Cleaning The Pole Barn
Behind the Green Door
2025-04-10
Finally got off my lazy bleep to clean out the pole barn. When I bought the place, it came with a big pile of debris in the pole barn and miscellaneous stuff in various places, which I added to the pile. I also contributed a lot of boxes and packing material, so the result was a huge pile of rubbish. Over the last couple of weeks, I broke down the boxes and what I could to the recycling center.
I just about have everything gone, so the next step is setting it up as a shop. I have been scanning around for an air compressor. The first owner of the house was a mechanic, so he built a space outside for an industrial air compressor and ran pipe from it into the show area. I figure I can find a used compressor from the sale of a repair shop or maybe an estate sale.
My plan is to fix up the shop as needed. I want to start on the truck project, so that will provide many reasons to buy tools and shop items. In this area, there are always estate sales where part of the estate is a garage full of tools. My new hobby will be cruising these places looking for deals. There is a country-style auction house not far from here, so I will be investigating that as well.
Comments (Historical)
The comments below were originally posted to thedissident.substack.com.
Transcript
The transcript below was generated by Substack.
welcome to my pole barn not really sure why i keep calling it a pole barn it was
what it was listed as on the deed or on the property description so that's what i
keep calling it and uh my neighbor calls it a pole barn too so i mean technically
it is you know what a pole barn is as you can see here and you got these uh four by
sixes so you put those up and then you put a roof over it and
You know, that technically qualifies as a pole barn.
Although when I was a kid, pole barns were always dirt floor.
And the reason they did a dirt floor and they built them the way that they did is
that it technically didn't count as a taxable addition to the property.
Well,
anyway,
those of you who remember some of my early videos,
I think I did a couple the first time through in here.
And there was a giant pile of trash.
If you look from where this, well, this broom right here,
And all the way back here and then all the way back down the wall here.
This was full of trash about five, maybe six feet high.
And it's all gone now.
Well, not all gone.
What you see here are bags of things that I can't take to the recycling place.
You can take paper.
You can take metal.
You can take things like bottles and pop bottles and water jugs, stuff like that.
But you can't take styrofoam.
That is literally all styrofoam.
And there's some other, I shouldn't call it styrofoam.
I mean,
there's another type of packing that kind of looks like styrofoam,
but I think it's called something else.
But it doesn't matter, they won't take it.
And to find a landfill to take it to is a lot harder than you would think.
Strangely enough, it's not close by.
So what I decided to do,
I mean,
in a huge hurry,
is I can take these bags to the,
put them out with the regular trash,
We have private trash service here.
You pay for it.
You know, it's not the county or something like that.
So they'll pick up, I think they'll take like two or three per trip per week.
So that's one, two, three.
Meh, a few weeks.
So that'll all be gone.
And there's some boxes of stuff that I'm not really sure what to do with.
I've burned a lot of it.
I've burned a lot of boxes.
But most of the cardboard I've flattened out.
made it into small pieces, and took it to the recycling place in probably about 10 trips.
So one of the cool things I found under the pile,
as you can see here,
those two studs sticking up,
they are from a lift,
a two-post lift,
which is great news.
It means I can put a two-post lift in here at some point.
Now, I'm not ready to do it now.
I don't have a need for it.
I got other things to do, you know, clear out the rest of the trash.
And then I got to get rid of all this stuff.
I still have wood left over.
And I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the wood over on the other
side of the truck and make the bay I'm standing in be the work bay.
And then that I can put wood over there on the other side.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Maybe I'll put it underneath the workbench.
But the problem is I have – it's a great place for wood because it's dry.
And then it stays dry all nice and seasoned in the winter.
And I have about 20 logs that are about 10 feet long that have to be split, cut and split.
And so this pile will get much bigger.
So I could do it on this side.
I don't know.
We'll have to figure it out.
Because I do have,
if you look here,
about a space between the door and the wall is more than enough.
It's not quite as much on that side, but I don't know.
We'll see.
Well, anyway, I'm recording this Wednesday night.
I'm not sure if we're going to put it up tonight or not.
I'm going to, well, this is what, 5.30, 6 o'clock.
So a couple hours I'm going to be with Paul.
We're going to talk about tariffs and the economy and all the stuff that's going on.
It's amazing how big of news this is.
I mean, people are really locked in on this.
And I think in one respect, it's because people always care about the economy.
Everyone thinks the stock market is the economy.
It's not.
But a lot of people have 401Ks.
They have retirements.
Of course,
a lot of old people are really concerned about their retirement funds because
that's a fixed income.
And you can't blame them for that.
I know a lot of people give the boomers a lot of crap for caring about the stock market.
But, you know, look, I'm not a boomer.
I'm not retired.
But probably 10 years from now,
you know, maybe sooner.
It kind of depends on how the economy goes.
But 10 years from now, I'm definitely going to be a retired guy.
And so I'm going to look at my savings account and say,
well,
geez,
I hope I have enough of my investments where I can live off of the interest.
That would be ideal, or at least mostly, and then, you know, not have to cut into the principal.
Now, it's probably not going to happen.
My retirement fund is not that big.
But, you know, hopefully it's big enough.
So you do care about those things.
But even now,
I worry about this stuff because,
well,
maybe I should take my money out and put it in cash or put it in T-bills.
I mean, I think treasuries were up to like 4.1.
I think a 10-year treasury was like 4%.
So people do care about it, and for sensible reasons.
But I think also people also...
are looking at what's been going on and saying it's about time.
It's about time we have an economic conversation that's based around what's best
for the American people and not what's best for making Arrow go up.
I mean, this has always been the problem in
The United States,
for as long as I've been alive,
if you ask why this policy or that policy is good for the American people,
all the smarty-pants guys would look at you like,
what's wrong with you?
Are you a communist or something?
Make arrow go up.
Arrow good.
Arrow go up.
It has to be good.
No one ever considers the cultural, the social, the personal impact of any of this stuff.
And look, the American people have some blame for this.
I think the arguments were made in the 1980s that economic nationalism was the
right course,
and the public overwhelmingly voted for open borders,
open trade,
all the libertarian jibber-jabber about economics.
I mean, not everybody did, obviously, but large enough numbers voted in favor of this stuff.
And that told the ruling class that, hey, not going to be any opposition to this.
Full steam ahead.
And we've had 30-plus years of bankers looting the economy.
And that's literally what's been going on.
And look,
when you hear the Treasury Secretary say that,
hey,
for 40 years,
Wall Street has been doing great and getting rich off of this economy,
and now it's Main Street's turn to get rich on that.
That's huge.
That is huge stuff.
And so as the process goes forward,
it really doesn't matter as much as the tone,
the tone that's being changed.
The conversation isn't going to be any more about arrow go up.
It's not going to be about these abstract things about the trade deficit or the federal deficit.
It's going to be about
The kinds of things that people actually care about.
How much money are you making?
How good is your life?
How comfortable are you?
We've gone through this great technological revolution.
And the average American works harder now than at the start of the technological revolution.
I was alive when this all started in the 1980s.
And in the 1970s,
1980s,
I grew up very poor,
and even in poor neighborhoods,
women stayed home when their kids were small.
They might start going to work once the kids got into school,
but it was part-time,
so that they would be home for the kids.
This was just the way it was.
And then really,
when all this stuff starts,
the financialization,
the economy in the 80s,
my generation was the first latchkey kids,
moms at work.
I remember when that started happening,
all of a sudden everybody's mother got a job and got divorced and all this other
crap that went on.
And today,
the typical family,
instead of being a wife at home and maybe volunteering at the church or
volunteering at the school,
she's working.
She's in some job somewhere.
Husband and wife are working 50 hours a week,
60 hours a week,
counting the commutes and all the other stuff.
Well, what happened to all that great productivity gain?
Where's their piece of the action?
How come they're not benefiting from it?
Sure,
they got more junk in their house,
big screen TVs and all that stuff,
and it's not inconsequential.
It does matter.
But, you know, they've given up a lot for that.
And that wasn't the deal.
And I think we're starting to get people to... People are starting to understand that.
That, hey, wait a second.
Happiness isn't the stock market.
Happiness isn't the economic indicators.
Happiness is happiness.
And the economy is supposed to help us be more happy.
At least economic policy is supposed to help us be more happy.
And, you know, that's...
That's the first step,
is to get that conversation going,
get people thinking that way instead of thinking,
hey,
line go up,
line happy.
Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
I think it's going to be a long, bloody battle.
Odds are what Trump will get out of this in four years is probably big changes with China.
I think that's the big one.
But all the other stuff will be left to Vance, assuming that he wins and he runs and he wins.
And knock on wood that that's what happens.
I think that's the best we can hope for.
Because, look, it took 40 years to get to this point.
You're not going to fix it in four months.
It's going to take a while.
And it's not going to be pretty.
You know,
I think we've already seen the bankers start revolting,
saying that they're going to have a liquidity crisis that they'll get some relief
out of Trump.
That might be true.
But, you know, that's another obstacle to get over.
Well, anyway, let's see how much time I've got left on the camera here.
You know,
one of the things about doing these videos,
I kind of have to relearn how to pace myself and what to look at.
And honestly, I find it a little irritating.
I've got to think about a better way to do it.
Well, anyway, there's a live shot from the garage.
It's about 40 degrees in there, by the way.
It's cold in the Fortress of Solitude.

