives of Yada yada, you know, where. Where they're all yelling at each other. So Alex goes, and he doesn't know anything about wrangling a goddamn chimpanzee. So he brings the chimp onto this set and there's all this, you know, which it's. It's a person's house, but, you know, they turn it into a goddamn set, right? And he's just on the lawn and the monkey is not cooperating. He's not moving. And Alex kneels down, looks the monkey right in the eye and points at him and is like, get. You get the fuck moving. That monkey went just like in the movie. Nope, just like started beating the. Ever living out of Alex and all the film crew. The film crew and actors and whatever were just like, back the away because they're like, I mean, this guy's supposed to be the wrangler. So it wasn't. And, and he was, he was punching back as. As hard as he could. It wasn't until the monkey got him up onto like the porch and hurled him like six feet off a patio, right? So that he landed on the ground. And now the monkey's standing over him and looking down at him. And then everything was totally okay. Monkey was completely well behaved because he had established, you don't look me in the eye, like demand, you know what's.

[Ray Christian]

Going to be happening here. That's. Man. Yeah, you animals can't fight back. My goat last year, goat almost tried to kill me.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Which. And several people, about 100 people a year get killed by goats. But really, yeah, man. They can butt you and break your legs, snap, bust your kneecap and they do butt you in the ass. And they will not just a TV joke. They'll but you hard too. You know, it's not funny when it happens to you. Like, I've seen this on TV before. When you get butted in the ass, you feel vulnerable, man. I mean, you hit the damn pavement and go like, you got me? So he had gotten to a point. My mistake. You can't really play with your male goats that haven't been castrated because they don't forget that. And when they grow up, they want to challenge you. It's just what they do. So you don't touch them, you castrate them, or just leave the males alone. You pet up the females. So I wrestling with him, throwing him on the ground, you know, let them know who was boss. You know, I was trying to act out this whole Greek story about, you know, holding, like, the baby calf or whatever and. And walking with it till it grow up. Whatever the story is, I was trying to do that with the goat, you know, Like, I. I was gonna take videos. Here's Ray walk with this little baby goat. And then, you know, you. You. Well, we never got to that point. That's. He decided one day was the day. And you don't think I'm exaggerating. I heard a knock at the door. I look out the wind. There's nobody out there. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, no.

[Ray Christian]

I open up the doors to damn goat and that. Some ran in, man, and charged me.

[Kevin Allison]

Wow.

[Ray Christian]

He was butting me. And then he was putting his horns up under my crotch, and he was hurting me. And now it's like this. I. I had to grab his horns, and I'm fighting for my life. We are busting stuff up in the house. I'm holding him. He's throwing me around. I'm kicking him and beating on him, man. And I finally was able to drag him and kick his ass out of the house. I kind of threw him out because he only went, like, five feet. And he, like, came back like, what's. What? What? That's all you got? I went in the house. Uncle. I'm a man. You know what I'm saying? You don't do that to me. I'm gonna punish you. I'm gonna take this stick and bash you in your head with, and you're gonna be scared. I came out there to stick. Ah. He's like, okay, you ain't. I ain't scared. You know, I'm a goat. You hit me in my head, it don't hurt. I'm not Scared of you. And I was intimidated, so I had to get rid of Ernie. Had to go.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. Oh, my God.

[Ray Christian]

You know what?

[Kevin Allison]

You just gave me an opening. I've been afraid to tell this story the whole, like, 15 or so fucking years that we've been doing Risk. We always say that there's the I'm the bad guy stories that, you know, people are afraid to tell. My cat, Mr. Poo, it's a very cute name for what was a God damn dangerous animal. I got him from this rescue woman and my husband Ariel. He was like, you got to get a pure white cat because they don't have. Have that much dander. Well, what we didn't know is that pure white cats tend to have problems. They tend to have. You know. So anyway, he was deaf, right? He was deaf. But she also assured us that he had been castrated, like you say. And I didn't. I had never adopted a cat before, so I was like, well, that's interesting that he has such gigantic protruding balls, you know, because I guess. I guess I figured that they maybe just that those balls were just dead weight or something, that they had taken care of that. But no, he had balls because he still had his fucking balls. And he grew in. So the stories I've told on risk about Mr. Poo, like the two times he sent me to the hospital by, you know, biting into me and blood splattering everywhere. I make those comedies, right? But there came a day, it was after the second time he sent me to the hospital. That one's a funny story. Cause I was right in the midst of a BDSM scene where I was the dom and the fella was blindfolded. And I tried to get Mr. Poo off the bed when he jumped up and he just sunk his. Those big teeth right through my thumb. And it was like in Monty Python when the blood's just. Just. Just a stream of blood coming out of my thumb, which hit the.

[Ray Christian]

The.

[Kevin Allison]

The boy on the bed with the blindfold on in the face, like, just blood splattering all over the place. And. And I started shouting red, which is my safe word. And he's like, what's happening? You're safe wording.

[Ray Christian]

Why?

[Kevin Allison]

He's just looking.

[Ray Christian]

He already throwing in the towel. I need. Damn your hands. Was weak.

[Kevin Allison]

Totally. I had him take me to the goddamn hospital. But very shortly thereafter, Mr. Poo got urinal. Uti or no, not a uti. He got crystals in his. So. And it cost me $2,500 to get that taken care Of. And then the vet said, the thing of it is, this is than not a recurring problem. So if it happens again and within like, six months, it might be happening, like, every six months. It happened again six months later. And I took Mr. Poo back to the. What do you call it? The. The. The shelter animal.

[Ray Christian]

The.

[Kevin Allison]

The shelter that. Where I first.

[Ray Christian]

You took him back, man.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. You adopted the kid and then you say, oh, he's fucked up. Y' all gotta have him back.

[Kevin Allison]

When we would take Mr. Poo to the vet, they would have to put him in a straight jacket. They were afraid of him. Yeah, because he was so muscular. And at some point we got those balls taken off. But he had. He had grown up with. With a very ballsy attitude. But you know what? The thing that really sold me, we had Donkey. We had our other white cat I adopted from the same person. And she was like, yep, he's deaf too. He's deaf too. And I dropped my keys as soon as we got Donkey home. And Donkey looks right behind him, like, what? Just dropped on the floor. I was like, that cat is not deaf.

[Ray Christian]

Like.

[Kevin Allison]

Like. We thought it would help. We thought it would help if donkey and. And Mr. Pooh, like, could. You know, why we thought that.

[Ray Christian]

What would they be talking about?

[Kevin Allison]

Well, what they did end up talking about was Mr. Pooh would just beat the. Ever living out of Donkey all the time. So there came that time when I took him to get his UTI or whatever was wrong with his bladder fixed. And so he was. He was gone for several days. I had never seen Donkey happier than when Mr. Poo was out of the house. So that was what kind of convinced me. The next time it popped up, I was like, I've got to take him back. And I. I have to. The reason I say especially that that makes me the bad guy is because, you know, I don't know what his fate was after that, you know, with being the sort of cat that. That vets are afraid of.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, man. He's probably fertilizer somewhere.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, he's. He's there. He's there with your monkey and. Or child. I mean, I hate to laugh, but it's that. That story. It's. What's funny about that story is it's kind of horrifying. From the beginning.

[Ray Christian]

I was a weird kid. Wait, wait, this kid.

[Kevin Allison]

It has that kind of Edgar Allan Poe thing where it's like, okay, this is kind of creepy right from the start.

[Ray Christian]

So many stories from the funeral home. Some I've told some I haven't because the place, I mean, it was in close proximity, so happened, you know. Yeah. One of my. We used to go in there to cool off in the summertime, but the deal was you couldn't go in there unless you, like, went in a viewing room. So we had to go. We had to do that. It'd be hot. Oh, it'd be nice in there. Nice and cool.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

We just close our eyes and one of those kids in our group, he was killed on a bicycle right in front of the funeral home.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, God.

[Ray Christian]

That we. That we played in. And my stepdaddy was in that funeral home. My cousin was in that funeral home. My uncle. These are people like behind my house, their dead in this building behind the house. When we were early teenagers, so some kids were walking through the alley behind the funeral home and there's a body out there on a gurney. These kids decided, you know what would be funny? Let's push that out into the street.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, Jesus. God.

[Ray Christian]

And we ran off. Wow.

[Kevin Allison]

You were one of those kids.

[Ray Christian]

It's been said. Yeah, yeah. Rumored to be, you know, that I was allegedly. And you know, it's. I don't know if it's a special place in hell. We don't know how that was resolved or who had to go out there, what the hell, you know. But yeah, people did say, you know, that a dead person was hit by a car and that couldn't be explained, you know, because of the way it was worded.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

It became like this weird shit in the community. Oh, my God, you'd be the dead guy.

[Kevin Allison]

Easy.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. I confess, man.

[Kevin Allison]

But that's amazing.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. The funeral home, all kind of stuff, man. Anyway, he gave stories, you didn't want them.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, well, you know, I. We knew my dad just loved to tell stories and laugh and that's where I got a lot of what I do from. But when he died in 2020, and it was that weird thing where we had to have the funeral during lockdown, so there could only be a few people in the church and all that kind of stuff. So it was really weird. So we needed to find laughs wherever we could. So we're working with this funeral home that has apparently been in the same family in Cincinnati for 150 or so years. And the guy is telling us, you know, about their long legacy passed down from father to father to father to father. And what we found so God damned hilarious was that this guy couldn't pronounce the word funeral. He would say, welcome to the former Home. We're gonna put together a really good form. So the whole family was just. Was just saying form the whole time. It was just so funny that someone whose entire, like, family history was funerals.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. He couldn't get there.

[Kevin Allison]

He not a people person, Right, Exactly. He's a corpse person.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, same thing, man. That was a big family affair. That funeral home, they had about three, four generation. I went to school with some of the. The kids. They were my age, and a couple generations of them. Yeah, the funeral people.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Manning's Funeral Home. You can go visit it right now.

[Kevin Allison]

You know, back when Risk first started, I was invited to be on a storytelling show. So the New York storytelling scene, back when Risk started, was super popping. And I quickly became well known as, you know, a guy that people liked in the storytelling scene. So I agreed to do this one trick sort of show where popular New York storytellers would swap stories so that I would have to get up and tell someone else's story or something like that. But it. But there came a time in the middle of the show where you got to tell a little story of your own. Just a little story of your own. So I told the story, and there was a special guest that night, and it was a psychic, and she was gonna have a little something to say about people's little stories, Right? So I told the story about how I. When I was a kid, I got this. I was about 10 years old, and I love the idea of getting mice. Those little white mice I thought were so cute.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, man.

[Kevin Allison]

And so my dad found.

[Ray Christian]

We could.

[Kevin Allison]

Afford the mice because they're, you know, they were like a buck for a mouse at the. You know, what they're really for is feeding the snakes at the pet store. So anyway, he got me a mouse, but we didn't have a cage, so dad knew that down in the basement, there was an old aquarium that hadn't been used before, but it was. It didn't have a top. So it was really just a glass box without a top. So dad was like, I know what we can do. I'm going to take one of the screens that we're not using on one of the screened in windows and just cut it out and just kind of. Kind of bend it so that it stays a little bit like a top on. On top of the aquarium there. Well, I named this mouse Rav R A V because it was my birthday, my 10th birthday. And my friend Rich was there and my friend Dan was there, and I was like, we'll take the first Letter of Rich, the second letter of Dan, and the third letter of Kevin. And that's Rav. I thought that was funny.

[Ray Christian]

So.

[Kevin Allison]

So, So I loved Rev, but it was only a couple of days before that little guy, he got into this habit of crawling up his water spout hanging from the top, and then Spider man crawling upside down on the. The screened in window part up at the top. And I should have tried to figure out a way to not have him doing that because sure enough, I was either taking a bath or a shower one day and I came back and he had been crawling around on the top like Spider man and had fallen and broken his neck on his water dish and was convulsing. He was convulsing in death throes. And that was. That was traumatic for little me to see. So, yeah, we, me, Dan and Rich, we decided, well, we've got a bury Rav. And so we put two popsicle sickle sticks together as a crucifix and put them in the ground in the back and, you know, wrote Rav on the cross. And that was that. So, okay, so I tell that little anecdote at this storytelling show, and now it's time for the psychic to say something. And she gets up and she says, kevin, I just want you to know that Rav. He says, all is forgiven.

[Ray Christian]

Man.

[Kevin Allison]

So I finally had some closure about old Rav.

[Ray Christian]

No more guilt.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, Lord. So, yeah, you know, one thing I love about your Churchill stories is, well, there's a little bit of a gothic thing that sometimes comes into them, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, it's, you know, whatever you can say about. Yeah, there was a heck of a lot of struggle and poverty, but it sounds like it was also a really, like, fascinating community to grow up in.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah, that's a word for it. Fascinating. Oh, man. Yeah. A couple of times a year, you'd see a naked person walking down the street. I didn't know what that was, you know, like it was from the heavens. Now I know what it is. People schizophrenic, you know. Ah.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

And yeah, they like to walk around naked. For me, it was like, what the universe is giving, you know, this is woman, this dude. They walking down the street naked, you know?

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Kids, we losing our minds.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Somebody should, you know, they should have been in a facility. Yeah, totally. Yeah. But nah, they weren't in no facilities. Just walking the streets doing what people do. Who? Well. Well, hell, you see that in the big city, too.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know.

[Ray Christian]

But back then, we just thought you was weird, you know, or you just mean or. Or some like that, you know.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

That woman, no clothes on.

[Kevin Allison]

I worry. I hope you know, we're at this stage where, you know, people who are vulnerable are more and more and more vulnerable. So I worry about seeing more of that in wherever we are. Well, that's something I always love. Revisiting the Churchill of your childhood. Yeah. Do you ever get back there nowadays?

[Ray Christian]

I mean, whenever I get to Richmond a couple of times a year, I always have to drive by.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

And I should be taking pictures. You know, I'm going like 90% of my stories take place within a four block radius. Just. My world was small, but a lot of weird shit happened there.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

From the dead lady that's right across from the funeral home. All of them stories pretty much playing with garbage. With trash right across the street. That was. And you could go on and on. Stories that would have embarrassed. You know, now that I've gotten older, they just give you a picture of what the past was like.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's very surreal to revisit my childhood, neighborhoods that I knew in my childhood, because, I don't know, it's like they might look almost the same, but there's just. You feel like you're looking into a. A place that's just where the spirit of it has. Has gone the way that you knew it, you know? Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

That's the. That's the part. It's like you want to point out to people little details that wouldn't mean anything to them. And then you sound like an old man.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Right there. That's where Johnny was. And right over there. And people are looking at you like that. Just. There's nothing there.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

And that's when you started feeling the age kicking in. Damn. I'm romanticizing a past that's unrelatable.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Doesn't exist. Nobody remembers it the way you remember, and no one cares.

[Kevin Allison]

Right. You might as well be describing a dream you had.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. Mr. Flaydo. It was right there. Mr. Flaydo set off the front. Okay. Mr. Fl.

[Kevin Allison]

Right next to snuffle up, I guess.

[Ray Christian]

Yep. Right there was right there. Such a fond memory for you, man. You can't bring anybody in, you know, to go like. Yeah, I see that. Okay. And that's. I find myself doing that more and more. And it's like, that's aging, man.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

For start talking like that, you got too much to remember that you want to drop on people that knowledge that they not you know, they don't get. That's right. That's the whole idea behind oral history, man. Don't change the names and stuff. Just give it the context it had when you were saying it back in the day. You know, it sounded corny, but wasn't corny when you said it right. You know, give people a real taste of, you know, how we spoke, how we addressed things, popular culture. But I see a lot of going back in the archives of some show and cleaning up stuff or changing stuff to fit more like what's happening now. You kind of lose some context of how people thought in the day.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh.

[Ray Christian]

Because there is a lot of homophobic and misogynistic and other weird out there.

[Kevin Allison]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we do that on Risk. The reruns that we run on Thursdays, we remove words. Sometimes we remove entire stories from episodes because we know we could just, like, catch all kind of hell. And now we got to give all kinds of warnings about. You might hear this coming up. Yeah, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Would you keep it in the archive so somebody in the future will be able to get them jewels the way they actually existed?

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

It's hard to think about that now. You still don't think you're aging, but, man, Kevin, I like. I blinked my eye and I was great. You know, when I did the first wrist show, I didn't have a single gray hair on my body.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. Oh, no.

[Ray Christian]

Me.

[Kevin Allison]

Me neither.

[Ray Christian]

Dude either.

[Kevin Allison]

No, yeah.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. So it's like, damn, in a blink. I'm not. I'm no guy. I was the youngest in everything I ever did. Always. I was that one. I couldn't get in the clubs, couldn't do it was always an issue. Had to get fake IDs, all kind of stuff.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. Now, funny.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. I blinked my eye and I'm that dude. I'm looking back.

[Kevin Allison]

Absolutely.

[Ray Christian]

Catching a ride, man.

[Kevin Allison]

Well, I'll tell you, you know, even though it's such an insanely, you know, stressful time right now, it is always good to catch up with you a guy. I mean, this. This what we do does still make a big difference as far as, like, connecting in a human way, you know, on this show.

[Ray Christian]

Yeah. That's the legacy right there.

[Kevin Allison]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ray Christian]

They'll always be there.

[Kevin Allison]

And that is that. Now I need to apologize to the entire chimpanzee community. In talking about Alex Wilkie's story, I repeatedly referred to the chimp as a monkey. So I want to formally apologize to the entire chimpanzee. And while we're at it Bonobo Diaspora for referring to you as monkeys while everyone knows you are great apes, just like gorillas and orangutans and meat. Alex Wilkie's story, by the way, is called the Beast, which you can hear on our Best of Funny Stuff Number four episode. And the story I was giving background on on my cat Mr. Pooh was called Safe Word Red. And that's on our 2019 episode called with the Mystery Box Show. And then Ray mentioned the dead lady. That's a story called the lady, which you'll find on the Best of risk number 15. There'll be links to all of those in the show notes. So a Huge thanks to Dr. Ray Christian for coming back to share another great story on Risk. Now Ray has his own podcast and it's phenomenal. It's called what's Ray Saying? He shares how his own personal narratives intersect with the larger story of Black culture and history in America. It's fascinating, beautifully produced, it's educating, educational, and Ray is always a delight to listen to. So you can find that and [e-mail] or on Instagram @raychristian9789. So let us know what you think of this or any of these conversation style stories we've been having at the Risk Podcast Fans Discussion Group on Facebook or the R Risk Podcast subreddit. Or you can email me directly at kevinrisk-show.com and if you've got a story that you'd like to share to tell me about animals, pets, whether monkeys or apes, just go to risk-show.com submissions and send me your pitch. Because folks, today's the day. Take a risk.

[Ray Christian]

Man.