← Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment
Bonkers
00:36:58
The Southern heat is turned up high as one man faces a filthy flock of sheep, a nonstop chatterbox, and an angry ram, all in a super explosive little shack. Plus, a story where an anarchist and an Amish family come together.
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- [00:03]
Quinn Washington
Snap Studio. Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. So I'm just walking down the street, minding my own business. Bright sunny day. Then I feel something hit me on the back of the head.
- [00:53]
Brian Lee Knopp
Hey.
- [00:54]
Quinn Washington
On my feet. Appears to be a chicken bone. What? I look around behind me, to the side, to the front. Nobody. Nothing. What is happening? Who's out here chucking KFC at folk? Somebody's having a go. I don't know. I take another step and get tagged again. Pow. Hey. This time I look up and I see him. It.
- [01:31]
Brian Lee Knopp
Her.
- [01:31]
Quinn Washington
Looking down from the telephone wire. A crow cackling, waving its beak around in glee, finishing up the last of a scavenged chicken.
- [01:41]
Dan Comstock
Oh.
- [01:42]
Quinn Washington
Oh, this is funny to you? Knock it off. Stupid bird. But it doesn't knock it off. Even on every single day or two, I get bombed. Chickens, chicken bones, rocks, buttons. It knows me, waits for me, targets me. Every time when I least expect it, something gross plops on me from the sky. Stop it. And then, then, then, then, then it tries to drop a steaming dump on me, Mrs. By just a hair. And I lose it. No. No, you didn't. Come here. Come here. Come down here. Come down here right now. Come here. Of course, right then the neighbor opens her door. Look, sees me screaming at the sky. And she shuts her door again. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- [02:44]
Brian Lee Knopp
I'm not.
- [02:45]
Quinn Washington
I'm. It's this bird. I swear, the bird's out to get me. It's the bird. The bird. It's the bird. Playing snap judgment. Bonkers. Amazing stories from people pushed too far. And what happens when the joke is on you? My name is Quinn Washington. Riddle me this is a crow that eats Kentucky Fried Chicken. A cannibal, I say. Yes. Yes.
- [03:20]
Brian Lee Knopp
And you're listening.
- [03:24]
Quinn Washington
To Snap Judgment. Now we begin. May 1989. Ryan Lee Knopp is about 40 years old, living in North Carolina, and he's got a great side hustle going. And I should let you know that this is a real situation, and the real people in this real story use real strong language. See, what folk do is they call Brian's home phone and ask Brian to come and shear their sheep. And this is the story of one of those calls. Brian, take it away.
- [04:27]
Brian Lee Knopp
I've been shearing professionally for four years. I always like to work with animals. I've logged with mules and worked with draft horses. But the first time I smelled what a shorn sheep smelled like with that LAN on. If you take much of the coconut smell away from Hawaiian Tropic and mix it with like a honey nut and a vanilla smell, that's what it smells like. I was hooked. I came home and heard all the phone calls and messages. That's how you found out about your prospective clients. They left messages. And there was this guy. Hey, this is Dwayne Bagwell. I live in Harris. You probably don't even know where that is. I'm down here in Rutherford county, near South Carolina border. And when I heard this voice, I first thought it was Ross Perot. Like hell. We got sheep everywhere. They're just hard to spot because they're all wrapped up in kudzu. And it never stops. It goes on and on. I had two sheep fall into my pond. They soaked up every bit of water. That was the first message. Because you know those old machines, you had a limit. Yeah, he ran. He ran the limit on his first call. And then as soon as you press the next call, it's like, hey, it's me again. The feller down in Rutherford county with the 2 ton sheep. And he said, shear 30 some sheep, come on down, you won't have to catch him. Just shear them. It's an easy job. You get weird calls and if you bail on them, you're not going to shear many sheep. Maybe he was just tired, maybe he was drunk. But I figured, what the hell, I'm shearing down that way anyway. So I called him back and set the shearing date and I went. The next day I sheared two farms before him. Drove probably another 30 minutes, and I went to his place. And the farms are getting less and less attractive and developed and you're starting to see broken down outbuildings. So I drive up this lone, hard red clay road and all of a sudden you come to a big black mailbox that's crooked with white loopy letters that says Bagwell his last name. There was this man standing by a Jeep. This guy was in his 60s. If you took a stocky John Denver and you hit him on the head with a baseball bat and shortened his head and then gave him a really deep sunburn and chrome aviator glasses and a little toothbrush mustache and put a John Deere hat on him, that's Dwayne Bagwell. I said, are you Mr. Dwight Mr. Bagwell. And he says, I am. And I bet dollars of donuts you're the sheep share. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, sir. Sir. Don't call me sir. I was a sergeant. He asked me, where are you from, boy? And since I moved to North Carolina in 87 from Texas, I said, texas? Big mistake, Texas. You a Texan. That means you think you're pretty tough. Well, I'm pretty tough, too, and I'll kill the first son of a bitch and think so. And he pulls out a.38 pistol. He didn't point it at me, but it did irritate me. So I said, put that damn thing away or I'm gone. I mean, I'm not saying that I'm tough or cool. It's just living in the Southeast, in particular the mountains of western North Carolina, there's guns everywhere. It'd be like me getting upset if someone lit a cigarette in a city. So he put the gun away, and he just. Ha ha ha. I was just funding you. I thought Texans loved guns. Guns bad steak, jalapeno peppers, and titty bars. I'll open the gates for you. And so he seemed to calm down a little bit. Then I saw it. I saw what the place where I was going to be shearing. He had used barbed wire, hog wire, old wooden pallets on their end tied together to make this little paddock that's about 100 by 100. This paddock had a little storage shed about an area as big as a pickup truck. And that was the sheep barn where he wanted me to shear. And I just. I remember thinking, this is going to hurt. These were big sheep. And there's a condition of sheep called a scour, which is basically like a sheep diarrhea. So the sheep were green from, like, their stomach back over to their hindquarters and tail. And your imagination can now run wild. What that would be like shearing that animal. And it was very, very hot, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. And I'm like, they can't throw that wool off. They will overheat and they will die. They need to be shorn. Even though they were nasty. You have to shear sheep or they die in the Southeast. Can I swear on a podcast, I thought, I'm fucked. So I walked over to that little barn and I set up my equipment. When he walked into corral to start, quote, catching sheep, I told him to bring the ram first. You start with the ram, because they're usually the biggest, toughest, and the hardest to shear of a flock. So while you're fresh and strong and you got all your combs and cutters in good shape, go bring me your worst case scenario. I'm busy setting up my gear, and all of a sudden I heard, yeehaw.
- [10:06]
Dan Comstock
Yeah, yeah, sheep.
- [10:07]
Brian Lee Knopp
And I hear gunshots. And I turn and look, and there he was running around this pen with a lasso and his pistol in the air. And he was panicking these sheep who began to run in different circles and tangents and smack into the fence and into each other and jump over farm implements and tractor discs while this lone guy is running after them. And he actually snared the ram. He snagged it with the rope, and the ram pulled him like a water skier is pulled by a boat. He just went sailing around, kicking up dust all around. In any other context, I would have pissed myself laughing. The ram doubled its body around and rammed that little ramshackle building and broke the planks of the siding. He ran at Dwayne Bagwell and knocked him down. It was smashing everything. It broke the fence. It broke into the side of this building. It broke the siding down. I've sheared rams over 200 pounds, never one that enraged. But ultimately, he got close enough to it to shorten up on the rope. He brought the ram to me so I could take my thumb and make a ring of your thumb and your first finger, pass it through the sheep's mouth in that space between the teeth, hold the head and tuck my hand under the tail. And now I got him. Now it's up to me. I flipped the ram onto the ground, and then the shearing was on. But he was still kicking and snorting and rolling around, and, you know, it was like ground fighting an MMA or something. So Dwayne Bagwell, I thought he would go and maybe get another sheep, right? But as I sheared the ram, he pulled this little chair from nowhere and sat on it and put his head right pretty much under my ass and lit a cigarette and then talked. Yeah, boy, that ram has a pair on him, don't he? Wish I had a set like that. By this time, I was in this almost nonverbal mode of get it done, survive this day. And that was pretty much my mantra. I was already soaked completely through. And this was only the very first sheep. I had 29 more to go. Hey, Tex, tell me something. How come all the Texas boys but you got girly names? Sheep after sheep after sheep. Hey, now, you ever hold the tip of your tongue and say, cowboys, lasso Try it with that kind of voice. There's something about it. This man would talk in his sleep, talk in my sleep, talk inside his coffin, Talk inside my coffin. And he kept that up for 29 more sheep for a minute. And he butted me good. If he'd had horns, I'd be singing the high parts in the church choir. Hell, I'd have his damn stuff. I was going down, dude. I got dehydrated. My muscles started to cramp. Because you're upside down in a way. Your head is lower than your waist. When you shear, your sweat runs into your eyes and then has no place to go. And it kind of cooks there. Your eyes are fiery red, and the salt crystallizes, so it looks like you look like margarita glasses were put onto your eyes. And in fact, at one point, a vulture flew over me. I was kind of charmed. Like, hey, they really do know when you're gonna die. I mean, they said, that boy ain't gonna make it. And I don't fault him at all. When I finally shut off the machine, it's hyper quiet. Hell, even he shut up. And we just looked out, and there they were, these beautiful white creatures that looked like Dr. Seuss creatures with the little whippy tails. And they were all happy. And the ram was standing, looking majestic, like, look at all my girls here. It was a pretty scene. This is why I did this. And then he goes, well, I'll go get your money. So then he just jumps in his jeep and drives away. And I'm. I'm standing there like, is he gonna come back? Am I gonna get paid 90 bucks for four and a half hours? I was taking my equipment off, and I couldn't unclench the nail that held that sort of gallows pole that hold my shearing. So that's when I went in the shed to see why it was held up. And I saw these, like, shelves, and they had all these boxes, and the boxes said Dupont, and they were all filled with dynamite with the nitroglycerin oozing out like the way you would squeeze a tube of glue. I was so tired. And that day was bad enough and then to realize that a ram had been battering this little ramshackle building. Ram had been beaten on it. I had been beaten with a hammer, and this guy had dynamite. I could have been blown to smithereens. And that's when my mind shut down. He did come back, gave me a hundred dollar bill at the end and said, yeah, I gave you 100 because them sheep were tad Dingy. I didn't say anything. He said, I'll see you next year. Nope. It was even hard for me to drive because I had a manual shift and my legs were starting to cramp and lock up. And I pulled on through the gate. I felt like I just. Why did you do that to yourself? Most people would have said, I'm gone, but I didn't. And sure, I could talk out my ass and say, and the moral of that story is, you gotta ask for dynamite before. I mean, that would be false. I couldn't say that I learned something about myself other than a capacity for pain or abuse or whatever. I'm still not sure why it happened to me, but I accepted. I was in my car and the reports of my body were telling me, you need to hydrate and you need calories or you're going to crash this car. The first grocery store I came to, I pulled in. There were kids there playing and there were teenagers, you know, pretending to fist fight and punch each other, and they were flirting with a girl. When I stepped in, it all just came to a complete stop. I mean, can you imagine a human being walking into a grocery store who has got blood and manure and dark stained stuff all around his crotch and his waist and he's sunburnt, looks like he has salty eyeglasses on, and he smells like smell that you've never smelled in your life. I didn't even speak. I walked around the store. Hell, I lied. I ran to the store trying to find sustenance. And so I went in the baby food aisle, twisted open like a lid and stuck my. I now had like banana honey cracker goo shit all over my face. I didn't care. I was just sucking that stuff out of the jars and eating it and then opening the next one. Of course I was going to pay for it. So then I'm walking down the aisle eating baby food jars out of my elbow and wondering why everyone was horrified and looking at me and pulling people out of the way as I walked up. And then when I went to the conveyor to pay, I just dropped all these empty bottles on the conveyor belt. And then that's when the manager stepped up and he just had his arms folded and looked me up and down. Hmm, son, now what have you been into? And I said, I'm a sheep shearer.
- [18:53]
Quinn Washington
Brian Lee Knop, thank you for telling your story. Brian is a retired private investigator and sheep shearer. He's currently working on a collection of personal essays. The original score for that story Was by Renzo Gorio. It was produced by David Exabe. Now, after the break, I get to rock a story of my own. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the bonkers episode. Okay, so fourth grade. The teacher's saying something. The eternity seconds click away once every eon. So hot. So bored. Carl leans over to me, whispers, hey, this Saturday, I dare you to pee on the electric fence. I dare you, too, I say right back. And I know right then, without a shadow of a doubt that both Carl and I will, in fact, pee on the electric fence running between our respective farms outside of Kingston, Michigan. This will happen. Carl never, ever backs down. Never. And Carl will never, ever see me back down either. We're farm boys. We do what we say and say what we mean. But I don't want to pee on an electric fence. It's just another one of Carl's stupid ideas. I can already hear my dad at the hospital. He did what? But there's no help for it. I gotta do what I gotta. So I start thinking, what do I know about electric fences? What? And it turns out, big country that I am, I know quite a bit. See, here's the thing about electric fences you urbanites might not understand. Electric fences are only on sometimes. Farmers want to pop it enough so that the cattle are scared to touch them. But you don't want to waste all your money pouring electricity into a fence after they get the message, see? So you turn it on every once in a while. And you can turn the fence up low or up high for the bad hombre cows that aren't making America great again. But we digress. I start thinking I'm gonna pee on the fence when it ain't on. But how to tell? I can't just ask Farmer Ted. It's his fence. Word will get back. So that afternoon, I go home and I sit in front of the fence. And if you stare long enough, it's like you can tell there's a hum in the air, a crackle. You can almost see the magnetic energy field. Ready, waiting. And then it stops. The pop goes out of the air for hours. I watch until I know the rhythm of the fence. The dance of the fence master. Saturday comes. I'm going first. You go later, I tell Carl. He looks relieved. He won't be. I make a big show about how scared I am. I bend over and smell the angry wire. You gotta be crazy to pee on that. But there's nothing. No pitch, no hum, no magnetic field. It's gonna sting, Carl. I look back with Fear in my eyes. Here I go, Carl. I pull trowel and let fly. And it's not just my wheel that it's electrocuted. A spasm of voltage sizzles my spine, the back of my brain, my liver, my kidneys. The shockage sends me 10ft in the air, crashing down on my back, trembling, groaning, foam leaking from my eyes, my mouth, my nose. Oh, man, you're something special. I ain't never seen nothing like that, man. Fried, that's what you got. I can't believe you did it. Can't believe it. I even asked Ted to turn it to 10. I said, there's nothing this kid won't do. And I was right. I'll tell you what. My brain hurt. Whatever bet this is, you win. Pa. Kill me if I did something crazy like that. Look over at the fence. And the fence grins right back at me. I don't know what happened. I still don't know what happened. Either I read it wrong, or it turned on right when I did my business. I don't know. But you can imagine my surprise. A few weeks ago, I turned on the TV to see two science guys announced that it's impossible to get zapped from peeing on a fence. I can prove otherwise. I can. But, Carl, if you're listening right now, I think it's safe to say it's your turn. Now, after the break on the Bonkers episode, we meet a dangerous anarchist group. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Bonkers episode. Now then, get ready to unsheathe your broadsword. We join a notorious anarchist organization in the midst of chaos. Snap Judgment.
- [25:29]
Dan Comstock
So we were at the edge of a gigantic national park in Pennsylvania. It's such a rustic place. We had kind of planned on just making, like, a big explosion of viol and then leaving town.
- [25:42]
Malaklipse
Malaklipse was part of this violent anarchist group. The group didn't have a name or a purpose. They just wanted to cause chaos. They went from place to place, usually in rural areas where they could easily rob people and escape into the forest. In the middle of one particular heist, they spotted an old wooden tavern at the edge of the woods where they could hide and regroup.
- [26:05]
Dan Comstock
When we came into the tavern, there were two or three people in there. And it just so happened they're people that had looked at us funny earlier. We kind of had a feeling that there were people after us. And we realized that in the tavern right now is our group and these two people that don't like us. And that's it?
- [26:23]
Malaklipse
Malaklips and his group were on the run and carrying stolen goods. They were on high alert. And when other people inside shot them suspicious looks, everything went off the rails fast.
- [26:35]
Dan Comstock
My friend Don, he just like, looks at me and he's like, okay, now. And he just instantly starts throwing poison gases at people. Half of our group looked at him with shock and the other half jumped in on it and immediately started attacking the other people in the tavern. When we left the tavern, two people had been robbed and one was dead. So we've got to kind of like kill our way out of town now before anybody realizes what's happening. It's getting dark. It's five o'clock in the evening at this point. It's snowing, and we're trying to keep our visibility really low. We made it to the edge of town and we started hiking into the woods. And like, most of our groups is in this cluster. And we've got one person that's like 50ft ahead of us and one person that's like 50ft behind us. And they're like our front and rear guard. And maybe like 40 minutes after we're into the woods, the guy behind us claps twice. They were chasing us. So Don gets this idea to leave, like, a false trail. He has us all, like, follow each other's footprints, step in each other's footprints as we go off in one direction. Meanwhile, he leaves footprints in a big circle. And then he cuts off a branch of a pine tree and walks backwards, covering his steps as he goes. We're like an hour and a half into this chase, and I'm like, they haven't found us yet. They're not gonna find us. At that moment, we see this guy emerge from the fog ahead of us. And he goes, there they are. We just. We scattered and I ran like a couple hundred feet, and I look over my shoulder and somebody has just hit my friend Sylvia in the back. And she falls down. And then all of a sudden, there's like six people around her. So I sprint. I sprint and I panic. If these guys find me, they're gonna kill me. There's two of them, at least two of them, and there's only one of me. I don't stand a chance.
- [28:43]
Malaklipse
So Malaklipse has this idea. If he can't run, maybe he can hide.
- [28:49]
Dan Comstock
I laid down on these rocks right next to the river, and I brushed a bunch of snow onto my back and I let the snow fall on me. And I can hear their footsteps. And if I look to the side I can see feet but not much more. They had just been running and they were kind of out of breath. I could hear talking about like he was just here, where is he? I just sit still in the snow. They eventually give up and go away. I look at my watch and I realize two hours has passed. I can leave the game now.
- [29:27]
Malaklipse
He put on a small white headband and instantly Maleclipse, the notorious anarchist and thief, changed back into being Dan Comstock, a linky college sophomore with shoulder length blonde hair and a big foam sword. Dan was a larper, a live action role player. He'd go on long weekend retreats where everyone played along in these big fantasy come to life games. He'd been so committed to it that he found himself alone in the snow in the middle of the night.
- [29:58]
Dan Comstock
And the gravity of this situation slowly sinks in. And now I'm just a 19 year old kid lost in the mountains in Pennsylvania. I realize I'm like really lost. It's now past sunset and the snow has been falling so I've only got like 100ft of footprints and then it's gone. I shout help. I ran and I ran and I ran. I just running and screaming. I just picked a direction and kept going. I start to lose hope. I'm going to use like my last bit of energy to like climb up this big hill and see if I could see anything from there. I push my way through these like thorn bushes and I make it up to the top of this hill and it's like a big flat field. And on the far side of the field I see a tiny farmhouse. I'm like oh, civilization. I'm saved. I'm out of the woods and so I walk over to this farmhouse. I was very conscious of that. I'm dressed in this ridiculous fantasy outfit. I take off as much of my costume as I can without shivering. I put my foam sword around the corner and I take off my cloak. And then I took a big breath and I knocked on the door. It was a Dutch door and the top half of it opened and I saw a woman in a very traditional looking blue dress and bonnet and she was holding a candle. That took me a little while to process what I was looking at. And the first thought in my head is like what? Did I wander into another larp? And then it hits me that I'm in Amish country. I was nervous so I said, you know, I'm lost. I'm staying at this campsite near here and could you just like point Me back to where I need to go. She's like, oh, my God, you were lost in the woods. That's terrible. She knew I was scared. Let me wake up my two of my sons and they'll. They'll give you a ride back. So Steven and Levi get two strapping Amish lads about my age get out of bed. They get on their clothes, they go out to the barn, they wake up the horse, they attach the buggy, they bring it out, and I get in the buggy with them, and we start to go back. It's like a little wooden cab with four wheels. They have rubber tires on them. And we were sitting side by side in the front of this buggy, all three of us. They were wearing brimmed hats, and I'm wearing a black cloak with a hood and leather armor with studs on it. The horse had just been woken up, so he was a little cranky. I think they could tell that I had never been in a horse and buggy before, and they thought that was adorable. They're like, they're really polite and they didn't really let on that they were teasing me. But it was very. It was a little pointy. They're like, I never been lost in the woods before. Were you scared? And it was just. It was really surreal, you know, because I'm trying to talk to these Amish people. They're like, what were you doing in the woods? And like, I couldn't really explain it, you know, I was like, have you ever heard of a Renaissance fair? No. Have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons? No. And I'm, like, trying not to say, like, well, we pretend like we don't have technology. Like, we live in a different time. It's funny, you know, people talk about Amish people like they're, you know, these, these bumpkins, and they talk about us the same way. You know, they're good at things that we're clueless about, like, who am I to judge? You know, I just wandered through the woods with, like, a cape and like a foam sword. I wasn't really able to explain it to them. And so they just kind of stop asking follow up questions at a certain point. So we pulled up to the campsite into like a little fantasy village. And there are different groups of people. There are these dark elves. They have pointy ears and they have dark makeup. Wizards who are wearing robes or, you know, and funny hats. Rangers who, you know, kind of dressed like Robin Hood a lot of the time with the kind of like pointed cap as soon as I stepped in, my friend Don and my friend Alan, who was carrying the treasure chest, they were like, there he is. And everybody kind of cheered. Everybody was relieved. Everybody was worried about where I had been. They said, where were you? And I said, amish country. I thanked Steven and Levi very warmly. I gave them hugs. They seemed a little bit amused. They were looking around and weren't really sure what they were looking at, but they were happy. I got to where I needed to go. I kind of got that sense too. Like that the next day they were going to be telling everybody. We met the weirdest guy last night. My name is Malaklipse. I'm a madman, a revolutionary in the world of Tira, on the continent of Avalon, in the kingdom of Evandar, in the duchy of Greyhorn. This is a. This is a land of order and chaos. There are liches and death knights, vampires, werewolves. One of the werewolves is a baron and he rules part of Greyhorn.
- [35:10]
Quinn Washington
Thank you, Dan Comstock for the fantastical tale. Now, dan's been organizing LARPing events for decades now. Even though Malclipse the anarchist is retired, Dan only plays the hero now. Don't get lost chasing anybody, Dan. The original score was by Renzel Gorio and that piece was produced by Jasmine Aguilera. What a show. If you missed even a moment, know that the Snap Judgment storytelling podcast awakes your listening pleasure. More episodes and you can shake a stick at or walk the shadowlands with our evil twin podcast Spook stories about the things that go bump in the night or amazing tales from the African continent from Mind your own with Lupita Nyong'o. All available wherever you get your podcast. Snap Storytelling. Rub it all over your body. It feels so good. KQED in San Francisco is snaps orbiting hall of justice. SNAP has brought to you are the team that has never, not once, had to hide on a window ledge. Like what happens in every single sitcom ever made. Except of course for the uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, who is actually something of a window ledge connoisseur. Now there's Nancy Lopez, Pat Mesiti, Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Gorio, John Fasille, Shayna Shealy, Tayo Dakot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, David Exime and Regina Badiaco. And this is not the news. No way is this the news. In fact, your neighborhood jerk crow could bully you for years on the sly and your neighbors and friends could universally take the crow side in your ongoing dispute and you would still still not be as far away from news as this is. But this is prx.