Mike sees a helicopter in a trailer lot | Ramblin' & Amblin' | Nov 1, 2026

okay episode three of this walk uh actually four because again i started from zero um all right i'm gonna tell a story that i tried to tell before but i messed up the part where i talk about the uh personal helicopter landing uh right in front of me um and it starts with me leasing a uh a lot in my dad's uh um at my dad's shop to a uh truck driver who wanted a place to park the truck overnight so one day i'm working for my dad i'm out of the army i'm sitting in a trailer and uh some some guy comes he's a he's a tall mexican man with uh a mustache just leave it at that because that'll be relevant later because i'll need to be able to distinguish him um he he comes and says hey i want to run a truck i mean i want to run a spot how much all right 25 bucks a month just for the for the spot uh no building access okay okay all right so he rents the spot the stall and uh a few months go by one day it's summertime it's beautiful but i'm waiting for my dad to return from the road because my job is to uh take and do all the maintenance so he can go home and rest and i get him ready to go back on the road i get the truck ready to turn it around and uh lube oil coolant tires mud flaps hook up two different trailer sweep the trailer out all that stuff okay and uh well one day i'm sitting in the trailer waiting for my dad to return i know he's just a few minutes out so i'm playing a little video game on my e-machines i'm playing uh some star wars uh tactical game this is the late 90s and uh my desk is is facing the window of the trailer and to the right in front of me is a uh is the door to the trailer sliding door and all of a sudden a uh well large black man appears holding a uh what's uh i would classify as a large uh very shiny gun i i think it was kind of gold tinted but you know it's been over 20 years maybe going on 30 now um and he says to me he's got the gun he's holding it not it's not on that's not holster it's it's in his hand and he's holding it with both hands and he's got a badge and he says am i alone and i am a little too quick to always answer uh honestly yes i am alone uh yes okay come with me at that moment the phone rings now i'm counting on my dad calling me because that would be expected he had a bag phone this is again 90s uh he uh is gonna call me from the road to let me know to have everything ready for him but uh phone rings i say can i answer that the man with the gun says no follow me okay said gassy and he followed the man with the gun hands up and uh come around the building and i see what i couldn't see before and that is a large number of mercedes bmws cadillacs all parked helter sculture around the lot and there's a whole lot of of what are clearly etf agents because of uh of their um vests they have these little like pullover vests like you see in the movies and it's got the uh atf um insignia now here's the thing i gotta admit no pictures of this uh so it's either atf or de i i i want to say atf but it's hard to remember exactly but these are agents and there's a lot of them they all get guns they're all pretty much in civilian clothes except for their little vest they pull over they've got uh the man they're all standing in front of the man in in this stall with two other mexican men who are on their knees with their hands behind their heads uh each respectively and uh i'm standing in the middle of of this crowd and uh at one point i'm standing there a uh there's this little clearing they land a personal helicopter in the clearing and uh it was just absolutely surreal the helicopter a little personal like something on like macgyver pi lands and uh then uh takes off again i mean they have some like communication then they take off again uh the uh the agents are over in front of the uh the uh the mexican men and they take one they they cover them or they uncuff them but they take put them in a car and they drive away and then they do it with another the other man and then finally they get to the original uh man who had uh leased the spot for me and they take the cups off of him he gets back in the truck and drives away now all of this is happening and i'm standing here in the middle of this big crowd of all these crazy cars and down the road i see my dad driving he's i think he was in war cloud um which is the black truck but it could have been the green one he loved uh auto car trucks and uh he he told me afterwards oh yeah and i i see him coming and i just kind of put my hands up and kind of that universal shrug if you've ever seen that emoji with the hands and the shrug up with the with the um forward and back slashes and yeah the hands up that was me and my dad told me after that he said when he was coming down the road and he saw all of this he said the first thought that came into his head is what it might do this time which was funny um get home all excited thinking that this is going to be on the local news no not a word but then i'm watching the daily show and then the daily show john stewart is talking about uh some um trans u.s mexico to canada or vice versa marijuana um uh distribution that was busted outside of chicago and i'm like what are the odds what are the odds but it was that none of this was covered on wgn or the local affiliates for anything it was the daily show um a comedy show and it's almost like everything is a big joke the whole world is just one big joke because that's how i got my news not not through the mainstream media but a comedy show it was talking about how absurd this entire thing was and and john stewart was right it was it was absurd so yeah and then i'm at uh obtiva one day as a geek fest many many years later and uh uh dave hoover's asking for stories and we're going around the room and i can't and i and i'm listening to everybody else's story they're all so cool it's something like programming related or that they were so sophisticated but um night gets to me and dave's like come on tell the story and i'm like i don't have a story i don't have a story i don't know i don't he's like come on you gotta have a story so i'm like fine and then i start to tell that but i'm on i 'm not on camera i'm in front of an audience so i'm gesticulating and telling a dramatic retelling of the whole series of events and at the end everybody's just looking at me and dave says something along the lines of i don't have a story i do have a story i have a lot of stories i'll tell more here in a bit about other times i've seen the wrong end of a gun that's uh yeah yeah it was weird very weird all right thanks bye