Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, Jerry over there, and this is the Lighthouse
Speaker 1: episode Take one. Uh. Can I just go ahead and
Speaker 1: say that I love lighthouses? Do you love love already before?
Speaker 1: Like you fell in love with them and researching both
Speaker 1: like if I'm I grew up going to Honey Island,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, not every year, but we went quite a
Speaker 1: few times here Buford and they have a lighthouse and
Speaker 1: it was one of my favorite things to do as
Speaker 1: a kid, was climbing the lighthouse. And I would I
Speaker 1: if I'm near a lighthouse now ever, I will go
Speaker 1: climate but outside. I will seek it out and then
Speaker 1: shimmy up the outside like Spider Man. Um. No, I
Speaker 1: will seek it out and go look at it and
Speaker 1: then climb it and um this article just made me
Speaker 1: love it even more. I have a precious memories lighthouse
Speaker 1: to marble Head Lighthouse near Kataba Island, which is where
Speaker 1: what state by Sandusky in Ohio on Lake Erie. And
Speaker 1: it was the same thing when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: We used to go vacation on Kataba Island, and um,
Speaker 1: we would go to that lighthouse every once a while.
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever going inside, though it might not
Speaker 1: have been open, because there's no reason why you would
Speaker 1: go to a lighthouse more than once and not go
Speaker 1: inside climb it up. I don't remember every going in,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're just like, yeah, it looks nice from
Speaker 1: down here. Yeah, I would have climbed it. I was
Speaker 1: a climber. Yeah, me too. Um. But I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that factors in for me is I found
Speaker 1: I really love antiquated systems that could still be viable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like post apocalypse, you could fire up lighthouses again, you
Speaker 1: know fire yeah, and it would work. Yeah, it would.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a weird thing with me that
Speaker 1: I love. I love stuff that's still around that you
Speaker 1: could use if if need be. You know, I've never
Speaker 1: really looked at my environment that way, like to see
Speaker 1: what it was going to be standing after an apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should. Well I don't know about standing, but
Speaker 1: let's just let's say there was some weird domino effect
Speaker 1: type thing like that movie where electricity and internet and
Speaker 1: everything went out and people turned on each other. You
Speaker 1: could still light a lighthouse and fos could find their
Speaker 1: safe harbor. What movie are you talking about the domino effect? Oh? Really,
Speaker 1: there's a movie like that called that. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I think it was called with Elizabeth Shoo
Speaker 1: and agent Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks Kyle what's his face? McLaughlin?
Speaker 1: And he is so great? Is the mare um Portlandia? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He is good. I love that guy. I think it's
Speaker 1: called a domino effect. If not, that was the you know,
Speaker 1: essentially what happened there was a domino effect like a blackout, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that just like and it created a domino effected things
Speaker 1: kind of spun out of control. You're talking about Fury Road, right,
Speaker 1: So uh, Chuck. I love lighthouses too, but I knew
Speaker 1: virtually nothing about them until researching this. And um, if
Speaker 1: you think about them though, it's like you were saying,
Speaker 1: after the apocalypse, you'll still they'll still be standing. You
Speaker 1: just need to replace the electricity with a fire and
Speaker 1: then you'd have basically what lighthouses have always been, which
Speaker 1: is some sort of highly visible signal. For most of
Speaker 1: the time, it was a fire, either a wood fire,
Speaker 1: coal fire, tar fire. Um that you could see that
Speaker 1: was meant to signal to ships that hey man, there's
Speaker 1: some treacherous waters around here. It's one of the main
Speaker 1: things that they did. And as the light got better
Speaker 1: and better. One of the roles that um, lighthouses play
Speaker 1: was not just to say careful in this area. We
Speaker 1: went to the trouble building a lighthouse here because it's
Speaker 1: so treacherous. But also check out these rocks. See this
Speaker 1: with this light, there's some rocks there. Yeah, like literally
Speaker 1: lighting up a harbor. Yeah. Um, well, because there was
Speaker 1: no light otherwise. Right. And then um, the other role
Speaker 1: that they play is in the daytime, right, because lighthouses
Speaker 1: I don't think that they actually keep them on twenty
Speaker 1: four hours a day, highly inefficient. On a cloudy day,
Speaker 1: if it's foggy, they'll turn it on and start sounding
Speaker 1: the fog horns, which we'll talk about. But um, for
Speaker 1: the most part in the daytime, it's off. But a
Speaker 1: lighthouse still serves a purpose during the day because they
Speaker 1: don't decorate them the way that they decorate them just
Speaker 1: for looks. They do it so you can differentiate one
Speaker 1: lighthouse from another. Yeah, Like this one looks like a
Speaker 1: barber pole. So I'm near north Carolina is exactly right.
Speaker 1: And there's like a whole book called the light List
Speaker 1: where it has pictures of them and if you get
Speaker 1: your hands on that. I meant to look it up
Speaker 1: but ran out of time. I'll bet it's neat. I
Speaker 1: bet it's neat too. By the way, that movie is
Speaker 1: called the Trigger Effect. I have heard of that one.
Speaker 1: There was a movie called the Domino Effect, but it's
Speaker 1: not the same one. What about the butterfly effects? Remember
Speaker 1: that garbage that was the couch? Right? Yeah? Man? Why
Speaker 1: does he haunt us? I don't know. It comes up
Speaker 1: a lot, all right. Where were we were we in
Speaker 1: the lighthouse? We were talking about the day mark? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty neat. But there's also what's called the light signature, right, yes,
Speaker 1: where that's um, that's we're going back to nighttime again.
Speaker 1: Ye sorry version the sun's going up and down, the
Speaker 1: lights off. It got weird. It is a little weird. Sorry, Jerry,
Speaker 1: are you still here? So? Um? At night the light
Speaker 1: has its own flashing signature, light signature, and that's also
Speaker 1: in the light book too, And there's actually a number
Speaker 1: of different ways that a light can flash, right, who knew?
Speaker 1: I didn't know you've got the fixed and that is,
Speaker 1: of course, if you just have a light on saying
Speaker 1: we're open. Yeah, it shines continuously, come on in, it's
Speaker 1: the waffle house. You have the occulting light. I love
Speaker 1: this one, the creepiest of all lights. Uh. It has
Speaker 1: longer periods of light than dark. Um. And then the
Speaker 1: flashes six six six uh, And a flashing light has
Speaker 1: longer periods of dark than light. So occulting and flashing
Speaker 1: or just sort of inverse of one another, there are
Speaker 1: two sides of the same coin. That's right. I can't
Speaker 1: have light without the dark is the whole premise. And
Speaker 1: then you have the isophase light that's equal light and
Speaker 1: dark with its uh signature blips, and then a group
Speaker 1: flashing light super seventies. Yeah, it has a regular repeating
Speaker 1: number of flashing lights. It's the same pattern, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's actually really famous one of those, um, the
Speaker 1: Minnot's Ledge light in Boston. It was very famously known
Speaker 1: as I think it still is that I Love you
Speaker 1: light because of a flash one, then we flash four,
Speaker 1: and then we flash three, so I l O V
Speaker 1: E y O U. So it was like a very
Speaker 1: romantic light. That's how people took it. I didn't make
Speaker 1: that up. Oh see, I thought it was I hate
Speaker 1: cal it could. That's the secondary way that it's known.
Speaker 1: The people Boston are known for their soft side. I know.
Speaker 1: So that's why I love you. Yeah, they're prone to
Speaker 1: break into sobs and the public on the street frequently
Speaker 1: just walking around thinking about the beauty of life. That's right,
Speaker 1: And hey, Boston, we'll see you this fall at the
Speaker 1: Wilbur Theater. I think it's still available. I just want
Speaker 1: to work that in nice um. And then finally we
Speaker 1: have our alternating I'm sorry. We have the Morse code um,
Speaker 1: which is what it sounds like. It It mimics Morse
Speaker 1: code with stats and dashes, stats and dooshes. That's Marist
Speaker 1: code dots and dashes man um to spell out, you know,
Speaker 1: things like I love you. But that's not when Mino's
Speaker 1: ledged does. It's it's just it's just one, four and three,
Speaker 1: and people took it that way. I hate and when
Speaker 1: its ledge, Actually it's pretty awesome to begin with. It's
Speaker 1: it's under ten ft of water at high tide and
Speaker 1: they had to build it I think in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: whenever the tide was out, so they only had like
Speaker 1: X amount of hours and the day during low tide
Speaker 1: when the ledge was exposed, it's still there. It's tough cookie,
Speaker 1: but josh, these are all sort of modern modern is
Speaker 1: modern ish, but um, although old, they can go back
Speaker 1: to uh what comers Iliad? They mentioned a lighthouse. Yeah, crazy,
Speaker 1: and I mean like we're talking basically a huge bonfire
Speaker 1: on a cliff more exactly, you know, not like a well,
Speaker 1: not like Minot's ledge or anything. But the still qualifies
Speaker 1: as a lighthouse. It was the premise behind it, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I founded weirdly defensive just now about that still lighthouse. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: like you said, you would have like either wood or
Speaker 1: coal burning on a long pole. Uh. And then finally
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century, um, they started using lanterns, which
Speaker 1: is a little more probably controllable. Yeah. The problem was
Speaker 1: that they kept running into, um was that the oil
Speaker 1: or coal would smudge the lantern, the glass around the lantern,
Speaker 1: and the so the glass top, the whole thing where
Speaker 1: the light is that you can walk around, and that's
Speaker 1: the lantern of the lighthouse. And if you're burning a
Speaker 1: coal fire in there, it's gonna get sooty. Pretty quick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the that's one of the main jobs of
Speaker 1: the lighthouse keepers to watch windows. Um. The problem is
Speaker 1: in between washings, which they did at least once a
Speaker 1: day normally, UM, the light would degrade as the soot
Speaker 1: built up. Uh. So they figured out, oh, we need better,
Speaker 1: better fuel than coal or tar. We thought they used tar.
Speaker 1: Let's burn the dirtiest thing on the plane. Inside. They
Speaker 1: were working with what they had at the time. So
Speaker 1: they figured out, especially in New England, that they could
Speaker 1: um use things like blubber and lard, which they did
Speaker 1: from Wales, burns a lot cleaner. Uh. And then they
Speaker 1: also figured out, hey, you know what this flame is okay,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't it be great pre electricity if we had
Speaker 1: something like electricity to beam this thing out there? For
Speaker 1: miles and miles and a very smart physicists from France
Speaker 1: named Augustine Fresnel. For Nell, I like, Fresnell, that's cool.
Speaker 1: For Nell said, all right, take my lens and do
Speaker 1: with it what you will, and he invent at the
Speaker 1: Fornell lens. He did and nineteen I'm sorry, eighty two,
Speaker 1: and it's like what you would think it would be.
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of prisms. Um through that through magic
Speaker 1: can cast a beam like twenty something miles out to
Speaker 1: the ocean. It's amazing. They concentrate in the the gather
Speaker 1: light from the top and the bottom and in the
Speaker 1: middle and basically just shoot it all back to a
Speaker 1: single magnifying point. It just goes miles. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that really that changed everything and did a great job
Speaker 1: of handling the load until electricity would come around. And
Speaker 1: that's when everyone was like, you know what, we don't
Speaker 1: need these silly flames anymore. Let's just plug in a light.
Speaker 1: But you can still use it for nell lens with
Speaker 1: the light and it's even brighter like today's modern lighthouses.
Speaker 1: Use um or have produced lights between ten thousand candelas
Speaker 1: and a million Candelas's candela? Did you see this reference? Like,
Speaker 1: this is the worst analogy I've ever run across. What
Speaker 1: did it say? A candela is one two d the
Speaker 1: brightness of a fifty watt light bulb. Oh okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly how much a candela is. I also
Speaker 1: saw that it's roughly the brightness of a candle, which
Speaker 1: makes sense, and that's a much better frame of reference.
Speaker 1: So the brightness of a million candles burning in the
Speaker 1: same place. That's how bright modern lighthouses are, not one
Speaker 1: two bulb. Let's take a break. Yeah, seriously, let's go
Speaker 1: find out who wrote that and write a strongly worded letter.
Speaker 1: Well that got ugly, So we're I feel like we're
Speaker 1: still talking about the history of lighthouses, right yeah, um,
Speaker 1: well what they were, they were made of wood early
Speaker 1: on um. But the problem with a wooden lighthouse and
Speaker 1: a massive burning fire of tar is that they can
Speaker 1: burn down and be washed out to see, or in
Speaker 1: rough weather it can just be knocked plumb over by waves.
Speaker 1: And but like I said, they used what they had
Speaker 1: at the time, and over the years they got sturdier
Speaker 1: and sturdier with steel and concrete and stuff like that. Well,
Speaker 1: even over even before, over the years before, over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Pharisa Alexandria, one of the seven Wonders of the
Speaker 1: ancient world, was this um lighthouse at the mouth of
Speaker 1: the harbor to Alexandria, Egypt. And it was around I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure when it was around. I think the
Speaker 1: which one the pharaohs of Alexandria to seventy BC. My friend,
Speaker 1: that thing was pretty sturdy it took a massive earthquake
Speaker 1: to bring it to It was made of masonry, it
Speaker 1: wasn't made of wood, you know. So it looks like
Speaker 1: lighthouse construction got dumber as the years went on, and
Speaker 1: then it got smart again. Then it got smart again.
Speaker 1: It just dipped down in the wood era and then
Speaker 1: came back up. Well. Um, what you you normally have
Speaker 1: is a lighthouse, which can be just a lighthouse, or
Speaker 1: there might be uh a fog signal building. There might
Speaker 1: be a boat house. You might have a little house
Speaker 1: or apartment attached to it, and you might live there
Speaker 1: with your family on in a very remote part of
Speaker 1: the world. Um, all by yourself for with a couple
Speaker 1: of other dudes. Yeah, and take turns and take shifts.
Speaker 1: That's called a stag station. Yeah. And I think the
Speaker 1: other thing that appeals to me about lighthouses is I
Speaker 1: could have lived that life. Oh yeah, yeah I can.
Speaker 1: I have seen myself dropping out and you got a
Speaker 1: neck beard. Yeah, so you needs like a cable net
Speaker 1: sweater and living up there all by myself corn cob
Speaker 1: pipe really yeah, throw my own crops and just sit
Speaker 1: up there and be quiet, no one bugging me. It's
Speaker 1: like it appeals. I did not know that. I did
Speaker 1: not picture you as a lighthousekeeper. I could totally do it,
Speaker 1: or a lightkeeper for short um and um. This is
Speaker 1: another thing that I thought was remarkable in this article.
Speaker 1: You might as well mention it is it. If there
Speaker 1: is a lighthouse near you that nobody operates, it is
Speaker 1: possible that you could own that lighthouse. Yeah. On the
Speaker 1: National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of two thousand, it got
Speaker 1: a process together where the coast Guard, which is what
Speaker 1: runs the lighthouse, biz now a lighthouse racket. Um. They
Speaker 1: you can basically start a nonprofit or have a nonprofit
Speaker 1: and at no cost they will give you a decommissioned
Speaker 1: lighthouse if you maintain it and keep it open to
Speaker 1: the public. Yeah. For the most part, it's like preservation
Speaker 1: society in this. But if nobody wants it, they put
Speaker 1: it up for auction and then you can do what
Speaker 1: you want to. You can live out my dream and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have to do the windows either. I could
Speaker 1: just live up there and be a crusty old hermit.
Speaker 1: You know, we could do a Kickstarter to help you
Speaker 1: live out your dream. Chuck, Well, let's let's do a
Speaker 1: few more years of stuff. You should know first though,
Speaker 1: before you go. Okay, okay, um, all right, so back
Speaker 1: to more modern times. Um, we're building them out of
Speaker 1: concrete and steel. At this point they're a little more sturdy.
Speaker 1: You got your little keeper's house. You're not getting paid
Speaker 1: much money. How much money, dude? Not much? So this
Speaker 1: article says that they earned about two annually in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. I went on to the g wiz
Speaker 1: west Egg inflation calculator for eight in eight that was
Speaker 1: five grand. Today your provisions are covered though, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the very least your room is. I don't
Speaker 1: know about board. I bet you they all the whale
Speaker 1: ard you can eat. Yeah, no, imagine they take care
Speaker 1: of stuff because you can't like leave and go shopping
Speaker 1: like imagine you just have everything shipped to you and
Speaker 1: um again ideal. I love that. Don't have to go out,
Speaker 1: you don't have to spend any money. It's like web van, yeah,
Speaker 1: coming to you. You're just you're banking that five five
Speaker 1: grand a year essentially. Wow. Man, when you get into
Speaker 1: like lighthouse mode, you're lower in the standards like germanously
Speaker 1: you're like, man, I'm making five grand. People are bringing
Speaker 1: me food I don't have to talk to anybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. It's like your fantasy. That's hilarious. Um. So
Speaker 1: that lens we were talking about, we we didn't use
Speaker 1: that in the United States for a while because the
Speaker 1: way I read this is we kind of cheaped out
Speaker 1: when it was being run um by this guy Stephen
Speaker 1: pleasant from for thirty years eight eighteen fifty two, thirty
Speaker 1: two years he ran an efficient, some might say chintzy
Speaker 1: program to where he was like, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: need those fancy French lenses. Um, take these creddi versions.
Speaker 1: They probably wouldn't even a lens. It's like a mirror,
Speaker 1: reflector or something. Maybe if that, yeah, maybe a piece
Speaker 1: of metal at somebody had to just stand behind the
Speaker 1: light with the reflected you're my mute assistant, right quiet.
Speaker 1: But then finally the US government got involved and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we need to regulate this. Well, they
Speaker 1: were involved. That's why, Yes, from seventeen sixteen to seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, that was not run by the US government. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until alex Andrew Hamilton's almost got in a
Speaker 1: shipwreck off the coast of I think North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: he went back and said, hey, I think we need
Speaker 1: some lighthouses. The federal government needs to get involved. And
Speaker 1: so I think the nineteenth piece of legislation the US
Speaker 1: Congress ever passed was to establish the Lighthouse Board. Uh,
Speaker 1: the U S Lighthouse Establishment initially is what it was called.
Speaker 1: And you know, socialist program. He said that the federal
Speaker 1: the federality is going to run this thing, uh and
Speaker 1: in charge now. And you know what, things um went downhill? Yeah, improved,
Speaker 1: proved everyone who's critical big government, right. Yeah, But there
Speaker 1: were a lot of lighthouses at the time. By nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: we had about a thousand lighthouses well, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred government had reformed its reputation, Like seriously, the world
Speaker 1: ground for the mid nineteenth century, the US governed, the
Speaker 1: US lighthouse system was second rate at best. They just
Speaker 1: had a terrible reputation. And I guess it sounds like
Speaker 1: they got rid of Stephen Pleasant, whose name is basically
Speaker 1: mud these days, and the quality went up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's when they established the Lighthouse Board, which is I
Speaker 1: think what you were thinking to shape things up. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two, they said let's get some for now
Speaker 1: lenses for all these lighthouses. Finally, Yeah, we can be
Speaker 1: like the rest of the world pleasant stead. Uh. Did
Speaker 1: you know the Statue of Liberty was a lighthouse. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I knew it, but when I've read it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, yeah, but I don't know if it
Speaker 1: unlocked some memory or if I'm just like that's just
Speaker 1: too obvious. Yeah. I was like, surely I knew that, right, right,
Speaker 1: that was it. For fifteen years it was a lighthouse
Speaker 1: in New York Harbor, which is pretty neat. And then
Speaker 1: by nineteen thirty, when electricity was effective and rampant, UM,
Speaker 1: you didn't need these fires burning or candles burning or
Speaker 1: whale blubber. No, but there were a lot of lighthouses
Speaker 1: where that were on like islands or on offshore like
Speaker 1: ledges like Minnow's Ledge or Eddie Stone in England. UM
Speaker 1: that were just like the technology to run electricity out
Speaker 1: there just was not around. UM. So they were still
Speaker 1: using oil of various types to to fuel these things
Speaker 1: well into the twentieth century, into the sixties, UM easily Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were um still had people working there, um
Speaker 1: living in the lighthouse or on the property. Uh. Into
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, it was definitely more rare, but um
Speaker 1: and night. Uh. That's when the Coast Guard brought about
Speaker 1: their lighthouse automation and modernization program, and that pretty much
Speaker 1: dwindled by the end of that decade. It dwindled it
Speaker 1: down to sixty that still had people working there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty out of a thousand. Today, there's one in Boston,
Speaker 1: the Brewster Island, one little bruster, little Brewster Island was
Speaker 1: refusing him a big Brewster. Well, there might be one
Speaker 1: Brewster's Millions Island, little Brewster. That's right. It was the
Speaker 1: first one in the United States. Uh, seventeen sixteen was
Speaker 1: when it was built, and then that one was replaced
Speaker 1: in Sight three and it's the second oldest working one
Speaker 1: behind Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Is the right, and the
Speaker 1: person that lives there is basically living there as a
Speaker 1: tour guide, not necessarily like guiding boats into harbor, although
Speaker 1: they may do both. No, I think it's still working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well then I guess they do both. I saw modern
Speaker 1: marvels on lighthouses, and they interviewed one of the light
Speaker 1: keepers on Brewster Island, little Brewster Island, and he he
Speaker 1: was They showed him like polishing the glass and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's automated. I got delight itself. I see, I see,
Speaker 1: so they up keep into our guided right. Okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he's still I mean, he's providing a function there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not just show. Maybe I could That's what I
Speaker 1: could do. That think you should have heard that guy.
Speaker 1: He's like, I can't even begin to do it. But
Speaker 1: he was like a hardcore light keeper in Boston. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine, although I wouldn't be the best person,
Speaker 1: because Chuck silent lighthouse story isn't really You're just like
Speaker 1: you just sweep your arm in and turn out quietly.
Speaker 1: People ask questions, I just wrap them on the knuckles out.
Speaker 1: All right. I'm getting all excited thinking about the prospects
Speaker 1: of living in a lighthouse. So I'm gonna go do
Speaker 1: some push ups and we'll come back right after this. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: say that you did live your life as a lightkeeper,
Speaker 1: what would you what would it be like? Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: First of all, what's what's your family background? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: my dad was a fisherman. Probably actually my my great
Speaker 1: great grandfather was a fisherman. My grandfather was a lightkeeper.
Speaker 1: My dad was a son of a lightkeeper and the
Speaker 1: mom was Akeeper, pirate captain, pirate captain. Like, Gina Davis, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a good movie. She's awesome. Yeah she uh.
Speaker 1: Jesse Thorne interviewed her recently on his Bull's Eye show.
Speaker 1: She's just like the best, and they were all excited
Speaker 1: in the office. Everyone was like, oh, man, Gina Davis
Speaker 1: is the coolest she uh. Supposedly was known for bringing
Speaker 1: cookies to that she baked herself two interviews. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: a MENSA member. Yeah, I got a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: Julius Smith, who works at the maximun HQ and produces
Speaker 1: Judge Don Hodgman, said on her Facebook she was like,
Speaker 1: Gina Davis is like the coolest aunt of all cool aunts. Yes,
Speaker 1: she was in Beetle Juice. I mean like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: didn't get much cooler than that. She could she could
Speaker 1: just be a total jerk and she was still awesome
Speaker 1: and Beetle Juice. Um. So, anyway, hats off to Eugena Tavis.
Speaker 1: How'd that come up? I don't even remember now your
Speaker 1: mom was a pirate captain alright, Gina Davis? Was that
Speaker 1: a shout out to Cutthroat Island? I guess the movie.
Speaker 1: You're the one that said it. I guess. Yeah, was
Speaker 1: that cut Throat Island? Huh? Is it the name of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that bad pirate movie. I loved it. That
Speaker 1: wasn't bad. It got bad pressed, it wasn't bad. It's
Speaker 1: funny you like some of the most legendarily bad movies
Speaker 1: of all times. It wasn't that bad. As far as
Speaker 1: just like critics and you're like, yeah, man Ishtar, I've
Speaker 1: actually stayed away from his star. Also stayed away from
Speaker 1: Rock the Kasbo because I saw that it was basically
Speaker 1: an updated Ishtar. Did I even see that? I can't
Speaker 1: remember if I watched it one night Rock the Kasba, yeah,
Speaker 1: or if I wanted to and didn't like. That's how
Speaker 1: little of an impact it made. It's on Netflix. I
Speaker 1: think I actually did watch it, and it was just
Speaker 1: sort of like, yeah, not very good. Yeah, No, Ishtar
Speaker 1: is a pretty good code word to stay away from him.
Speaker 1: I never saw Ishtar. What else do I like? That
Speaker 1: was bad? It was supposedly bad. I mean, like, just
Speaker 1: have you have you seen cuts Rhode Island? Sure, it's terrible,
Speaker 1: it's not um all right. So we were talking about
Speaker 1: the lineage, what might get you into the light keeping business.
Speaker 1: We were being coy and role playing, but that is true. People.
Speaker 1: It's a family business for the most part. Uh your
Speaker 1: parents or your father might have done it, or you
Speaker 1: come from a long line of uh seafaring types. At
Speaker 1: the very least you feel close to the sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if you want to spend your time out there
Speaker 1: on a rocky point overlooking the waves all day long,
Speaker 1: like you probably didn't come from Kansas to do so,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, there they have wheat watchers. They just
Speaker 1: sit in the tower and watch the wheat and the
Speaker 1: flatness and they stand up all of a sudden they're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a wheat missing. There's a wheat. Um.
Speaker 1: One thing we keep saying is men. That's because most
Speaker 1: of the lighthousekeepers were men, but not all. No, not all,
Speaker 1: and not all of them were necessarily white men either.
Speaker 1: There were some very famous legendary African American lightkeepers and
Speaker 1: um light life savers as well. Surfmen is what they
Speaker 1: were called to because supposedly you're just there to provide
Speaker 1: light and signal, but when the s hits the f right. UM,
Speaker 1: I think you can say a fan fan when the
Speaker 1: essets a fan. Brave lightkeepers were known to go out
Speaker 1: there and provide rescue. Yeah. Um, and one of them
Speaker 1: was a woman named Ida Lewis, actually American hero. She
Speaker 1: grew up on Lime Rock Island, uh, near Newport Rhode
Speaker 1: Island in Newport Harbor, and her dad was a lightkeeper,
Speaker 1: so she followed that tradition and she actually started taking
Speaker 1: over the duties after her father had a stroke. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, she just became a lightkeeper, but a very
Speaker 1: famous one for her life saving skills. Rescued a dozen
Speaker 1: men over the years. No, actually eighteen affirmed. They think
Speaker 1: it's as high as twenty five. They're I'm gonna say dozens.
Speaker 1: She Uh, she rescued her last person at age sixty three. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She's quite a lady, that's but for the most part,
Speaker 1: and and she's not the only one who saved lives,
Speaker 1: like there were plenty out there that did. But it
Speaker 1: was not an expected role of a lightkeeper because the
Speaker 1: Coastguard had a life saver house usually nearby a lighthouse,
Speaker 1: because the lighthouse was there in the first place too,
Speaker 1: because there was a treacherous area, so it just makes
Speaker 1: sense to also put a life saving House there because
Speaker 1: even with the light the lighthouse itself, ship may still
Speaker 1: run the ground and there may be rescuing. And if
Speaker 1: you want to be thrilled, there's a really neat um
Speaker 1: article that's posted on this podcast page about the p
Speaker 1: Island Um life Saving House. It was, um. But by
Speaker 1: the way that pre Coastguard, we had the U S
Speaker 1: Life Saving Service, which is what that term comes from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they merged everything together under Roosevelt, and the
Speaker 1: the lighthouses and the life saving Service all came under
Speaker 1: the purview of the Coastguard. Right, we should do one
Speaker 1: on the Coastguard. Remember that married couple that were both Coastguards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that lobby dosts for many years until they gave up.
Speaker 1: We're still thinking about you guys, and we're still gonna
Speaker 1: do a Coastguard podcast eventually years and years later. Um. So,
Speaker 1: pre nine when they made the Coastguard is where you
Speaker 1: really can't find a whole lot of written history now
Speaker 1: while that has been lost to time and um they
Speaker 1: say here in this article that what we have now
Speaker 1: our stories from families that remain lower. Yeah. Lore, it's
Speaker 1: pretty neat Yeah, and then chuck, um, so if you're
Speaker 1: in a lighthouse, even as remote and cut off as
Speaker 1: they are, if you hated it, you would still be like,
Speaker 1: at least I'm not working on a light ship. Yes,
Speaker 1: So before they had booies like modern booies. Today there's
Speaker 1: there's booties out there. They're basically like floating lighthouses in
Speaker 1: areas that require some sort of warning but are just
Speaker 1: too far off land to build the lighthouse. They put
Speaker 1: booties out there. And today the booies are like sometimes
Speaker 1: something like forty feet in diameter. They're huge, massive things. Um.
Speaker 1: But before booies even they would use something called light ships.
Speaker 1: And it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a lighthouse
Speaker 1: on a ship and it's in a very remote area.
Speaker 1: You are out there for months at a time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just sail out and anchor down and live there
Speaker 1: right um, and the boats anchored all the time. You
Speaker 1: would have to like go to and from the boat
Speaker 1: to the to shore. Um. But while you're working there,
Speaker 1: it's just mind bogglingly awful. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: like insanity. Yeah, that would happen, like when the fog
Speaker 1: rolled in before the evan of foghorns, you would have
Speaker 1: to yank the bells rope the fog bell rope um
Speaker 1: every ten seconds, twenty four hours a day, for as
Speaker 1: long as the fog was around. Every ten seconds you
Speaker 1: had to ring about. That was your job, and if
Speaker 1: you didn't then you were risking the lives of anybody
Speaker 1: passing by in the area. So not cool, man, not
Speaker 1: cool at all. But the lightships, apparently we're just about
Speaker 1: as bad as it it got. As far as boredom, loneliness, isolation,
Speaker 1: hatred of bells, the lightship had it all. You hate bells.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I never worked on a lightship, but I'll
Speaker 1: bet they hated bells. You would hear that in your sleep.
Speaker 1: If you rang a bell every ten seconds for hours
Speaker 1: at a stretch, you're not going to get that out
Speaker 1: of your head. And even if you did, when you
Speaker 1: tried to go to sleep, one of the guys on
Speaker 1: the next ship would be out there ringing the bell anyway. So,
Speaker 1: dregy nuts, let's talk about some famous lighthouses. Well, we
Speaker 1: already talked about the the Pharos of alexandria Um, which
Speaker 1: is the oldest known lighthouse and at the time they
Speaker 1: contend might have been the tallest thing on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's super tall. Yeah, and it was masonry to the
Speaker 1: found it in underwater ocean. They found pieces of it
Speaker 1: and in Alexandria Harbor. I guess you mentioned Eddie Stone
Speaker 1: Light already in Plymouth, England, which is I guess that's
Speaker 1: where the fine gin comes from. Yeah, still hitting Plymouth
Speaker 1: up if anyone out there works for Plymouth. Oh man,
Speaker 1: it's such good gin. It's delicious. So is Leopold's Leopold Gin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's American gin really good, too good. That's that's my
Speaker 1: go to American gin. Nice, although I like most American gin's,
Speaker 1: but that's if you had st George. I love that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's three of them. One of them I do not
Speaker 1: care for it all really, but the other two I like.
Speaker 1: I'll bet it's the terror terr War. You don't like
Speaker 1: it's so got a weird taste, yeah, but love it.
Speaker 1: But its own thing, the fact that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: its own classification of gin like Old Tom or Jennifer
Speaker 1: or something like that. It should have its own thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like foot gin. I love that stuff. It's weird, dude,
Speaker 1: it's really good. You know what it's really good with?
Speaker 1: Have you ever had um fever tree bitter lemon. No,
Speaker 1: it's like a lemony lemon, limy, citrusy drink, but without
Speaker 1: much sweetness. Um that with the territory war gin and juice.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know, but it's it's knock your socks off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care for it. And you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: just go ahead and bring you my bottle because I've
Speaker 1: had like two drinks out of it, so I did
Speaker 1: wrap my head around. I will you just can't do it.
Speaker 1: I will email you tonight as a reminder, say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll bring in that st George. Thanks man. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, I am now on because you know,
Speaker 1: I drink the dirty martini, but I don't eat olives,
Speaker 1: which is a little weird, just like the juice. Yeah
Speaker 1: the brine, okay, um with a twist, it's a little different,
Speaker 1: I know that. And um, for years I would have
Speaker 1: empty jars of dry olives in my fridge and very
Speaker 1: little juice you know in there. Oh, I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Now. So now I bought dirty sue
Speaker 1: yeah olive juice, uh, and you can buy it in
Speaker 1: a bottle, and I bought a box of it, and
Speaker 1: it just sits in the cabinet my house, nice and
Speaker 1: so big. Shout out to Dirty Sue Olive brine, really dirty,
Speaker 1: is up your Martini? What's your gin that you used
Speaker 1: for this? Well? I mean I love Plymouth, I love
Speaker 1: Hendrix and our friends at Spring forty four. Gin dude
Speaker 1: sent us gin from a They said it's all about
Speaker 1: the water, and they have like the best water on earth.
Speaker 1: They made some old tom gin. Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 1: It is delicious like it it made. I love Martinez.
Speaker 1: Is it's um old tom gin. Uh um, marischino liqueur,
Speaker 1: not the cherry stuff, but like the real liquor, and
Speaker 1: then um some sweeter mouth. It's like probably the most
Speaker 1: perfect drink anyone's ever made. It's very old um that
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the best Martinez of overhead. That was good stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: for a while lately I've been stirring. I got a
Speaker 1: little martini picture or a cocktail picture to stir um.
Speaker 1: But I'm back to shaking now because I found out
Speaker 1: that bruising gin is a total myth. So James Bond
Speaker 1: wasn't cuckoo. No, you can't bruise gin. Yeah, that's all
Speaker 1: just garbage. Do you use orange bitters? In yours. No,
Speaker 1: really brightens it up, straight up dirty sue gin. I
Speaker 1: do use a little vermouth like I know that people
Speaker 1: don't like vermouth at all anymore. Really, Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: bartenders now don't use any vermouth. That's that's not a martini.
Speaker 1: Well agreed, that's a gin a child gin up with
Speaker 1: some um. Just the one in the green Italian bottle?
Speaker 1: Is that Dolan Blanc? Yeah, that's good stuff. But I
Speaker 1: also found out recently that that vermouth is a wine
Speaker 1: and you don't just keep it on your shelf for
Speaker 1: two years. Uh, you keep in the fridge for maybe
Speaker 1: a month. Yeah, I didn't know that. So I've been
Speaker 1: drinking this old old vermouth. You still can, It's not
Speaker 1: like you can't, but just for the best possible impact,
Speaker 1: you want to just get that small bottle. I learned
Speaker 1: that the hard way. I'm gonna start doing that. Man,
Speaker 1: we we should have our own cocktail show. We should
Speaker 1: because we've just talked. We talked about booze a lot.
Speaker 1: We don't need to. Let's drink about it. Has that
Speaker 1: covered a good friends that let's drink about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and thanks also to Ben who sent us um some
Speaker 1: ambler smooth ambler. Uh what was it called contradiction? That
Speaker 1: stuff is good too, that's right, man, booze talk on lighthouses.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Oh, I bet you there's a lot of
Speaker 1: boozeing that goes on at lighthouses to time. They're not
Speaker 1: making amazing drinks with St. George and bitter lemon. They're
Speaker 1: just drinking that stuff straight out of the deer skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Um, Where were we, Eddie Stone Lighthouse, Plymouth, England? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: this gut started. Um. This thing is. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a very rough area to have a lighthouse, and it
Speaker 1: seems like nature doesn't want a lighthouse there because over
Speaker 1: the years it has been knocked down and burned down
Speaker 1: many many times. This dude, basically um went out there
Speaker 1: by himself, Harry Harry or Henry Winstanley in sixteen sixty
Speaker 1: six six and just started building this wooden lighthouse out
Speaker 1: and these rocks off the coast of Plymouth. Himself got
Speaker 1: captured by a French pirate, released and lit the thing
Speaker 1: in and he actually died. He deconstructed it and rebuilt
Speaker 1: it and died in the second version of it. It
Speaker 1: got swept away with him inside but he was a
Speaker 1: pretty cool cat. That was seventeen o three. Then another
Speaker 1: one in seventeen o eight was built that burned down
Speaker 1: in seventeen fifty five. And then a guy named John Smeaton,
Speaker 1: he was an engineer. He built one that was built
Speaker 1: to last for a little while. He actually came up
Speaker 1: with what you think of as the modern lighthouse. It's
Speaker 1: stick at the bottom, tapers at the top, and then
Speaker 1: it flares out right below the lantern. And the reason
Speaker 1: most lighthouses flare out right below the lantern is when
Speaker 1: a wave comes up and the waves can get that big,
Speaker 1: it won't ride up into the lantern. It will be
Speaker 1: thrown back out to see when it hits the flare.
Speaker 1: It's a water guard. Pretty much interesting. I did not
Speaker 1: know that here's a smart dude. Um So that one
Speaker 1: lasted for a hundred and twenty three years, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as the Eddy Stone light is concerned,
Speaker 1: an eternity. But eventually, uh the Trinity House, which is
Speaker 1: England's version of the coast Guard of the lighthousehouse, they said, no,
Speaker 1: let's let's tear that thing down. It's this long, but
Speaker 1: we think it might not for much longer. But then
Speaker 1: they built another one. This one actually they used almost
Speaker 1: a jigsaw puzzle foundation. Yeah, so when a wave hits it,
Speaker 1: it actually compresses together and becomes stronger when a wave
Speaker 1: s kicking into it. So that was there for good, wonderful.
Speaker 1: We talked about Boston Light. There's also the Cape Hatteras
Speaker 1: on the outer banks of North Carolina, which is I
Speaker 1: believe the tallest one in the United States two feet
Speaker 1: and it's one of the most famous as well. It's
Speaker 1: the one with the black and white barber pole design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sixty three for our friends everywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: Did you know that one was in trouble The sea
Speaker 1: was encroaching upon it, and they got some money together.
Speaker 1: Congress did and moved it. Moved this lighthouse feet back
Speaker 1: inland over the course of twenty three days. They slowly
Speaker 1: moved it on tracks. It was pretty amazing. It was
Speaker 1: on that modern marbles one. It's like fitz CARLDO. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: I got a few more fast facts unless you have
Speaker 1: something else, No, I'm done. Uh. Six hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: lighthouses remaining in the US estimated out of that original
Speaker 1: thousand plus thirty seven states have lighthouses, just not Kansas.
Speaker 1: Michigan has the most, don't they have all the states?
Speaker 1: Undred and twenty in Michigan because of the Great Lakes,
Speaker 1: I would imagine makes sense. The East Coast says three one,
Speaker 1: West Coast only has ninety four. I guess there's just
Speaker 1: a lot more shipping and stuff. Huh, need to step
Speaker 1: it up West coast um and worldwide. Uh. We estimate
Speaker 1: seven more than seventeen thousand lighthouses in two d and
Speaker 1: fifty countries. M and the brightest one Oak Island in
Speaker 1: North Carolina, fourteen million candle power. You can see it
Speaker 1: twenty four miles. Great. Yeah, that's a lot. Fourteen million
Speaker 1: candles all burning. And what's pretty neat? It sounds like
Speaker 1: a new religion. The Candela's really a million is one
Speaker 1: lighting their candle and I think you just established it
Speaker 1: reciting the the candela's prayer. Nice. See we just started
Speaker 1: a religion. Yeah that easy? Well you did? I just
Speaker 1: bore a witness. That's all right. You can be my
Speaker 1: faithful assistant. Thanks can baptize you sure? Okay? Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to know more about lighthouses, you can type
Speaker 1: that word into the search part house too. Horse dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I talked about baptizing Chuck, it's time for
Speaker 1: listener man. Since you talked about baptizing Chuck, that must
Speaker 1: mean it's hey, guys. I recently discovered your podcast and
Speaker 1: immediately fell in love. I'm thirsty for knowledge. Find it
Speaker 1: quite impressive that you've become quasi experts. Not really, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm writing in to respond to the controlled burn episode.
Speaker 1: I used to work for my local county park system
Speaker 1: doing habitat and wildlife management, and controlled burns took up
Speaker 1: many days in the early spring for us. Our department
Speaker 1: only consist of about six to seven people, three of
Speaker 1: which were licensed burn bosses by the state. They make
Speaker 1: the burn plan, they light the fire, and basically coordinate
Speaker 1: and oversee the entire operation. I would make everybody call
Speaker 1: me burn boss totally. Um. Additionally, local fire departments volunteer
Speaker 1: personnel and sometimes equipment. Uh so they lend out their
Speaker 1: stuff which is nice, and people such as water trucks
Speaker 1: to assist. We also had quite a large number of
Speaker 1: park volunteers that go through our training and help on
Speaker 1: fire line. On the fire line as well, that would
Speaker 1: be neat. I would do that, yeah, like a Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's different for each state and agency um,
Speaker 1: but our burn bosses go through training put on by
Speaker 1: the state in order to get certified. I can't recall
Speaker 1: this is mentioned, but another advantage of controlled burns is
Speaker 1: that the charred earth absorbed light because it's black in color,
Speaker 1: more than it normally would, causing the soil to heat
Speaker 1: more quickly and thus early germination for the desired species.
Speaker 1: I had not considered that we didn't mention that good
Speaker 1: factoid there. Thanks for satisfying my wondering mind, Tracy comp
Speaker 1: and since that, Ohio, thanks a lot, Tracy. We appreciate that.
Speaker 1: We always love to hear from people who know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about. Burn Boss Colma. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, you can tweet to us
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast or hang out with
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