- Welcome to the thriving metropolis of Buies Creek, North Carolina. - Well actually Buies Creek is that way. (groovy electronic music) - On this special edition
of Good Mythical Morning, Rhett and Link return to
their childhood environs, Buies Creek, North Carolina, where they haven't been for many years and experience along with you the things that made their childhood
special and informed their novel, "The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek." - We wanted to come back to Buies Creek to revisit a lot of the
locations that made their way into "The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek." In fact, we originally,
in the first transcript of the book, we had written Buies Creek as the name of the town, but the world, the setting of Buies Creek is really what inspired Bleak Creek. Basically the reason
that Buies Creek is here in a lot of ways is Campbell University. I mean a lot of this is new. - [Link] What is all of this? - [Rhett] Look at this, this is, construction is happening, Link, right as we come in. I don't even know what that is. - A traffic circle.
- Traffic circle. - We had never seen or
heard of a traffic circle. - It's European, I don't understand it. - [Link] When we were
growing up in Buies Creek-- - We would not have known how
to navigate a traffic circle. I still kind of don't know how
to navigate a traffic circle. - Pretty dicey. - [Rhett] There's two branches at least of Buies Creek, right? I guess--
- Oh a huge turtle on the side of the road.
- West end and east and then they--
- Let's go back and get that turtle. - [Rhett] What do you wanna do, eat it? - We can put the turtle at the creek 'cause I think he's looking for the creek, when we say this is Buies Creek. I can turn to the camera and I can say, "This is Buies Creek." This is Buies Creek. So we're all getting out here,
there's gonna be a turtle, there's gonna be a creek. - [Rhett] Hold on, he
left the side of the road. He knew we were, hold on. - [Link] There he is right there. - [Rhett] Look at the size of the turtles that you can find in Buies Creek. - Welcome to Buies Creek. Is that what I said? This is Buies Creek. Welcome to Buies Creek, literally. We're at the creek.
- Yes. - Do they float, you just
put 'em in the water? - Just put him right here. He'll probably go towards
the water on his own. Go be free, little one. Big one, actually. - You were already free. Continue to be free. Look, there he goes. - [Rhett] And oh. - Oh my goodness.
- I guess he's used to that. Do you think he meant to
do such a nard nose dive? - If we don't accomplish
anything else on this trip, I feel like we've released
a turtle into the creek that was already probably
hanging around the creek. It's safe to say, this is the first time that the two of us together have gone back to Buies Creek to relive anything from a nostalgia perspective.
- Yeah. - And I love nostalgia so I've been very, very excited.
- So let's buckle up. - [Link] So that's Rhett's
old house right there. - [Rhett] The gray two story
is the house I grew up in. The basketball goal used to be right here. I probably shot 50,000
shots on this thing, well maybe more than that. And these, these people
just built a house there. - [Link] And they painted it purple. - [Rhett] Purple. - Now your house, when I
first met you, it was yellow. It was like bright yellow. - [Rhett] And then my
dad got vinyl siding. - I remember you came to
school and you were bragging about vinyl siding, like for days. Well you know it's superior--
- I'll still brag about it. - The way it's durable.
- Look. This many years later, it
looks like a brand new house. Vinyl siding holds up. That guarantee my dad paid
for is being lived out right here in front of your eyes. - Now your parents don't
live there anymore, you should explained that. - My parents don't live there anymore, I should explain that. - Whoever's inside has probably noticed there's a very huge van out front. - Now I know the guy kinda
who lives there, Jake, because he lived in the house, his parents lived in the house next door that I would visit my
parents after I went off to college and stuff and so
my dad sold him the house when he grew up. He's ready to start a family
and move into a house. (soft acoustic music) How's it make you feel? Coming to the McLaughlin house. - Really restored my
faith in vinyl siding. (Rhett laughs) - [Rhett] Pick that up. This is the McLaughlin brick. You rub it for good luck. I'm glad that they did not remove it. - [Link] We should knock on the door before you start rubbing on the house. (Rhett chuckles) - What's up?
- Hey what's up man? - How are you? - You grew a big beard.
- Big ol' beard. - [Link] Hey man, I'm Link. - Pleasure to meet you. - [Link] So you were warned that we're-- - Yeah.
- That we're coming. - [Rhett] Well yeah, we
wanna go to my old bedroom. - Yeah, come on. (Rhett and Link laugh) - The very specific thing
that we were interested in in going to my house was to go to my room and to play the game
that we've now featured in two books which we ended
up calling testa-kill. A simple game of sitting
across from each other with your legs spread
and throwing a Nerf ball at each other's nuts. - You remember what side you sat on? My vision of the room was
always you on that side. 'Cause I felt like I was next to my bed, I sort of owned that spot
'cause I was like inviting you into the room to come
throw things at my nuts. - Yeah so I'm gonna sit here. You sit there. - We're a lot bigger than we used to be. I don't remember our feet touching. (Rhett laughs) - So I can be back like this. - I feel like those
pants that you've got on offer a distinct advantage
'cause you went like a hard-- - Hard what? - You've got like a--
- I've got a-- - Pull 'em up a little bit. The jeans that we wore
back in the day were, they fit different. And you gotta remember,
Link, it wasn't hard, it was like you roll the ball, like this, at each other's nuts. I know what you're thinking, you're about to do a baseball throw. The philosophy in "The
Lost Causes of Bleak Creek" is that if there's something that we did that sort of really, we
think is very specific to our childhood and something
that kind of represents our friendship and some just weird things that we did as friends,
if we can put those into this book, I think
it'll add a lot of texture and a lot of color to these
character of Rex and Leif who are us but also not
us at the same time. (suspenseful music) - That was light, man.
- Yeah. Here we go. - Oh! (Link laughs) Oh! Oh, and you know--
(Rhett laughing) - It made such a good sound! Good thing we don't need
to use these balls anymore. - You know what?
- What? - Three kids later, the stakes are much lower.
- That's right. (Rhett grunts and strains) Oh oh oh oh oh oh! - And by this point, we would
be cackling like this in pain. And Rhett's dad would come up and say, "What the hell are you doing?" - Well we talk about
that in the first book but in the novel we
talk about him coming up and thinking that he's
gonna be mad about something but it's a twist. You're gonna get to that scene in the book and you're gonna be like,
oh yeah, this is that game. But for the people who are
just picking up the novel and reading it with no
point of reference are like, is this really a scene
where these two teen boys are throwing Nerf balls
at each other's nuts? And then that happens in the middle, there's something that happens
in the middle of the scene which kinda sends it in
a different direction. - I don't like having to look so intently. - No that's when pitcher's gotta look right at the mitt, man. - Close your eyes.
(Rhett grunts) Hey, hey, relax. (Rhett whimpers) - I can't relax, I can't, I can't-- - [Link] Oh gosh, I hit
your freakin' knees! - I can't, I can't.
- I'm trying. - It's the most--
- Come on, come on. - It's the most unsettling
thing that I've ever-- (Link screams) - Gah! (chuckles) - I got you 'cause I was talkin'. - I was hungry. - What?
- Oh and it was, it was the right one again.
- What does that have to do with anything? - I'm nauseous now.
- I was hungry. Thank you, I was hungry. (chuckles) - See, I have a lot of
memories of us hanging out at your house.
- Right. - Do you have any memories
of hanging out at your house? - Yeah and other things. - Like what?
(Stevie laughs) - Just like, just like my--
- You have other memories? - My entire life.
- Okay. - That was the joke. Not other things with you. - Rhett has memories.
- What I mean is that-- - That don't involve his house. - Do you remember things at your house? I mean yeah, like I grew up there. So one of the things
that we've been talking about wanting to do is
basically recreate the way that we would travel
across town and meet up with each other back in 1992. - Yeah, so this would
be your departure point. You'd hop on your bike. I'd leave from my house, hop on my bike. - It'd be nice if it was as
authentic as it was before which that was before cell phones so we just had set a time
and you just had to be there. - Well I mean it's gonna
take five minutes to drive to my house but then it's gonna take, it would take about 20 minutes to... - I'll meet you at the
graveyard in 45 minutes, in case you have a little accident, you wanna stop and get a
drink, you've got time. - There's nowhere to stop and get a drink. - In case you have an accident. 45 minutes. - All right. Should I go now? - Yeah. (Rhett chuckles) - We should have started at my house. Welcome to my homestead. This is the home within which I grew up. I mean the house is special
because when Mom went through her divorce and
we, really both went through the divorce, you
know, and it was like that house represents for
us, us starting a new phase of our lives and being on our own and I know for Mom it was like very, it had to be very scary to
say okay, now it's just me and my son and it's up to
me to make a way for us. As you can see, we fancied
brick over vinyl siding. We knew that was superior. And we planted these trees. It's crazy to see how much
bigger these trees have gotten. Like, the tree was my
height when we planted it. It's funny how trees grow
over time in this area. This is where my mom
parked in the car port. We were like, well, if we're
gonna get our own house, it's gotta have a car port. And then my dog Tucker would chill out beside the car. This is Tucker's resting place. I'll show you his final resting
place a little bit later. One day I came home from school and Tucker didn't get up to
greet me because he was dead. So he was a pretty big dog. But for some reason we
had this refrigerator box or we acquired one and
then Rhett and I dug a hole and buried him right here. There was a divot for a long time. But it's kinda smoothed itself out. So we dug a hole not quite deep enough. Talked about it in "The
Book of Mythicality." It was right here, so
here lies Tucker, my dog. Tucker, you've been
memorialized in two books now. I played my trumpet as part
of like a funeral service. I can only imagine what the
neighbors were thinking. And then, it rained. And the next day, Rhett and I came out here
to check on the grave and it was just like a big pile of mud and we took off our shoes and
we rolled up our pants legs and we jumped in the grave. I'm not proud of it. I don't know why we did it, it just seemed like a funny thing to do. I really loved Tucker but he was in a box, so when we sunk in, my
feet just hit the box. I'm not saying that it
was the right thing to do. I'm not saying I'm proud of it. I just remember that we did it. And I do have pictures to
prove it I think. (chuckles) It was cold, the mud was very cold. Why am I sharing this? I showed them Tucker's grave site. And I told 'em what we did. - You told 'em about jumping into it? - I told 'em that we did a funeral service and that I played the trumpet and that we went back the
next day after it rained and we jumped in the grave. - And that's why your dog
haunts us to this day. - And now I'm still talking
about it and I don't know why. Every time I talk about it, I'm like, I shouldn't be talking about this. This is a PR problem. Rhett said he was gonna
allow extra time for me in case I had an accident but instead, I gave you a meandering tour and aimlessly talked about my dead dog. Now, in 1992, bike helmets did not exist so I will not be wearing one but you should always wear a bike helmet. (light-hearted orchestral music) I really had to rocket out of my house because Tucker would be
going along beside me and if we made it to this
point and he was still with me, I'd have to turn around and
go all the way back home and try again in order to wear him out so he wouldn't go wherever I went all day. - So in the book, my character Rex, who's technically me, he rides a scooter because we
thought that would be funnier. I'm riding a bike today
because it's too daggum hot to ride a scooter. (light-hearted orchestral music) (Link sighing) - [Link] I'm out of shape. (light-hearted orchestral music) - You're late.
- So are you. - I peddled a long freakin' way, man. It's like, it was probably two miles. - Well and--
- There's that mile long stretch that's just desolate country road. - It's just so hot. We would meet in the graveyard
and then we would ride the actual distance. - Yeah that wasn't--
- Like all around town and I just don't ever remembering
stopping and thinking, man, it's hot. We should get out of this heat. Or we should possibly drink
something besides Mello Yello. - I didn't drink an
ounce of water all day. - We didn't drink water,
we didn't wear sunscreen. - We didn't pee. We didn't wear socks. - Was it all a dream? - So what we would
normally do at this point is we would decide where we were gonna go for the day and then we would go. - Okay well we could go to the
Groc and sort baseball cards for a dollar an hour. - They tore it down. - We could go to the fine arts building and go into the auditorium
and make chairs fall and then when people come, we could hide in the orchestra pit. - I'm sure they've instituted
new security measures as a result of the first time we did that. We could go to the
oasis and play ping pong and annoy all of the college kids. - I don't think that exists anymore. I think they call it the student center. - This is how it worked. We would sit here and we'd bicker about where we were gonna go and then we'd go. We could go to the river, being as it is 100 degrees out here. - Oh we should definitely, we should definitely go to the river but I kinda feel like
going back to the hotel and just getting in the shower right now. - [Link] Good idea. - [Stevie] This video
does not show how bad we were all sweating in North Carolina, but you're gonna be
sweating it if you don't get your copy of "The Lost
Causes of Bleak Creek" at BleakCreek.com or
wherever books are sold.
This was so amazing; I've been watching GMM for a long time, and this is instantly one of the best episodes. Really moving and just so cool to finally see the town we've been hearing about for years. I got my copy of the book, and I'm glad I saw this video before reading it, so now I can picture it just like this!
Link had a much more somber tone when talking about his past.
But look at the way that vinyl siding held up!
I got the book on release day and finished it Friday night. I would have finished sooner but my job, husband, and kids tell me that spending 12 hours straight reading is "antisocial" and "grounds for termination".
Haters.
Anyway, the book was great and I wish they had come to my town on the tour. Looking forward to the movie version of the book.
This really was a fun episode, and I’m looking forward to the other ones!!
Is this the doc that they showed at the Bleak Creek conversations shows?
As someone who’s loved GMM for so long I really don’t know why I haven’t bought their books I really need to I love hearing everything about them
Amazing. I live close to where they grow up.
Wow!! This is going to be amazing!