← Shannon Cason's Homemade
Shannon Cason's Homemade
Know Thy Neighbor | Everyday is a Story
00:11:40
Went to help my neighbor…ended up staying the entire day.
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
I went over my neighbor's house to Linda Ham and I ended up staying the whole day. Every day is a story. I'm Shannon Cason. Make sure you like and subscribe. My neighbor heard that I was doing some DIY work on my own home, meaning the house next door and another family home that I'm fixing up that I'm moving into soon. And I'm, I'm super excited about that. It looks so good. But I think my neighbor listens to the podcast, to be honest with you. What up M? We go call him M. I know you listening, Em. He said that he's converting his old pipes at his house, which is a mix of copper, galvanized pipe, cast iron, and he wants to convert it over to pex and pvc. And all of our homes in this neighborhood are over 100 years old. This, this is the East English Village neighborhood on the east side of Detroit. Nice neighborhood. They're doing a lot of construction and building up this neighborhood. The East Warren Corridor they call it. Everything is old though. It's built to last, but it's old. So he invited me over to assist him and I'm a hands on learner. I got to get my hands in it, so it works for me. And he's like a super handy guy. He gets excited about tools. He was telling me about his new welding machine like, like we were seven year olders and he's showing me a toy, you know, he's all excited about it. I'm like, wow, okay, that's awesome. So this weekend, after I took my grandkids to go get their haircuts, I gotta take them every two weeks or so, I walked next door and I knocked on the back door and he yelled, come in. And I go downstairs. Now this is, this is one of the things I'll bring up. I didn't want to turn this into a competition of the minds. We have had conversations before, my neighbor and I, and Em is very opinionated and I'm very sarcastic. So if he always feels he's right about everything, going to show him where he's wrong in the most sarcastic terms. And I wasn't in the mood for us to like do that battle back and forth, you know, it's the weekend I want to chill. So I'm walking downstairs and I got that feeling that I'm just going to be cool. And hopefully he's just cool. So I walk downstairs into his basement. Huge basement. These are bigger homes and it's a maze of rooms. It's a room for the boiler and the water heater. There's a room for the washing machine and the dryer. There's a little room for a toilet. Most of these basements in the Midwest, they have a toilet in the basement. So the factory workers, like if you worked at the factory, you can go in the basement, clean up before you go into the main house. I think they call them Pittsburgh toilets. We have a toilet in this basement. Then I walk into the main area of the basement and it's a cool ass man space. I mean, he has a full gym, really a full gym with a Smith machine and everything. There's a TV on the. On a swivel on the wall so you can watch the game in any direction. A kegerator. He has a kegerator down there. And. And then you got a little fun stuff to smoke, if that's your thing too. So it's Emma's crimping a pecs fitting and he comes over to greet me. And like I say, he a cool guy. Cool guy. We always had cool conversations. But I don't want to get into the heavy stuff. I don't want to talk all this heavy and going back and forth so we can keep the conversation light, talk about sports, talk about women, talk about stuff like that. You know, keep it cool. No chest puffing. I'll take the position today as the student of your handiness. That's my attitude. We're neighbors. I'm gonna be a student today. Let's just be cool. And it was cool. I saw he had a beer that was sitting on the washing machine and he asked if I wanted one too. And I really didn't. I didn't want to drink. My tolerance for drinking has changed in the past two to three to five years. It's changed totally. I don't drink much at all anymore. Like, I'll buy bottles of bourbon and tequila, but it'll just sit on the bar forever. I have a couple glasses of wine and they'll put me to sleep most of the time. So I really didn't come to drink. But I can't have a man drink alone. You know what I'm saying? He's showing me his kegerator and stuff. So I. I try a drink and it's a Double Rice ipa. He caused it. Dripper. I had never heard of it. Forget what the company's name was. Good shit. Really good. Really good drip. A Double Rice ipa. You got to try that. If you. If you know the company. Y' all remember I was sponsored by Laganita's Brewing Company. So I. I know good beer and, and this was good. This was really good. So we get to work, and we're cutting the old pipe out of the basement ceiling with an angle grinder. And he's using a sawzall on some of it too. So sparks are flying like sparklers in the basement. I'm looking to make sure nothing burns up so I can. So I can stomp it out, you know, help him out. I'm a second eye. And we're connecting pex hoses and. And he's measuring everything, and I'm writing down the dimensions for him and yelling it out to him so he can cut the pecs. And then we're putting it up and we get a few things done. And then he says, I'm hungry. So we get more beer, go upstairs, and we go out to his backyard and we're firing up the grill. Now, his backyard used to be like a full flower garden. Flower and vegetables and all this other stuff, you know, big metal atrium was in his backyard. And all of that's gone. It's just a grass plot now. He raised everything, got everything out, and he replaced it with grass because he had a growing family, newly married, first time dad. And the kid needs place to crawl and run around and play. So he's created a perfect backyard for his family. And I had a lot of questions on the landscaping because I have so much to do over at the other home. This. This place is. Is pretty decent, but it still needs some work too. And he got good landscaping skills. And he. And when you asking questions as a student, people who are handy have no problem answering all the questions. So his backyard looked really good. So I was listening, and we put a few T bone stakes on the grill, and he had these contraptions that he was using that he. I told him that's like cheating, you know, He. He's tried to grill, but he's cheating. He has these wireless meat thermometers. You might know about them. This is my first time seeing them. And he showed me how they work. You, like, connect it to your phone, you put the thermometer in the meat. And he asked me, like, how do you like your steaks cooked? And I said, medium. And he pushed in the thermometer and pushed some buttons on his phone, put it on the grill in the thermometer. His app told him when to flip it, when to remove it, how long to let it rest. So then when we took the steaks inside the house to eat, steak was Perfectly cooked. It was perfect. Just the right amount of redness and a little bit of drip of blood moistness, you know, perfect. He sold me on the thermometers. I put it in my Amazon cart right while we were sitting there at the table. And then we got more beers. Then we get into a talk over, over T bone steaks. And in the past it was a sparring match of the minds. It was a battle. Who knows more about this topic or who's been in tougher situations in life. And we found our way out of it. Here's my unwavering worldview on this subject that you're not going to change my mind on. But the man I met while we were eating T bone steaks in his, in his dining room was softer, more humble, easy to be cool with. I told him early on when he told me that they were pregnant, I said, hey, having these kids is going to change you in many ways. And he told me I was right. Now we're both two regular dudes. This is, this is, we like guy guys who want to lift weights and, and challenge ourselves in certain ways. So we love our families, we love thinking and experiencing the world. We talked about ways that we wanted to be better, grow as men more in our later years and how we were becoming more aware. And that's one of the definitely things that I've been working on even with this every day as a story, becoming more aware and mindful. And it was a real conversation. There was no competition, it was vulnerability in the conversation. Then we finished our steaks, got more beer, got back to work. He had to cut open a wall in his office, like on the first floor to get to the pipes behind the wall. Now this is a hundred year old plaster that we're cutting into and the plasters just falling from the floor and a little dust cloud, I'm trying not to breathe asbestos. Until we came to a natural stopping point in the work where he, he couldn't really go any further without buying some more supplies. And we stopped. So we were done for the day and we shook hands and I told him I'll come back, check on the progress and, and help as much as I can. And he told me that when I'm ready he'll come over to check out the other house that I have. And I told him I' ma hold him to it. So em, if you're listening to this, I'm gonna hold you to it. So I went home next door, which is a short walk, it's like right next door and I get in the shower and go to sleep, and I feel like I got a good, cool relationship with my neighbor. So the moment of meaning for me is get to know your neighbors, drink a beer with them, grill a steak with them, talk about life with them. No competition, no battling back and forth. Who's the best, who got the most stuff. Just make a good connection. It's good to know your neighbors. But what about you? Do you know your neighbors? Have you sat down with them? Talked to them? Have either of you made a sincere attempt to move the connection beyond just high and by? What's your story?