EP334: Inspiration from my Dad and American author Jack Kerouac, Danielle Mickelson Had to Sue Just to Sell Soup and The Man In The Glass Coffin

There's a recipe for getting your car running just right. And whatever you're cooking up in the garage, you'll find what you need at eBayMotors.com. They have over 122 million car parts and accessories in stock, all at the right prices. And that can help you turn your ride into something really tasty.

The parts you need are just a click away at eBayMotors.com. Let's ride. What up?

It's Dramos. You may know me from the recap on LATV. Now I've got my own podcast, Life as a Gringo, coming to you every Tuesday and Thursday. We'll be talking real and unapologetic about all things life, Latin culture, and everything in between from someone who's never quite fit in.

Listen to Life as a Gringo on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hello. This is Hey Dude Shoes. This is an ad. But not for your ears, for your feet.

Are they listening? Good. Hey Dude Shoes are the squishiest, airiest, lightest go-to shoes you'll ever have the pleasure of introducing your toes to. So light, a butterfly could steal them. So soft, kittens seethe with jealousy. So cushy, your hands will curse your feet for all the love and attention.

Toes, you've hit the jackpot of comfy. Hey Dude, good to go to. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And to hear the podcast version of the show, subscribe on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And now we hear from one of our regular contributors, Paul Kotz, who gives a tribute to his father and a brief history of American author Jack Kerouac. Here's Paul. I was listening to an interview on the radio discussing the need for the presence of fathers and dads in kids' lives. I think back to my own dad, who taught me many aspects of navigating life's daily concerns, shared his own anecdotes of wisdom and challenged me to be better. If he heard someone else tell him I was a good man or that I possessed a bad man, if he heard someone else tell him I was a good man or that I possessed a certain trait, he would often tell me, as one example, so-and-so told me you're a very fine teacher.

Well, direct praise was not as common in my own childhood at home until I later became a man and my father was facing his own death due to a prolonged illness. At the time in the late 90s, I asked for some feedback on an incomplete dissertation dealing with learning styles and aptitude. He said, you write like Jack Kerouac. Well, on the road, one of Kerouac's finest works possessed this kind of spontaneity that was valued by many. Kerouac is generally considered to be the father of the beat movement, although he actively disliked such labels. Kerouac's method was heavily influenced by the prolific explosion of jazz, especially the bebop genre established by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. Later, Kerouac introduced ideas he developed from his Buddhist studies that began with Gary Schneider. He often referred to his style as spontaneous prose. Although Kerouac's prose was spontaneous, was spontaneous and purportedly without edits, he primarily wrote autobiographical novels based upon actual events from his life and the people with whom he interacted. Interestingly enough, Kerouac spoke French with his family and began learning English at school around age six.

He began speaking it confidently in his late teens. He was a serious child who was devoted to his mother who played an important role in his life. She was a devout Catholic who instilled this deep faith in both of her sons. He later said she was the only woman he ever loved.

After his brother died, his mother sought solace in her faith while his father abandoned it. Much could be said about Kerouac's upbringing and life exploits, but I was focused on my own writing and trying to finish this work where I had been stuck in a holding pattern. At the time, I did not know who Kerouac was.

I had to look him up because it was a comment that came from my dad and I wanted to know the significance of this pronouncement. Kerouac, as mentioned before, is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose and like all of us had his fans and attractors. You would have appealed to the Beat Generation, my dad said. I was kind of worried because at the time I was stuck in my writing and did not think I would ever finish. Some believed that at times that Kerouac's writing style did not produce lively or energetic prose.

The famous Truman Capote said of it, that's not writing, it's typing. Yet according to Carolyn Cassidy and others, he constantly rewrote and revised his work. At the time of my father's comments, I was encouraged because as I learned more about Kerouac, he had an attraction to the writing of Joyce.

This was often overlooked by scholars of prose. Kerouac alludes to his Joyce's work more than any other author. Also, Kerouac had high esteem for Joyce and he often used his stream of consciousness technique.

I appreciated experimenting with this language too. But in this case, my discussions with my dad, I was trying to finish this dissertation where a stream of consciousness wasn't highly valued, but the ability to make statements supported by varied literature and where a clear methodology in your work is quintessential. It had a style of its own.

I was grateful for this time and advice with my dad. Connected with this idea was this elimination of the period, substituting instead a long connecting dash. As such, the phrases occurring between dashes might resemble improvisational jazz licks.

And when spoken, the words take on a certain musical rhythm and tempo. Well, in writing this piece, I returned back to reflection of the influence my dad's comments had on me. My dad wasn't very generous in praise, but he was there in the background and could be a presence when I needed that extra push and the moment was right. Was my writing like improvisational jazz licks?

Did they have a musical rhythm and tempo like many thought of Kerouac? Dad may not have been the one to go to all your games or events, see when you did something well or frequently comment on it, but when he did, it made an impact. I'm indebted for this. He passed away in April of 2000 and I still miss him. The words my dad had for me had an influence. At the time, I had to delve into Kerouac to bring to life my dad's comments, which seemed incomplete and asking for untapping what he fully meant.

I may never know I may never know the true extent. And a great job on the production as always by Robbie Davis and a special thanks to Paul Kotz. And by the way, we love doing listeners stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com and you may just hear your story on our airwaves and on our podcasts. And my goodness, it shows once again and we talk about it time and again, the importance of fathers and sons and daughters lives and just this little discussion about a dissertation and spontaneity.

And by the way, not many people think of term papers and dissertations as spaces for spontaneity, but the dad's suggestion, the dad's prodding, moving his son forward and along his own path. Paul Kotz's story and tribute to his father and to one of his favorite American authors here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.

But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button.

Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs, which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs, they have your back.

Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we return to our American stories and now it's time for another rule of law story as a part of our rule of law series where we show you the absence or presence of the rule of law in our lives. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story. Danielle Michaelson's story begins in Rolla, North Dakota. So I'm a North Dakota native. I grew up about 30 miles from where I currently live. I married my high school sweetheart.

I went to the University of North Dakota to be a high school English teacher, which I immediately started doing when I graduated in 1994. So I was an English teacher for 22 years, but the entire time that I was doing that and raising my kids, I was always gardening. It was in my blood. My grandmother was a gardener. My mom and dad were gardeners.

It just seemed like the thing people did. You know, you had to have a garden. You had to produce your own food.

You had to save it for the winter. You had to can and process and then of course, cook homemade meals. So we were always food producers, but food producers just for our family. In 2014, I was still teaching and still gardening and my sons who were then 14 and 12 wanted to make a little money to go visit their grandparents who live in Las Vegas in the wintertime. And I told them they could sell all of our extra vegetables at our farmer's market.

We set up a card table and the bowls from my kitchen and they sold green beans and potatoes and some onions and they made $72 and they were beyond excited at how great they were at it. And over the course of the next few years, we grew, our tables grew, our tents grew. We started canning everything from pickles to sulfas to jams and jellies and it became an intense passion. This growth of this business became a passion and all of a sudden I realized that my heart needed to be in that garden and not in a classroom anymore. And that was the year that I decided that was the last time that I would leave my garden at the end of August. That the next August I would be there with it and I would no longer be in the classroom. I quit teaching.

My world and my passion had changed and I needed to chase it. And Danielle would name her business Michelson Tiny Plants. But why? So our business is called Michelson Tiny Plants because when our kids were really little they were tiny tiny humans. I mean even as they grew they were still little little people and we always referred to them as tiny pants.

Come here tiny pants. And I feel like I feel like it every time that when I start my tiny plants growing in the spring it's like growing your children. There's this attachment to this life that's coming out of the ground and it's ground that belongs to me and is nurtured by me and I watch them I watch the plants grow and I watch them produce food. And I remember one of the years first years I was teaching I'd been reading an article about food security and how people often don't have food security in their life. And I was standing in the middle of my garden and I realized that I was it was my food security and I could help make it food security for my community.

Which is important to Rala. She's providing a service nobody else does in her city and giving people options such as healthy food. North Dakota is a very long distance from where the majority of fruits and vegetables are grown that end up in our grocery store. The average time from when a vegetable is picked till it gets to Rala, North Dakota is between 10 and 14 days. And if you take a look at the science of food the minute you pick a fresh vegetable it starts to lose nutrients. And I started thinking about you know that that loss of nutrients by the time it gets to the grocery store and how I could provide to our community food that had been picked literally the day before. You know we also have a practice that we believe in no waste and we just decided to start using our what we were growing in products that had a little bit longer shelf life. So some of the overage goes into jars and we just started putting a few out on the on the table with our vegetables and realized that we had a following.

People were coming back and asking for more. We made 1950 jars last year of dill pickles and from there we started looking at what you couldn't get in Rala, North Dakota. Like what can't you get in Rala, North Dakota? One thing was sourdough bread. There's no way to get fresh sourdough bread.

We don't even have a bakery in Rala. We do tomato juice. We do a spicy tomato juice and so we use our peppers and our onions and our jalapenos and our tomatoes and we make a cold press juice that we can and then one day the food freedom bill was passed that allowed us to start processing food into other things. Otherwise known as House Bill 1433, the Cottage Food Act was passed by elected officials in the North Dakota House and Senate and opened the door for Danielle's business to expand even more. You see before the bill passed things like pizza and french onion soup could only be sold out of somewhere with a commercial kitchen but now Danielle and others could sell out of their home kitchens directly to their customers.

People have been doing this forever right? You bake muffins and take them over to your neighbor and and give them to them and they enjoy them. Then your neighbor says can you make me four dozen? I want them for you know my family and you couldn't at that point sell them to them. You could give them to them but you couldn't sell them which seems kind of strange to me. So the cottage food law actually freed that up as long as the transaction is person to person. As long as the producer of the food is handing the food to the consumer and the consumer can ask the questions and take a look at the product and decide if they trust you and inherently that's what these small businesses are about right?

Friendships and trust. Then you can sell to them and it really made a huge difference for people who wanted to try starting a small business. You know biting the bullet in putting in a hundred thousand dollar commercial kitchen because you think you might be good at something is a little scary but you could actually do a test market use you know you could you can have you can have your own test market now.

You can try selling things. How did I know that so many people were going to love my dill pickles? Like my family loves them but does that mean that everyone who tries them actually will come back to buy more? We didn't know and so as our business grew that you know was a big deal. What the cottage food law allowed was for people to start to expand and for us that's exactly what it meant. Our business grew. I think it was you know it was this so I quit teaching in June 2017 and the cottage food law passed in August 2017 so it was just this immense excitement that when I had trans you know when I quit teaching to become a small food producer this was like another door opened in front of me again and I could just envision where my business could go. It was just a it was a reinforcing my decision to be a small food producer and a businesswoman and it was it was you know like the stars aligned right?

I quit teaching. I put all my energy into this and then this magical door opened and I could use all my creativity and all my planning and thoughts to grow my business literally straightforward. At least that's what Danielle thought would happen with the new lawn place. She didn't expect the face of lawlessness from her own government. And you're listening to Danielle Michelson tell the story of her own freedom to pursue her passion. It turned out that passion was in the garden. When we come back more of this story from Rolla, North Dakota.

Danielle Michelson's story, a freedom story, and a rule of law story, here on Our American Story. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65 you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop but for small business insurance I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. See they're small business owners too so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life try all free clear mega packs. All free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that all free clear mega packs they have your back.

Purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we continue with our American stories in the story of Danielle Michelson. When we last left off Danielle was growing her business and was lent a massive helping hand by the passage of the cottage food laws but the smooth sailing wouldn't last much longer.

Let's continue with her story. Everything seemed to be going well for Danielle Michelson but the North Dakota Department of Health had other ideas and tried to get rid of the cottage food laws which allowed Danielle to sell food she otherwise couldn't. I mean it was a whirlwind of craziness right we weren't even sure how this could possibly be happening but the health department decided that they were worried about the safety of these foods even though there was no foodborne illness in farmers market produced cottage foods produced foods since the passing of the law and they tried to have the law changed and they failed. They failed because the North Dakota legislature refused to make the changes to the law that the health department wanted but after this the health department did it anyways which is a violation of the rule of law because administrative bodies can't pass laws on their own they can only carry out laws that the legislature passed. I suddenly had to stop selling my soup I suddenly had to put all of my ideas on hold and I was I was just shocked I was shocked that this is where we had gotten because like I said I was elated with what could come and then it was just stopped dead over this fear for food safety and I'm not faulting them for that but the one thing I stressed over and over again is when you buy a jar of salsa from me or you buy a quart of soup from me I actually take what I feed my family from the exact same supply and I am going to be above and beyond careful about what I am providing to people for sale because that's the exact same food that I'm feeding my family and that's how and that's how cottage food producers feel also in a business model the reality is is you make one person sick and your business is done so small business can't ride out an E. coli outbreak on romaine like we've seen across the nation small business has to be on top of their game and specific in particular and perfect at all times that's why we were surprised when these rules came out because we felt like we were we were the best of the best right and suddenly we're the ones that are suffering under the administrative rules it almost makes you feel like you're not intelligent enough to know better that's offensive right I'm good at this and my customers were just heartbroken that they couldn't get the soup that they had learned to depend on and they're so funny because all of the people that live in my community are they all have the ability to cook and cook well but french onion soup takes a very long time to caramelize all those onions and they always like to say you know I could make this myself but I'd much rather you did it because yours is so good and I don't have to you know do all the work and they come to market and they want to buy soup and I have to say I'm sorry but the health department made rules and I can't sell you soup anymore and then the crazy part is is if you're if you are you know an English teacher from a town of 1400 you don't even know what you can do to fight it I had no clue I didn't have the resources to hire an attorney to fight I wasn't even sure what the fight would be and for the most part you know we're just rule following law abiding happy people and we don't get put in places where we're suddenly fighting against administrative rules I'd never even heard that term before I'll probably when I was in high school I heard that term before but I'd never thought about it since high school and so I didn't even know what to do and that's why I said that you know my business segmented in my and my hopes and dreams sort of died for a second I just buckled down and went back to work you know I guess we'll just sell fresh fruits and vegetables and the things that we can bake and we can bake and and can and we'll give up soup and that's just how it will go you just sort of resign yourself and I think that's a terrible thing to say about what happened to me thankfully she would be approached by the institute for justice a public interest law firm that stands up for Americans when their rights are violated at no cost to people like Danielle was so thankful for the institute for justice because I didn't even know we could fight it and suddenly they showed up you know like they're your knight in shining armor and they're like we can help you and I'm like you've got to be kidding me and they're like no we can help you you just have to be willing to stand up and be you know the plaintiff in the case and here we go you know they explained to me that it was unconstitutional and I hadn't even thought of it on that level what they did unilaterally with the with the administrative rules was circumvent what the entire house and senate had you know they had spoken we're not changing the law they circumvented that entire process when they had already voted it down there was also a second violation of the rule of law the north decoding constitution states that people have to be treated equally under the law but the rules created by the health department didn't do that you see the regulations allow a farmer to sell uninspected raw poultry while banning a home cook like Danielle from selling chicken noodle soup that makes no sense it's completely arbitrary and thankfully the court saw it that way too and ruled in Danielle's favor they they won and we just got this email that said you won your case and that was it it was over and all of a sudden my brain just spun thinking about all of the ways that this had opened this door for me again and it was time to not worry about being stopped and just barrel forward and we have new goals now and the goals are super funny or super interesting or super ironic however you want to see it but our next goal is to build a large-scale indoor market that will actually have a commercial kitchen and commercial kitchens will allow us to ship and so even though my fight was for cottage food which means I can cook it in my kitchen my long-term goal gets me a commercial kitchen and then I'm you know on the other side you know then I've crossed over but the reality is without the cottage food ability I would have never been able to build my teeny tiny business that started in 2014 to a place where I'm ready to build a facility and have a commercial kitchen so maybe in one more year we will be looking at building a new facility right on our main street now watch me now this business is going to grow like crazy and great job as always to Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to the folks at the Institute for Justice who represented Danielle Michelson and represented her freedom to sell food on an equal playing field and also for the people of North Dakota it allowed them to get this kind of food and not have it blocked by people who weren't represented in their state legislature these rules were passed and promulgated by people at the Department of Health and the Department of Health doesn't have the right in North Dakota to do such things what was fascinating was listening to Danielle's sheer frustration she said I didn't know what to do I didn't even know what the fight was or who it was with and what she could do about it and in came the Institute for Justice and well did what they do which is represent mostly small businesses in rule of law and property right cases the story of Danielle Michelson the story of Michelson tiny plants and about so much more but particularly the rule of law here on Our American Stories. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices for those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th if you're working past age 65 you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage it can seem confusing but it doesn't have to be visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more UnitedHealthcare helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop but for small business insurance I need my State Farm agent they make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident see they're small business owners too so they know how to help you best State Farm is in your corner and on it like a good neighbor State Farm is there call your local State Farm agent for a quote today.

Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done I mean that can be overwhelming for anyone so if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life try all free clear mega packs all free clear mega packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry all free clear mega packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs which my family we definitely have sensitive skin so the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes just know that all free clear mega packs they have your back purchase all free clear mega packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. This is our American Stories and up next a story you won't forget in 1924 when Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin died the Soviets preserved his body by placing him in a hermetically sealed glass coffin. Lesser known though is that around the same time in Benton harbor Michigan a religious colony called the house of David did the same for their leader.

Here's our own Monty Montgomery with the story of a robbery a glass coffin and a local legend. The year is 1927 the place Benton harbor Michigan home of the house of David a religious colony led by Benjamin Purnell who preached that if you followed his message and gave all your worldly possessions to him you would never die. Unfortunately for Ben though he contracted tuberculosis which he died from.

Here's Chris Seriano with what happened next. He didn't teach ever that he was going to die so here he died and it's it was pandemonium it was mass chaos at the house of David so Benjamin they kept wrapped in damp warm towels for eight days thinking that he was going to rise again. Finally the Berrien county coroner said listen it's been eight days you either bury the guy or we're going to bury him. But luckily for the house of David they had the soviets to look towards for inspiration. Well during that process of having him wrapped like that they found out the process that linen in Russia had been used to embalm and put his body body in a hermetically sealed glass coffin that's what they did. And there Ben Purnell sat for the next 60 some years in his hermetically sealed glass coffin while his massive mansion decayed around him as the house of David dwindled in numbers due to their belief in celibacy. But in 1988 twice the house of David Diamond House got broke into but the first time that they ran quickly the second time was not a good day. These kids these four kids had studied the movement of the house of David people they had sat out in the woods they were locals they were in their backyard basically they figured out when the house of David people moved back and forth around the Diamond House. They came back on a particular day that they knew that there wasn't much movement some one of the weekend days they cut a hole in the roof of the Diamond House mansion where they dropped down and they spent the entire day stealing things. So vases urn statues oil paintings from all over the world these things came from the richest of rich people that joined those things disappeared. Well one of the worst things that happened was they weren't satisfied with just items that were in the rest of the mansion they wanted to see Ben because he's that's a big big big part of our local history is him and his body being in there and they found out that he was in his parlor there's a stone wall that separates the catwalk from the Diamond House annex into his area and it's got a big steel bank vault door on it so there's no way you're getting to that door and the and there's wired electric wires like shock wires from the door so even if you touch the door you're probably going to go to heaven real quick or somewhere right so they went back one of them was a contractor they went back to his house got a big ramming bar and they rammed a hole through this stone wall and they they made it big enough where they could pull the rest of the rocks out and they could get their bodies through the hole and they got into his parlor where his tomb is at and I interviewed those people they told me Chris when we got in there it was like a pharaoh's tomb so around Ben's glass sealed coffin which is was up at an angle were piles and piles of rings and diamonds and rubies and necklaces and bases and it was like what happened to the stuff when people came there the beautiful things that they came there with they couldn't have those anymore right they didn't know they just had to give them away well they were saved a majority of them were saved in the diamond house so when he was buried he was buried like a like a pharaoh and and like a an emperor so they took some things off of that but the sad thing was is Ben had a 22 karat diamond ring on his finger and a big huge diamond filled and ruby filled white gold custom made necklace from House of David Jewelers they wanted those things bad and they took the pry bar the ramming bar and pried this the glass dome off of his coffin which is hermetically sealed can't be sealed again but they so they broke the ring off of his finger broke his finger in the meantime and ripped the medallion off of his neck and the 22 karat diamond on his finger was one of the biggest in the world at the time so they got away they got away with that break-in and it was advertised all over everywhere all over the country it was a big deal finally the i interviewed the state police officer at my museum one day and he said chris i'm the one that made the arrest and i said tell me about it and he said we had we had pictures the house of david had people had pictures of all these things that were in the diamond house and and he said where me and my partner are driving through benton heights which is a rough part of dodge in this area and uh we look over and in front of this trailer is this little nickel-plated parlor stove with flowers growing out of it that was it right so they walked up to the door knocked on the door and a lady answered and and said ma'am we love that stove that you have out there can you tell us where you where we can get something like that and she said well my ex gave it to me for some gift but he doesn't live here anymore but here's his name and phone number bam he gets busted he's got loose lips they all go they all go down right so come to find out and both the people that did the job did the stealing and the police officer told me that what happened was because there was such a massive amount of things because it was so written about in the media they were afraid to sell up everything so they took everything and divided it equally amongst them were and then they would take it and hide it one hit it like in the upstairs of his barn the other guy hit it in a storage area in his basement the lady hit it clausen lady hit it underneath her wrap around her mobile home none of them sold anything that so they got all that stuff back except the 22 karat diamond ring which mccoy brothers appraised it like two and a half million dollars and the giant medallion which was appraised at over a half a million dollars they found out that those kids took those to the south side of chicago and sold them to a jewelry dealer there like a swap guy for 12 000 cash and then he back then you didn't have to have anybody's driver's license you didn't have to ask questions you just bought stuff and sold stuff so he had taken the diamond and out and sold it to a diamond buying place in london for like 60 000 supposedly they chopped it up and sold it off differently so it wouldn't be detected but that that's all gone now the scariest thing was the girl that told me the story she came in my museum twice two days in a row spent hours without saying one word and finally uh i went up to her my mom and i were there and i said you seem really fascinated by this story can you tell me why and she said you want to know and i said yeah i do want to know and she said i'm the one that broke in the diamond house and i was like oh my gosh i mean this is all my stuff is right here in front of her and she was capable of getting into this place so she went on to tell me the whole story the whole all the details it was so good i should have filmed her but she was a mammoth girl she kind of killed me but in the end she said chris you know what i would do it again right now she says the best high i ever had in my life i'm thinking i can't buy a good enough security system at this point and it's a big country my mom used to always tell me as a kid explaining the unexplainable to me and the fun and the weird and my goodness this is both fun and weird and my goodness a guy that tries to basically entomb himself and surround himself with jewelry i always think of the great poem by shelly ozzymandias and as hard as he's got and this one sort of cult leader tried to talk about his eternal life and everyone else's well little something happened he died and everybody else was going to die too the story of a strange almost little cult in benton harbor michigan the house of david here on our american stories