35: Ep. 34 - Part 1 - John St. Augustine | From Near-Death to New Beginnings

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Hey, us too. So join us on Lexicon Valley to tru over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English, plus some wisecracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts. Welcome to the Drop the Needle podcast, your backstage pass to the corporate jungle. I'm your host, Jim Allstot. And here, industry titans step up to the mic sharing their epic journeys. We're hitting the high notes and the low notes of their careers, creating a symphony of success. This isn't just another interview show. It's where truth bombs are dropped and secrets are revealed. So grab your conductor's baton because who knows? This just might help you compose the next huge hit of your career. Are you ready? Let's go. That's right. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Drop the Needle podcast. I'm your host, Jim Allstot, and I'm so happy you all decided to join us. We have an extraordinary guest on our show today. This gentleman is a veteran Ted Talks speaker, a Chicago radio legend often referred to as the voice of America, a producer and host of the Oprah Winfrey radio network, a podcast pioneer, an amazing author, his books, Living an Uncommon Life, Every Moment Matters, Phenomena, and a co-writer of Iron Man with Randy Hundley, Cubs legend, for those of you who know the Chicago Cubs, and he was a catcher, inspirational speaker, survivor of three near death experiences, and someone who clearly knows how to grab life by the horns. Please welcome a fellow ex-knuckle-dragger, Mr. John St. Augustine. Welcome, John. Jim, it's great to be with you. And even when I hear the short version of my bio, it sounds like a eulogy at this point. And then he did this, and then there was this. And yeah, it's all true. And now I know why I need an app every day. I'm sure. Oh, man, what didn't I do? That's awesome. So we were talking a little bit before we started the show here. And John's experiences are, I would say, span many people's lifetimes. And there's no way we can possibly touch on everything, which is totally fine, because at the end of the show, we're going to direct people on how they can get your books, go to your podcasts, and of course, book you as a speaker, which is very cool. And so can we start everything off with the younger you, the kid growing up on the Northwest side of Chicago? Yeah, you know, so fortunate to be a Chicagoan. I think that there is that whole broad shoulders thing is no bullshit. It's the real deal. I've heard people talk about New York as a place where people talk. LA's a place where people party in Chicago. We work. And that work ethic has always been a part of my life. It comes from my parents who both worked very hard. My dad was a banker. And my mom worked part-time back in the 60s and 70s, just finding her way in things. And I grew up in Idyllic in so many different ways. We lived on the Northwest side near the Chicago River in my first few years, my grandmother. And then we moved to the house on Burto Avenue, which my dad was his castle at the time for many, many years. And it was this big old Victorian. And it was literally only about a half a block from Belding Grammar School, which had this huge park connected to it, a playground. And that was the hub of activity. I still have friends from those days. And so it was so great. In the wintertime, we'd be ice skating in the fall. We're playing football. Summer was all about softball. And to have that as like your whole universe was so formative to me. The friendships I had, the things I learned, the way I grew up there was just in some ways kind of like Walton's mountain to me. It was just so deep in me. And it's never left me. It looks very different back there now. I go back every now and again. And the playground's totally gone. It's all very much non-threatening. And nobody can get hurt. And we don't want to need lawsuits to settle with that. Of course, it's no fun either. Right. But all the time, they did everything. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's no litigation going to be taking place at all. And yet on the other side, there was some difficulty. My mom was an alcoholic. My dad was an enabler. It was very hard for me to rectify the two. On one hand, during the day, we'd live this life of my dad and mom, very successful people, big house. I played in sports, things like that. And then at night, it would often get very difficult. And so there was this kind of two sides of the same coin thing going on for me. And one of the greatest challenges I had early on was learning, which came to fruition much later in my life, but learning that first I thought this was my fault. Somehow that I had done something wrong that my mom was this way. It took years for me to get out of that. And what happened early on is I lied about everything to take away focus from how my parents lived. And everybody knew. The whole neighborhood knew. But we all knew about each other's parents. I had a friend of mine whose mom and dad met in the war, and they came here. She was Japanese. He was Swedish. And of course, that was a thing. We knew the Catholic family had 12 kids, and that was their thing. Everybody had their thing. There wasn't a better or worse here. But for me, it was difficult. And so I would do whatever I could to deflect, I think, the focus from what was going on there. And I became much more outspoken, got a little angry, a lot of different things. And some of my best fights were the ones I had early on when somebody would mouth off about my mom. Yeah. Nobody talks about my mama life. Of course not. We're going to talk about your mom, not my mom. That's right. Right. So that's how it was in grammar school. And then I went to high school. I could walk there. And that's where I think, obviously, things open up for people. And for me, I was no exception. I was really good athlete back in the day. I tried out for football right away, played baseball, that type of stuff. And my senior year was co-captain of the football team now in Chicago back in the 70s. That's a big, fricking deal. This was powerhouse football. This was no, there was no write-offs here. So I went to Scherz High School. Our arch rival was Lane Tech right down the road. Wow. That's a big school. And everybody was, this was men against men stuff back in the day. So to have that, to be put in that position with another guy named Tim, who I'm still in Friendswood to this day, as co-captains, I took that as a great responsibility. And I think in some ways, it tainted me for life, Jim, because I've never, since that time, not felt comfortable standing in front of a bunch of people, telling them exactly what I thought about them. And when you're in the football field, as you know, somebody's got to stand up front and just lay it out. There's nowhere to hide. So in some ways, that's really what set the tone, I think, for me. When it comes to doing the work that I do now, there are pieces of me that were formed back then that to this day, it's just like, every day's football practice for me. And every day's a game. And how do I go about this? And the drills we had and the things that you do to get prepared is the discipline that carried over when I played college football. And I got to play college football at Northeast Noling University, which we're going to talk about a little bit. And then I went on to play semi-pro football for eight years too long. Oh, wow. We call it semi-parole because most of the guys were probably out of work release, you know? Oh my god, yeah. But it was a lot of head banging and stuff like that. So those formative years that I grew up on the Northwest side of the city, it made me in so many ways the man that I am today. And I am really, really good with that. That's awesome. Out of curiosity, what semi-pro team did you play for? They were called the Chicago Panthers. I don't know if they even exist anymore. They were around for about 10, 12 years. And it was a bunch of guys that I knew from high school. And I had already gone in the service and come out. I thought, hey, here's a good idea. Let's play football again while you're in your mid-20s. You should have been playing five years earlier. I played last 30 years old, had a great time. And every now and again, I see those guys as well. So the knuckle dragging kind of stays intact if you get my drift. I do. And it's funny. So the eight years, I have a friend who played semi-pro. He played for Will County Buccaneers. And he played for the Chicago Lawman. And he said, hey, you should come out and play. And I said, you know what? I'm scheduled to get knee replacement in the spring. And he goes, hey, it doesn't matter then. It's going to replace me as well. Do it. That's exactly the mentality, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, and I was thinking about it. And I ran it by my wife and she's like, are you fucking crazy? I know, man. I tell you. Yes. The answer is yes. I am crazy and really did consider it for a while. And then it was just like, no. But yeah. And not maybe not high school as much. And I know not college. College was more like an honor to do this. I was heavily recruited. Like you, I hurt my knee. And it was in my senior year of high school. And nobody wants you when you're damaged good. So I was able to play at a smaller college, but played nonetheless. And I got a full scholarship. Then I didn't go to class. And I drank beer and hung out with the cheerleaders. And so I got a partial scholarship. And I had to go to work. Oh my gosh. Imagine that. But Semi-Pro, I think now as I look back at it these days, was really kind of like North Dallas 40 meets the longest yard. It really, really was. And it's a great place to work out your anger. You can just beat the living snot out of people legally, for the most part, and get rid of that stuff. So a lot of the stuff I had growing up, the anger issues that really held me back, the football field was a place to get rid of that. You know what? And some people may think that that's not a good thing. But I think that that's the best place, if you're going to do that. You would rather do it out there between the lanes versus somewhere else where you can really get in trouble. Yeah, I remember hearing Lyle Alzado, the late great defense event for the Raiders. And he said, football is the only place that I could do exactly what I want to do, create the mayhem I want to create, get paid for it, not go to jail. Works for him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and many others. Yeah, yeah. Jack Lambert was probably the same. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Cut from the same cloth. So you let's talk a little bit about then. I know we talk on the show about near death experiences and things like that. I'd like if you're OK with this, talking about your first of multiple near death experiences. Yeah, so I mentioned earlier about having to work the half of my scholarship off. And so I can't remember how many hours I had to take to do this. But anyway, I found a job at a local Osco drug store to pay up my half. We're talking in the 70s, Jim, so it wasn't that expensive. But I had basically given up a full scholarship to party. And now I got to pay my half, which would probably, for the year, was about $500. But anyway, you're making what back then? $2.12 an hour. So I'm working part-time doing whatever. And on January 19, 1978, to never forget the date, I was working on a Friday night at this Osco drug. And I was stock guy and inventory guy and all that different thing. They had this bailing machine in the back of the store. It's what you see in these when you go to the supermarket out in the parking lot. They put the boxes in, they get smashed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then they get turned into like a big bail of, hey, made out of cardboard. So this bailing machine had some sort of mechanical problem. And it was shorting itself out. And there was a fuse box on the inside back of it. And we were told to open it up and just press the inside button. Then everything would be OK. That's great. So it's almost 10 o'clock on that January 19 to 78. I am literally squeezed behind this giant machine. The thing had to be nine feet high. It's probably six feet wide. It's got this huge door and it's made out of iron. And I wedged myself between the machine and the wall to reach around the back to press the button. And at the same time, I'm just throwing back some cardboard in the machine, closed it with my left hand. So my left hand's on the door. My back is against the wall. My forehead basically is up against this machine. And I reach around to press it. And that's the last thing I remember. Next thing I know, all I heard was a loud humming sound and this awful smell. And then next thing I remember after that is hearing in my head, you're dead. No. OK, this is it. This is how it ends for me. I was 19 years old, fairly bulletproof at the time I thought. And then that was it. I blacked out. When I came back, there was a guy sitting in my chest. And his name was Mike. He was the pharmacist. He had been a medic in Vietnam. So this was 1979. So he'd only been within the last decade. He had been a Vietnam medic. And so he was a pharmacist at this point. And he stayed late coincidentally, happened to stay late on the Friday. Mike never stayed late on Fridays. But this Friday, he was there. And I woke up and this guy's beating on my chest, reviving me. And I thought, what the hell's going on here? And there's this whole group of girls standing around looking me crying their eyes out. It smells horrible. And I don't know what happened. And next thing I know, the back doors come flying open. And here comes Chicago Fire Department Truck 32. Still remember the number of the truck? They just, quote, happened to be driving by. Oh, wow. When it happened, they pulled in. Doors come flying open. They start cutting my shirt open. I'm pissed because it's the shirt my grandmother gave me. You can't cut Grammins shirt. And it was my favorite shirt. Exactly, exactly. So all that took place. And they hooked up the heart monitors to my chest. And I thought they're going to jump me. You know, and the guys, yeah, the guys like, no, you've had enough of that. So they wouldn't let me look at my hand, which was totally mangled. My crucifix that I wore at the time burned into my chest. All the eyelids came out of my shoes. If you remember a Jurassic Park where that kid gets fried in the fence and goes flying, his ears are all, my ears look like that. They were all burned up. And I couldn't remember, I didn't have any idea what happened to me except this overwhelming stench and hearing that I was dead. And half my right hand was stuck on the wall behind the machine. So half meeting the flesh, my hand didn't come flying off, but the flesh was all stuck up on the wall. It just literally blew off my hand. So they wrapped it up. They get me in there. They take me to the hospital. Again, this is all within 10 minutes of trying to just go home for the night. And we get there. We're at the hospital. Snapshots of laying there, my arm being tended to with some sort of kind of like a curtain in front of it. So I couldn't see it. But what I could see was over the curtain to the doctor, had that face mask down the plastic shield. I could see my hand in the reflection. I thought, who the F's hand is that? It's like the creature from the Black Lagoon's hand. What is that mangled thing? And they were putting this ice solution on it, to cool it down and what have you. And I had second and third degree burns all over my hands, my neck, my back, all over my body. And they had calls to call my parents. And my dad comes in, I could hear them talking in the next room and I'm in and out of stuff. My dad basically is convincing the doctor not to cut my fingers off. Because they actually had fused together. It's like a candle of wax. Yeah, waxed candle, so it melts. And then it comes back and it cools and they were stuck together. And to this day, if you examine my right hand, you can see where part of my ring finger used to be. And it's now in my pinky and vice versa where the bone's at. And it's just a delightful thing. And my dad convinces this guy that somehow I'm this prodigy of a piano player. I shit you not. I thought the old man is a great poker player. And here he is. He's convincing this guy to not cut my fingers off. We put it, and I know if you just give it time. So the guy listened to him. He did not cut my fingers off. They would have taken my pinky, my ring finger and my thumb off because they were the worst. So next thing I know, I'm upstairs at Swedish Covenant Hospital. And I don't know how this happened. My hand is being held upright. Look like a beehive hanging there. It smelled horrible. And it was just, how does this happen to me? And all I knew is that I was gone and back. I don't know how it happened, how long that took. I have no clue. But once they figured out some of the schematics afterwards, I was on for about 15 to 20 seconds, 5,500 volts going through me. And that should off any, yeah, I should not be here. I mean, I get that now I got it. But back then I thought, holy shit, now what? So I stayed in the hostel for about two or three weeks and there was this little thing started taking place to let me know it was gonna be okay in the long run. And one of them was a, it was fascinating. Couple of weeks in, this woman walks into my room. She's dressed as a nurse and I recognize her. And a year before she had been a manager of our football team in high school. And I thought, this is, how does this happen? Her name was Lori. She was a nutritionist on staff. She heard I was there. She came up to see me and she came up when they were changing the bandages on my hand, which was pretty nasty. You could literally look through my thumb like it was a sight on a gun. There was a hole straight through it. And they're changing the bandages and it was a very pretty nurse. I gotta tell you, it was bad, but she made it easier. She's cleaning me and stuff like that. And so Lori said she'd come back and check on me. So for the next week or so, she would come and check. And I would inevitably, because of the way timing worked out, somebody'd be changing my bandages and checking my neck and all the stuff that was going on. And at one point she said to me something that has stayed with me ever since that. She said, until you take ownership of the pain, you will never heal. And I thought, wait, what? What does that mean? Well, of course she was at that time focused on my hand, but that simple utterance by Lori so many years ago has played out in every aspect of my life. Until you take ownership of the pain in your life, you will never heal from it, no matter what it is. And I'm still in touch with her. She vaguely remembers all that. I was very vivid to me, but you don't just drop something like that in my lap and then get away with it for the rest of your life. So it was very profound what she said. And they were really concerned about my heart rate more than the burns. The burns will heal over time, but the heart rate was a problem and then they finally got it managed. And a month to the day I got back home, I was with my parents, and it was a Friday night. And at 10 o'clock I had this overwhelming pins and needles feeling on me. I can't quite explain it. And I turned around and looked at it, it was the exact same time it was a month earlier when this took place. Oh, wow. And ever since then, I call it kind of like Spider-Man's Spider Sense. This comes on me and has given me opportunities to hear, see, touch, feel, smell, travel, do whatever, connect with people. I don't think I normally would. Something was rewired in me. And it's gotten less over time, but all the books I've written, somewhere that's part of it. I'm not really supposed to be doing what I'm doing, Jim, but don't tell anybody, right? So the rewiring that took place back that I'm convinced has changed me in ways that I never would have changed any other way. That's incredible. And eventually, you know, the skin did heal, they did some skin grafts and things. And that Spidey Sense thing, for lack of a better term, shows up when it's supposed to. It did just a couple of days ago when I get an overwhelming nudge to do something. I try to ignore it. My conscious self says, now they're busy, now you're busy, whatever. And then I can't ignore it. And just a couple of days ago, I was able to reconnect with a guy that hired me in one of my first jobs 50 years ago. Holy cow. And we had breakfast. And what was going on in his life, all he needed to do was have somebody listen. His wife had just passed away a couple of years ago. He was in a very difficult spot. And he's 10 years older than me, and we just sat there. And here's this guy who was a devout Christian who his faith has shattered, crying at breakfast at a cafe. And he's apologizing. And I'm saying, this is supposed to be how it is. I'm here just to be with you, to witness this. So that nudge comes directly from what happened when I was 19, way back in 1978. That's incredible. I mean, it really is. Always interesting, that's for sure. 100%. And you know what's also interesting is that we've probably had those nudges in our lifetimes before something that dramatic happened. No question, all the time. All the time. But we don't listen to it, right? Correct, correct. And I'm guilty of that on a regular basis. Well, no one trains you to do this. There's no class I took says nudge. Right. There's no nudge class. And so this stuff, in my experience, observation and my opinion has been, I have this thought. And it's my thought, so I get to keep it, that we are all cut from the same cloth, but just a little couple of variations here and there. We all have the same wiring diagrams. We all just have different contact points. So what my life has been and how it was for me to kind of get my shit in one sock had to go just like it as I'm like you, I'm kind of bulletproof and I'm stubborn and all those things that go along with that. So I had to be literally blown up to wake up the first time. That had to happen. And that was just the first one. Then it's like, okay, then you kind of, when you hit the snooze button, you go back to sleep. And the life is constantly setting off alarms for us and we hit the snooze button. After a while, it gets further and further apart. And I think it's like, it's all about free will. You know, I could have ignored all that afterwards, but then I couldn't. There was something inside me that says, don't ignore what's starting to take place. And look, I'm 19 years old and I'm trying to live my life just like I would back then and do the things that are fun and girls and cars and this and this and this. Right. But over time, that inner voice started to override my outer voice and it changed everything. So I'm curious to know at what point did you decide, okay, I'm going to start listening to this voice or these nudges. Did something happen that you were going to say, okay, this is enough, enough of getting hit in the head with the two by four. I've got to start listening. Well, that would have been the second one. So in between being in 1978, it wasn't until 1986 when the second one took place. In between then I just, I didn't, was the same guy. There was a couple of things here and there. I thought, that's pretty cool. But then you go back, listen, they gave me enough money to buy a 69 Camaro for the accident. What do I give a shit? You could blow me up every week. I don't care. Whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, 69 is each 28. Come on. So, you know, I remember sitting at the OSHA hearing and my dad had hired a lawyer and this guy's talking about all this stuff and he's like, whatever you do, don't talk, don't tell them anything. Well, I didn't listen. And I said, listen, just give me five grand and we're good. And my lawyer's like, my lawyer's like, he's scarred for life. I'm like, just give me five grand. Let's get the hell out of here. So I paid like 2,500 bucks for the car. I had a big party. Yeah, I was alive. I was 19. The drug store to their credit, which probably was smart move on their part at the time. You know, they gave me, it's a drug store. So they gave me all the stuff I needed to clean my wounds and do that was all free. And here you want a television, here's this, you know, whatever you want. A band-aids for life. What else do you want at that time? I care. You got a liquor section. Come on, load me up. That's right. So it wasn't until in 1986 when the second one took place. I'd gotten married in May of that year. And three weeks after our wedding, we decided to go out and pick up our wedding pictures in Schomburg, which is the suburb of Chicago. And I was working at that time for the village of Schomburg. I had already gone through the service. I was in the Coast Guard Aviation from 1980 to 84, served honorably and proudly and still really a big part of my life. And I did reserves for a couple of years, but in 86, I was able to get a job in Schomburg as a heavy equipment operator. I thought I'm set for life. Got my name over my pocket. I get a step increase every year. I got insurance. I could play saw. I mean, it's this great. So we got our, we got to get our wedding pictures. And I was working four days a week out there at the time. And I thought, well, I'll just pick them up. And my wife at the time said, well, let's just go get them. So we did. And it was a Monday night. I was off that day and we drove out, looked at the pictures. We had a great wedding. It was a blowout, fantastic, wonderful. We get the pictures, we're driving back. And we get to a T intersection, which is at Schomburg and Meacham Road, for anybody listening, the Greater Chicago area. At that time, it was a T intersection. Now you can just drive straight through. But anyway, I stopped at the light. I'm heading east and north and south traffic is going to do another thing. And then they get a red light. And we get arrows to go left and right. So all traffic stopped. I'm starting to make a left hand turn. All of a sudden, next thing I know, explosion. A guy in a 78 Lincoln ran the red light, blasted us broadside, drunk driver. And I had luckily turned the wheel just slightly to make the turn. We were in a 1983 Firebird versus a Lincoln. Oh. Yeah. And we lost. And so this guy blew up the car. He goes right through the car, spins around. All hell breaks loose. My wife at the time, I'll remember the door flying open and seeing our wedding pictures that we were so proud to pick up strewn out on the street. And it's just all hell breaks loose. And my hand, my right hand, had loosened off the steering wheel. Went right through the front windshield. And then cut the main artery in my hand. And I was watching this blood. Like a fountain. I thought, well, isn't that interesting? My first thought was, I thought these windows are just supposed to break into little pieces. And of course, that punched the hole right through it. My knees went up through the dashboard, pushed the steering wheel up, and it was just a mess. And the car had crumbled around me. Now at the time, I was still playing semi pro. And so I was in really, really good shape. I was 250 pounds. I could bench press a Volkswagen. And if this guy would have hit us maybe a foot further towards the engine, I might not be here. But he hit us at the crease. So the car curved and bent. Gotcha. But I didn't fit very well in this little, tiny, compact thing, right? Yeah. And this woman, just like Mike years earlier, comes walking over to the car and he was Cassie White. I'll never forget her. She was a nurse at a nearby hospital, getting off work, saw the whole thing, runs over, stands and puts her finger and stops bleeding on my hand and stood there until the paramedics showed up. And she said, I think you're not going to die. And that's the last thing. I think you're not going to die. And that's the last thing I remember. And I remember then hearing them, I cut in the car and put down heart monitors. I had no heartbeat. And she's still holding it. And I literally, Jim, could see it all from above. Like, well, here's a movie of John getting blown up in a car. I could smell everything. I could see everything. It was like for 10 miles around, I knew everything that was going on. It was so freaky weird. And yet in my left ear, I hear them guys that I played softball with and worked with, the fire department like that. I could hear them crying because they knew who was in there. We got to get them out. So the sawing's going on. And they finally get the door open a little bit. They covered me up with this rubber thing. And so I don't get sparks on me and stuff like that. My wife had gotten out of the car. I hear her screaming at the top of her lungs. And it was a shit show. And all of a sudden, right back in my body, can't see anything anymore, can't hear anything more, just in the bag that they had covered me up with. They finally get the door off. They start pulling me out. I literally stood up. And I announced that I'm going to walk home. It's like 10, 12 miles. I'm going to walk to the house. I'll see you there. And of course, it's all adrenaline running me. And they grab my hand and they wrap it up. And coincidentally or incidentally, it's my right hand again. It's the same hand that got blown up years earlier. And so we get down and they take me to the hospital and the whole thing. And they find outside of my hand, nothing physically wrong with me, which was astonishing. And being young, being in shape, the right angle, the whole thing, very, very fortunate. But I also sure as shit wasn't going to tell anybody at the hospital. Well, at one point, I knew everything was going on for 10 miles. And yeah, right. So let's lock them up. Right. Exactly. That came a little later. But so it was after that was the big thing. Like this was an added level of what's going on here. How is that possible? Listen, like you, I'm a Chicago guy. We don't put ketchup on a hot dog. You know, pretty cut and dried. This is way out of my comfort zone, all this stuff that's going on. And I don't know what to do with it. So we get home. I have to take time off work. And I'm going to just fast forward about a month and a half to when they were going to do the court case for this guy who left the scene of the accident. He was a drunk driver, left the scene of the accident, court date set, all kind of thing. He left the scene of the. Yeah, he left the scene of the accident. Come to find out he's done this four or five times, never been convicted. He always walks. Jesus. So I've been touched with the prosecuting attorney. He says, listen, you just need this guy to, to plead guilty of, you know, doing this and you can sue the shit out of civilly. He owns like six or eight dry cleaners. So, okay. So I go to court. I sit there all day with a tie on. It's 90 degrees out. We get to almost the end of the day. And here comes this guy in with his attorney. I'm sitting in the gallery just waiting. No attorney, no nothing. And the judge says next guy stands up. He says, did you run a red light and cause this accident? He goes, yes. Finds $25 next case. Wait, what? That's when the knuckles started dragging around. And I just thought, how this is the most unbelievable injustice. We're almost killed in this thing. This guy's had this done before and he gets a $25 fine next case. That's nuts. So I went up to the prosecuting attorney. And he's like, it's all right. It's in the books. He's pled guilty. We'll be in touch fine. So I go home that day. And that night at midnight after sleeping for a couple hours, I woke up screaming, holy hell in my sleep, scared the shit out of my wife at the time, as you can imagine. And I remember walking into our bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror. And I didn't recognize who I was. I had no, I did not recognize whoever was inside me was not the same guy that I was looking at. It was very, very strange. So she called her parents who called the cops, who thought I was on steroids or something. They call an ambulance. They come to get me to calm down. They put me in the back of the ambulance in handcuffs, which is a smart move, not really. They take me to the local hospital. And the wheels really started coming off. And I was sitting there in a waiting room with this guy. Poor guy was just an overnight security guy. And I literally was taking the sides off the bed and pretzeling him with, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna kill everybody. You know, that's kind of thing. Probably not the best thing to say at the time, but that's what was coming out of me. That ended me up in Sheridan Road Hospital, which is the place where you don't come out from sometimes. And it's a mental institution. I don't even know it's still there. And they put me in this room and another one of these, now it's funny, but it wasn't at the time. They put me in the room, take my shoes away, and they take my belt away and all such stuff. And they put me in a room with a guy who looks totally normal. Until he starts talking to the chair in the room like it's a dog. And I thought, what the, what? I'm the guy that got hit here. And the other guy's probably at a bar somewhere. So the next day they put me in this room for observation. They quickly figure out that I probably don't belong there. There's something else going on. And you talk about that hearing voices thing. They take me from my room upstairs to start meeting the psychiatrist. And there's these two, looks like offensive tackles for the Chicago Bear, these two huge guys. They have a hand on each shoulder of mine. And they said, before we take you up, I have to ask you to hear voices. And I want, of course, I wanted to go, oh yeah, don't you? I mean, come on. Freak a mother. I know. And I thought if I had a smart ass here, I'd probably not get out for a while. So I of course know. And in the long and short of it was, I started to learn what post-traumatic stress does to somebody. That this was a force that hit me that I could do nothing about. My response and reaction was this overloaded central nervous system that didn't know what to do with itself. And it had broken parts of me off that needed to be reattached over time. And it was in that space, when they first started saying, well, just take this Xanax, you'll feel better. Well, that's not gonna happen. That doesn't fix anything. Right. And I started to think about the mind-body connection. And by that point, once I got out of there, I had to move from the apartment where we were in and this took place. I couldn't walk in the door, found a new apartment, I found a job where I could really put my talents to use. I was a bouncer at a hotel overnight and a security guy. And I could walk, literally, I could not sleep at night. I would walk all night. I couldn't sleep. I was afraid to go to sleep. And so we did this routine for quite a while. And when I had my time off for a year, I would take the top mattress off our bed, put it in the living room and put on back to the future. It's the only way I could go to sleep every night. My wife at the time would say, I would watch your carotid artery in your neck just pulse, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And then I'd have to wake you up to make sure nothing happened. For a year, we did this. So it was on one of those nights when I was taking the rounds and picking up menus and stuff, I found a book left over in a room and the book was called The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Pack. And I read that book and everything started to shift. Like, there's something going on here. You're not paying it. You're paying attention to the big picture, but you're missing what's really behind all this. And that was kind of the beginning of starting to figure out that there's something going on here that is far bigger than me. I'm being called to something. This is happening for me, not to me, which is a huge shift in mentality. Oh yeah. And that's when things started to even get more interesting as life went on. So that, I'm gonna ask you to time warp again because that kind of leads me to, I'm gonna fast forward a couple of questions, but it's your move that you make. Oh boy. And having, so just so everybody knows, I've, and I say read, but I've listened to John's books. And by the way, he narrates his books. So if you wanna pick them up on Audible, do so, because it's just fantastic. My favorite way to listen to any book is to have the author read it because then you get the true essence of what's going on, in my opinion. So I'd like to fast forward because I know that there was a move up to the UP. And you can definitely please fill in some of that in between there, maybe the why, to get to that, you know, how type of situation if you don't mind. Absolutely, I appreciate you asking that because it was a pivotal time for sure. Once I was at the hotel and I quit that job when a guy took a gun out and was arguing over his bill which I could care less, that was the end of my job there. And I went in, I got a job at the Chicago Health Club which has worked out well as a trainer. So I was doing that. And at the same time, when we had moved from that one apartment to the next department, we were close to a forest preserve. It's still, what I'm getting at is still there. So it's for people listening, you'd be able to actually go there if you like. And one night, I was sitting, getting ready to go to work or do whatever. And I could literally feel being called to this nature area, this preserve. And so I did, and I walked over there in the ceiling and this and that, and I kind of keep going. So I actually kind of, and this is a forest preserve in Chicago, it's not like it's hidden or anything. And I walked in and I made a left turn and I was going south and I came upon this headstone, this marker of a man named Alexander Robinson, Chichi Pinque, who was a chief, who was buried there with members of his family. And I never knew anything about this guy. I thought, oh my God, I have this great discovery. It turns out you could park like, right there and walk in. But for me, I had to walk, which I found out later was a traditional way through the woods and make my way there. And so I sat there and I was dumbfounded about this. Why would I be called to this place? What the hell do I care? And not long after that, and I would go there quite often and sit and have lunch, just ponder things and just watch the birds and the deer and stuff. And there was this huge monument there, this marker. And so not long after that, when I was at the health club, I had a client hire me, she had back problems. A lot of people wouldn't work, touch her, but I've worked with people with injuries so we could do this. And maybe five or six sessions and she says, I have to tell you that I'm abilities that most people don't have. And I said, I can't wait to hear what those are. You're right. Yeah, I'm married, thanks. She says, I can hear things and see things most people can. Okay. And she said, so the next time you go to that place where you go, I want to go with you. I told, my wife was the only person who I went there. They didn't know each other. And I said, okay. So begrudgingly, I told her when I was going to go, I would meet her there. And this was in the fall of whatever year it was. This would have probably been, oh boy, late 80s, I guess, 80, 80, 90, somewhere there. And in the meantime, I had this Native American thing had been building up in me from somewhere. And I'd been around a couple of people and they'd give me a couple of gifts. And one was this talking stick, which I was unfamiliar with. And it's, you pass the stick and you talk for us. These people would talk all day. No one talked until you had the stick. And it was a sign of respect. So I had this stick. It was basically a piece of wood carved with a bunch of stuff on it. And a deer's fore leg on the front. It was an amazing piece of work by a guy. And I had this thing. I thought, oh, I think I need to bring that there. So I'm sitting there waiting for her. She shows up and she doesn't even acknowledge me. And she walks up to this stone and she crosses her hands and she starts crying. And I thought, what the f is going on here? This is like, somebody's gonna jump out and kill me or something. I mean, I really was unnerving to me. And she said to me, I'm only being allowed here because you're here. This has nothing to do with me, but you can't see or hear what's going on here. And that's my job to help you. And she said, there's a man here who waits for you every day. Well, I just get emotional. I think about it. There's a man here that waits for you every day like a kid would wait for a bus after school. And there's a woman behind him. She's not important to you, but she's important to him in this place. You need to know this. That's why you come here. What are you talking about? So we spent about an hour there in the dark. And at one point, this is not far from O'Hare. We were sitting off to the side. It was a light rain coming down. We're talking about whatever. She's explaining how these people lived here at one time and who this man was. And as you can imagine, dumbfounded. I don't know what to make of all this. And at one point, she stands up real fast. She goes, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. I'm thinking, this is when they kill me. This is when they rush. I'll wait for it. And all of a sudden, this plane comes and lands at O'Hare. The ground literally shook. It's only 100 feet over, maybe 200 feet above the forest. And just rumbled and rumbled. When it's finally gone, she sat down and she said, he doesn't understand what's going on here. He doesn't understand what this noise is. He's scared. And you're supposed to know this is how it's supposed to be, which is quiet. And I thought to myself and I said, oh my God, what are we doing? I didn't mean like what are her and I doing. Right, right, right. But what's happened? What? What's going on in the world here that I'm not paying attention to? And finally, before we left, she said to me, because I said to her, I said, am I related to this guy? What's the deal? I'm from Germany and Sweden as far as I know. I got nothing. And she says, you are not blood of my blood, but you've been my son for many moons. And decades earlier, she alluded to the fact when I lived by the Chicago River with my grandmother, I went there and threw a rock or something and that set this in motion. What are you talking about? Holy shit. Yeah. So before we left, I thanked her and she put her arm across my chest and she said, I will never come back here again and I probably won't see you again. But I have to tell you that you can't bring everybody here, but part of your work is to bring this to everybody out there. And that, no pressure. I didn't even know what it meant, but that's how that started. And not long after that, we went to the UP of Michigan through some people we had met. And I spoke at the commencement address of a friend of mine, son, who was up there. And this was a, you know, there's 27 people in the graduating class. We go to this little motel, I walk back to meet the principal who's also the guy sweeping the floors. And the next night was gonna be this commencement. So get there and they hold up the graduation for a track meet. That's awesome. Yeah, it was awesome. But there was 500 people waiting for these 27 kids and I'm like, where I come from, it's 500 graduates of 27 parents. Right. It's the opposite. Yeah, right. So I talked about whatever came out of my mouth and all of a sudden I was in, you know, just enraptured with these people who would invite me to go fishing and come over a piece of pie. But it was really something. So we left, come back to Chicago. I was in a business deal with a couple of pro wrestlers, the guys named the Road Warriors back in the day. Oh yeah. The Roadies. And we had a couple of big business things going and stuff like that and both of them fell apart. And at the same time, make this long story short. And then I'm going back to the UP for a wedding. And on the way back, we were stopping in Minneapolis to meet with the guys and finalize stuff and do whatever. And I had rented a house there next to, not far from Joe Laurinitis who was Road Warrior Animal. And we get there and there's a lock on the door. And I'm like, why is there a lock on this door? I was literally here a week ago to get this done. And another car pulls up behind us in the driveway. And these two people get out and I'm thinking, oh, they're here to unlock as they know we're going to be coming here. And I said, are you here to clean up and open the place up? They said, no, we bought this yesterday. And I would just drove seven hours of my family in the car. And I look at them and I'm like, uh-oh. Get back to the hotel. I call these guys, they're on the road doing wrestling, whatever. And I said, I don't know what's going on, but I'll talk to you later. We head across Wisconsin to get in there. And we get there in time for the wedding. But the day before, we go fishing. My son who's just five years old at the time and some friends, as we're floating down the Whitefish River, we parked the boat to take a break, stretch our legs. And there's this house for sale, big log cabin. I'm like, wow, that's fantastic. So I walk up there and on the porch is a thermometer with the serenity prayer on it. Oh wow. And I thought, what is going on? And we were in business, we're trying to get a business deal. And this is an important part of it with 3M, the tape people. And before fat heads come out, which are now everywhere, you stick them on your walls, we were gonna have a deal with them to do this for schools, maps and stuff. And it was not working like it's supposed to. And it was getting dicey and stuff. And I just didn't have a good feeling about it, but my partners had made a lot of money in wrestling and stuff they didn't care. I had a lot of money involved in the thing. So the guy next door to this house walks over and asks what we're doing, we're just checking it out. He's like, come on in for a beer. Okay, so we walk into his, for a beer. Next guy, big Western. Yeah, well it's the UP, right? Come on in for a beer. And I walk into his garage to get a beer and all around the top of his garage are hats, baseball hats. And right next to the door it says 3M on it. I said, hey, what's the deal with your 3M hat? He goes, oh, I used to work at Evanston, my printing company, I did a lot of work with him. I said, hey, let me give you a scenario. I laid out the business and he goes, yeah, so you got a really good lawyer? I said, not that I know of you. I said, you're gonna need one. They'll sue the shit out of you. Oh, no kidding. Well, we couldn't get a work, we couldn't know agreement. This was all kind of behind the scenes kind of stuff. And I thought, I gotta get out of this. Go to the wedding, get back to Chicago, call my buddies. And having a conversation with the road wars wasn't always the easiest thing to do. I can only imagine. Yeah. And I love them both, they're both long gone, God rest your soul, but it was interesting time for us. Anyway, I said, I'm out of the deal. I can't do this. I lost everything I put into it. And that set off dominoes that I could never predict. I couldn't find any work, anywhere, anyone at any time for any reason. Everything imploded. The people who owned the motel, whose son I spoke with a thing out a year earlier, came down to get us with a horse trailer. And another friend of mine came over with his trailer and we packed everything up on the Northwest side and headed to the UP where I'd been a year earlier as Mr. Successful. And now I'm just Joe shit the ragman. Cause I got nothing going on. And all during that time, from when the business deal went south forward, I would have this recurring dream of walking. I would see myself on the side of the road with a backpack on a big beard, a stick in my hand and walking. And I didn't know what it meant every day right before I woke up. And I told my wife at the time, she's like, I mean, you're cracking up again. You need to go back on the Xanax or something. And we got up to the motel, we put things in storage. My wife at the time found work as a florist. She's very, very gifted that way. My kids go to school and I'm sitting there drinking, you know, my thumb up my ass drinking coffee with this guy, barely know this native American man named Bruce Hardwick. And I told him about this dream and he goes, come on and we go out behind his house. And there's this enormous lodge on their property. It doesn't exist anymore. They don't even own the place anymore, but there was probably 30 feet in the high. Something you'd imagine was like a dome, this big dome. And I'm like, what's that? He goes, that's our lodge. Okay. That mean anything to me. It looks just like a dome. And he stands there and he gets really emotional. He holds my hand. Now Bruce is as tall as he is wide with this flowing white hair. In the book phenomenon, there's a picture of him in there. It's just the greatest things of this flowing white hair. And he says, you're being given a choice, John, that most people don't get. You're being shown something that has not yet happened. You have a choice here to make. You can follow what the great mystery says or you can just sit here and drink coffee with me. And I thought, I guess I gotta take door number one. I gotta find out what this is all about. Within, I don't know, 12 hours, there's a fire in that lodge and all these people show up, I barely know. And he says, now you gotta tell them what you gotta do. And I knew then when I stood in the lodge, I had to walk to Chicago where I just left. And you can imagine my wife's expression on that. Yeah, but there was something, some sort of anointing on this that took the edge of all this. Especially when I got up and said, here's what I have to do. I don't know you people very well. I just ask you, take care of my family. I have no idea why the F I'm doing this. And across from me, this guy stands up, Dwayne Canard still friends to this day. He says, I'll go with you. I've been waiting for you. I've been waiting for you. I've been waiting for you. And his wife's like, you're not going anywhere. You have a job. This guy's crazy. Pretty much. A day or two later, Pat, the Bruce's wife's Pat, her sister-in-law's son, here's about it, lives in Detroit. He goes, oh, I gotta go with him. Never met this kid, Joe Johnson. So Joe comes up, Dwayne and I, we're all sitting in the lodge. And shortly after my daughter's, I guess it would have been her eighth birthday, all these people were with us in the lodge. And we decided we're gonna walk to Chicago. And the first day we walked 19 miles couldn't get out of bed the next day. Oh boy, yeah. And we only had about 890 to go. So. It was counting, right? Yeah, so I'll leave all the details. You can read about it if you get to either. In every moment matters, there's a chapter called The Last 100 Miles and phenomenon, there's a whole section of things that happened that are just, yeah, so humbling to me and so gifting to me. We get all the way to Chicago and our families meet us there. I think everything's over. And then the thought comes, you have to walk back north alone. And I thought, you gotta be effing kidding me. And my wife's like, you gotta be effing kidding me. And they all leave. I stay with my friend Dan, who was part of helping me move. And I stay with him for three days in displains, which is another suburb out here. His daughter Molly, who sadly passed away at the age of 44 in 2019, she and I walked around the block so I could get my legs back and we would talk. And she was such an instrumental part of getting me launched back north. And so on the way down, we were in newspapers, we were in motels, we had a van following us, had a cell phone, we had some food. Fluities. Yeah, to some degree, we raised money for a nonprofit. On the way back, nobody except me. And that's what it all really started. And so at some point, however long it took to get from displains to O'Connor, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where my life took a serious major turn and has never gone back in the same direction. I get to O'Connor, Milwaukee, I walk just outside of the town and I stop dead in my tracks. I'm standing in what I've been dreaming for almost a year at this point. I'm standing on the side of the road with a backpack on, with a big beard, stick in my left hand, son of my left, and I froze. How was it possible you could dream something, not know what it means at all, and then months later, stand in the same thing you've dreamt. And here you are. And here I am. Every circuit blew up. Whatever vestiges of what I thought I was or who I thought I was or what I was taught to believe growing up, gone, shit can, done. Oh yeah. Not possible. Yet here I am. And in that moment, a very clear voice, not male or female, don't remember, John, go on the radio. Why? Why would I do this? I have no training in radio. I'm arguing standing there. And I thought, wait a minute. I didn't argument, what was it? Pretty much. I'm so nuts. Exactly. And then the thought came, I'm arguing with a voice I've never heard before. I should shut up and listen. Wow. I made it about three miles down the road, and every two or three days, somebody would check on me. And this was my friend Molly. She was a ranger at the Horakon Wildlife Refuge. She came over, caught up with me, and I got in a car. Molly, you're not gonna, God talk to me at the side of the road. And she's just staring at me. And she'd get in the car. So I get in the car and I'm just rambling. There's a guy on the radio named Barry Farber. Barry was out of Boston, New York, I don't recall. And I said, Molly, I'm gonna do what this guy does, but I'm not gonna talk about the bullshit and the politics and the sports. I'm gonna talk about life. And I'm like, is it? And she's, you probably got a fever. Just settle down. You're delirious. You need a shot of wild turkey in an app is what you need. And I got to her house and I had the wild, and I was good. Wild turkey was great and took a nap. And I finished the walk a day before Thanksgiving in 1996, which we don't have time to get into all that. But months later in the spring of 97, I woke up one day still in the motel. We lived there for a year rent free with these people, became part of their family. And in the spring of 97, I woke up and go, I have to start calling radio stations. I was calling radio stations from room nine and 10 at the Hillcrest Motel in Rapid River, Nowhere out of a phone book with no experience at 37, which is a recipe for success. And went right down the list. Everybody said, you're an idiot. No, no one will listen, blah, blah, blah. I get to the last one in there, WDBC in Escanaba. The woman who was the GM at the time, Ella Sabuko said to me on the phone, oh, you're the nut that walked to Chicago and back, right? I read about you. And then she said, but what's your show idea? When she said your show idea, I'm like, something's going on here. In short order, I met with her and the owner who said, you're an idiot. No one will ever listen. I'm gonna give you five, yeah. Back to the same old story I'm gonna give you. It's the same pretty much. You don't just walk in off the street at 37 and do radio. What are you, an idiot? And he said, I'm gonna give you five hours, an hour a week for five weeks to try it out. No pay, no nothing, no nothing. And he said, what do you need from me if anything? I said, well, you should give me a year's contract because I'm from Chicago. That's what we say. And he at one point called, he said, son, you know, no one's gonna listen. I said, don't ever call me your son because I'm not. I want a year's contract. And don't tell somebody who walked to Chicago and back that he can't do something. Amen. And so, right? Amen to that. Right. And so I gathered myself, the first four shows were negligibly horrible, I'm sure. But the fifth show, I called Steb and Graham, who's Oprah's significant other. And Steb and I played golf together when I lived in Chicago. And I said, here's what I'm doing and here's what I wanna talk about. He's like, you're an idiot. What are you doing? And I'm like, just say yes. You're an idiot. Exactly. That's where I've become Mr. Idiot. I felt my family, my in-laws, pretty much everybody, except for my friends who walked with me, they got it. And on a two, on a Wednesday, whatever, it was 1997. It was the fifth Wednesday in. Stedman was on with me from Chicago. Didn't realize on Monday he was on the cover of People magazine. Tuesday, a book came out Wednesday at 9 a.m. Eastern. He was with me like I planned the whole thing. And I got five more shows and five more shows and get to the end of the year, the owner comes back and says, you were right. I was wrong. Here's your contract. I said too late. Because I already knew something was going on. It was bigger than me. It wasn't about that. And that's what kickstarted so much of what people hear today. Wow. That's incredible. I don't subscribe people to go that route to get in the media. Let's just say, state that up front. Yeah, I know. That's the silver bullet to success right there. And I still have the boots I wore on that walk right here in my studio. I look at them every morning. So I don't forget where I came from and what it took to get here. For me, I've learned that if you forget where you come from, sometimes you get sent back to remember. And that's not always a good thing. It's better to recognize it on an ongoing basis as opposed to having to do the return trip a few times going, oh, now I get it. So I understand that whole thing. That's something. And there was no way to know back then. Listen, I appreciate the accolades and yeah, you're not the first guy to say Chicago Radio Legend or Radio Legend and all this other stuff. Because I've been around a long time. But all I did was follow the connected dots. And they were never, ever easy. But that's what faith is. Between this dot and the next dot, that's the road of faith. And whether it's walking to Chicago and back or walking into a sometimes I think of the audaciousness I had of going, yeah, I want a year's contract. Let's go. Never did it before in my life. But the more the connected dots show up, the more I said yes to something, the more support came from places I couldn't possibly imagine. So within, you know, from going on the air in August of 97, less than 10 years later, I'm building Oprah's radio network on XM radio. How does that happen? My best grades. Well, my best grades were lunch and gym in high school. So come on. All right. I subscribed to that myself. That's it. That's it. Man. That's, you know, again, where I prefaced this whole thing was it's truly amazing. How you got from there to here, right? I mean, that is a road less traveled, speaking of the book. It is definitely that. And you know, it's one of those the chart for success is not a linear path. A lot of people like to think so. It's just like great idea, success. It rarely happens. And if it does happen that quick, it usually leaves pretty fast. It's not a longevity. Longevity, work ethic, discipline, all the things I learned on the football field and pouring concrete or being in the military, those things have served me in this. I didn't realize it till later. But I'm up every day at a certain time. I work. There's just a discipline you got to have, especially, I think, if you're doing your own work. If you work for a major corporation, you can do that's that's a whole different deal. But I tried that for a while. I mean, I always tell people working at Harpa was the highest paid internship I ever had of how not to spend a lot of money. Because they had millions to work with. And I've always had just thousands to work with. But in all of that, the discipline and the determination and the vision and the faith it takes to keep showing up, no matter how it looks in the moment, is really important for people, I think, to understand. And nothing can replace the fact that you keep showing up. If you just keep showing up and just keep showing up, it's not up to you what comes. You will see it in its time. And if you don't, just keep showing up. Yeah. Consistency in that regard is just huge. I'd like to one more thing before we get into the musical questions. Well, actually, yeah, I'll do this. We'll go right to something that I'm very curious about. Because having read the books, I understand your relationship with John Denver. If you're OK with this, I'd like to have you explain or talk about how you met your dear friend. All right. This seems like a great place to pause for today. But I hope you'll join us next time when John shares his connection with John Denver and how his life's purpose truly emerged. Well, I appreciate that. Any chance I get an opportunity to speak about John is a good thing for me. And it's an emotional thing. John's journey has already been incredible. And I can promise you that what comes next is even more fascinating. All right. Might drop the needle posse, like Billy Joel says, from the highs to the lows to the end of the show. This is the end of our show. Until next time, this is Jim. I'll stop wishing you infinite health and happiness and the perfect playlist for your life. Thank you again for being the best part of us. Catch you next time. What day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day day skills employers are looking for. Your place, your future, your opportunity. Search BCU courses and apply now. See the full terms and conditions at bcu.ac.uk Go Electric in the new Citroen EC3 Aircross. 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