Saturday morning in full swing along Route 66.

The old road has been through a lot — dust storms, economic collapse, and the slow decay of the American small town — but on this bright February morning, commerce is thriving.

'A lot of my friends took the traditional college route and are drowning in debt,' Daniels says. 'My friends who went into the trades? They’re doing great.'

The backdrop is classic downtown Tulsa — red-brick facades that have stood for a century, now housing retailers and yoga studios. Just around the corner is Mother Road Market, a trendy cafeteria dressed up like a food court from the golden days of American malls. Everywhere you look, the old world meets the new.

Working-class families stroll past retro diners and neon-lit novelty shops, spending their hard-earned money.

Near the University of Tulsa, amid the dispensaries and boutiques on Route 66, sits a sturdy old building that houses Tulsa Welding School’s main campus, wedged into three acres.

Work-first mentality

It’s the weekend, yet the parking lot is packed. Local radio station 106.9 KHTT has set up a booth, and a Fox23 cameraman angles for a shot of the crowd gathered for the TWS open house.

Inside, I meet Jon Daniels, the campus president. He’s direct but approachable, with the gravitas of someone who has led before.

“I took the non-traditional route,” he tells me. “Baseball got me into college; the Army paid for the rest.”

Daniels played ball on scholarship, served 10 years in the Army — infantry and artillery — earned his bachelor’s degree along the way, then picked up a master’s in management. Now, he’s working on a doctorate in education, all without taking out a single student loan.

“My dad was a union electrician for 40 years,” he says. “I grew up in a blue-collar family. No one handed me anything.”

That work-first mentality is what he hopes to pass on to the students at Tulsa Welding School. In an era when career paths are littered with debt traps, he offers something different: training that leads straight to high-demand jobs in welding, HVAC, and electrical work — fields where skill, not a diploma, determines success.

The college glut

For decades, the prevailing wisdom has been that college is the only route to a successful career. But with rising tuition and mounting student debt, that belief is being challenged.

Plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs — fields once considered backup plans — have turned out to be the surest path to wealth in an era when the so-called knowledge economy has left a generation buried under student loans.

“A lot of my friends took the traditional college route and are drowning in debt,” Daniels says. “My friends who went into the trades? They’re doing great.”

Even pop culture has taken note. "South Park" took its usual crude swing at the shift, mocking the growing divide between the oversaturated educated class and laborers in high demand. The Atlantic published a more measured lament, noting what it called “the rage of the almost-elite” among college grads.

Kevin Ryan

Get in, get out, get working

Daniels gives me a tour of the school, sprawled out over three city blocks.

Tulsa Welding School operates on a different timeline. Instead of a four-year degree, students complete the program in just seven months.

“Get in, get the training, get to work,” Daniels says.

The curriculum is hands-on, emphasizing real-world skills over lectures. Students learn welding techniques like metal inert gas welding, tungsten inert gas welding, and stick welding. Those in HVAC and electrical programs receive lab training and use virtual reality tools to simulate jobsite scenarios.

“We use Oculus welding simulations. If students want extra practice at home, they put on the headset and weld virtually,” Daniels says.

But it’s not just about the technical skills. Daniels and his team also focus on preparing students for life outside school.

“We don’t just teach welding; we teach soft skills,” Daniels says. “How to dress for an interview, how to talk to an employer.”

The school partners with local businesses to secure job placements. Students can practice for weld tests — often required for employment — on campus before applying for positions.

“You can’t fake skill in the trades,” Daniels says. “Employers will test you on the spot.”

'We're all about second chances'

Recognizing that many students come from tough financial situations, the campus provides resources like a food pantry and donated work gear.

“We want students to be comfortable, so we even keep a pantry on campus with food and work gear donations,” Daniels explains. “Sometimes we get leather boots donated too, because you can’t weld in sneakers.”

For students relocating from out of state, the school works with a housing company to provide temporary accommodations.

“We help students relocate,” Daniels says. “We have a company that provides temporary housing for them while they train.”

For Daniels, Tulsa Welding School isn’t just a place of learning — it’s a place of opportunity.

“We’re all about second chances. A lot of people deserve one,” he says.

Many students enroll after struggling with college, dead-end jobs, or financial hardship. The trades offer a fresh start and, for some, even a sense of purpose.

“Welding is therapeutic for some people. Just like cutting the grass is for me,” Daniels says.

The demand for skilled workers is only increasing. The school’s five campuses — Tulsa, Houston, Dallas, Jacksonville, and Phoenix — are training thousands of students, many of whom secure high-paying jobs right after graduation.

“There’s a massive workforce shortage in the trades, and we’re here to bridge that gap,” Daniels says.

Even as the school embraces new technology, the core mission remains the same: prepare students for meaningful, sustainable careers.

“We’re proud of what we do. We don’t just train people — we change lives,” Daniels says.

Kevin Ryan

Skill-based success

Here in America's reddest state, the die-hard working-class Democrat is all but extinct. Not a single blue county in a presidential election since 2000.

Many former Democrats say the same thing: The Democratic Party just isn’t the same. It abandoned its core constituents. The labor movement lost interest in the working class, and progressive politicians lost interest in labor, leading to a stratified society where wealth flows upward while the middle shrinks.

Meanwhile, the cultural divide deepens.The people of the working class aren't just ignored; they’re openly mocked.

Yet the rise of trade schools and alternative career paths suggests a way forward. The people who were told they needed a college degree to succeed are discovering that success was never about the degree — it’s about the skills.

It’s about dignity. The ability to build something, to create, to fix — these are things no algorithm can replace. At Tulsa Welding School, students aren’t preparing for careers that will be automated away. They’re forging America’s future.

Knife maker Rick Hinderer: How a gift for a friend led to an obsession with craft

Before Rick Hinderer was a knife maker, he was a horseman.

He worked with horses while attending a small high school in a small town in Ohio. After graduating, he attended Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute to study horse training and farriery. “I figured getting a degree would give me a better shot at working with top-tier farms,” he told me.

'I wanted to give a buddy of mine a knife when he retired from the military. Didn’t have money to buy one, so I thought, "I’ll just make it."'

While at ATI, he met his wife, whose family ran a quarter-horse breeding operation. Growing up, he had bounced around Middle America, moving from place to place. But by then, his roots in Ohio had grown deep. He’d moved enough. It was time to stay put.

Then came fire. For over a decade, Rick was a firefighter and an EMT. This added another level of complexity to his knifemaking. Knives needed to meet the demand and pace of emergency rescues.

“When you need a tool in a crisis, it better work,” he said. “I saw firsthand how important reliability is. You don’t want to be second-guessing your gear when the heat is on. That mindset went into every knife I made.”

Horses gradually faded into the background, and he left the firefighter job, but knives remained a constant. Over the years, his craftsmanship became unmistakable — like a painter’s brushwork, impossible to counterfeit.

He has no choice: “If I'm not creating, if I'm not making something, I'm not breathing."

Once a horseman ...

These three components — horses, steel, and fire — form the the DNA of Hinderer Knives. Rick’s logo — a horse’s head with a mane of flames — carries the two great influences of his life. “I wanted my logo to reflect my background,” he said. “Horses were my first love, and the fire represents my years as a firefighter. It just made sense to combine them.”

In recent years, he’s returned to horses, rekindling that early passion. It’s fitting, given that he approaches both disciplines with the same patience and craftsmanship. “People see pictures of me on horseback and go, ‘Oh, now I get the logo,’” he said, laughing in front of the blazing horse graphic that brands the company.

Lately, he’s been thinking about time. About things coming full-circle. He climbed back into the saddle: His tri-point harmony is now thriving.

“I found out three years ago that once a horseman, always a horseman.”

Shortly after he returned to horses, he took a trip to Gettysburg for a guided tour of the battlefield known as the Wheatfield. As they clopped along, the air began to change, a veil sank over the sky, birds chattering nervously.

He hadn’t expected the partial eclipse, let alone on horseback. His wife was inspired by the occasion and named a knife: the Eklipse.

It was poetic, as if God had realigned him.

Renaissance man

I spoke with Rick Hinderer via video from his shop in Northeast Ohio, where Hinderer Knives crafts unique designs that sell out quickly. He’s an easy guy to talk to — quick to smile, full of stories and insights, and deeply respectful of the work of his hands. We spoke for an hour but could have gone much longer.

There’s something refreshing about craftsmen like him — outdoorsmen with an artist’s mind, Middle American in spirit, yet wired for precision and beauty. Hinderer blends rugged practicality with creative finesse.

And it made me wonder — why didn’t I start profiling American artisans sooner? All those years spent interviewing political and cultural heavyweights, big-brained contrarians, the occasional prima donna. The thinkers, the talkers, the debaters, tangled up in their endless opera of ideas.

Meanwhile, men like Hinderer just get to work, turning steel into something that lasts.

'I just did what made sense'

Like many great craftsmen, Rick didn’t come into his trade through formal training but through necessity and curiosity. “I wanted to give a buddy of mine a knife when he retired from the military,” he said. “Didn’t have money to buy one, so I thought, ‘I’ll just make it.’”

At the time, he was already forging horseshoes, so blacksmithing was second nature. He pounded out his first knife from an old plow point, shaping steel with little more than intuition and grit.

“I didn’t even know custom knife making was a thing,” he admitted. “No internet back then, no forums. I just did what made sense.”

That first knife found its way into a collection, but Rick still owns the second one he ever made. “I look at it now and think, ‘Wow, that was rough,’ but given what I had to work with, I’m proud of it.”

Knives became an obsession. He honed his craft, learning everything he could, refining his techniques, and eventually developing the distinctive Hinderer style — rugged and beautiful and a little bit quirky.

"James Hetfield from Metallica once said he doesn’t know where his lyrics come from. That’s how I feel about my designs."

Pride of ownership

People often ask Rick Hinderer why they should buy one of his knives instead of something off the shelf at Walmart. It’s a fair question. “The price is different than some of the knives coming in from overseas,” he said. “So what are you getting? Each one cuts. So what are you really paying for?”

That question isn’t answered in a single sentence. Sometimes, it takes him an hour or more to explain. “There’s so much to it, and that’s before I even get into the historical side of it.”

He loves working with new customers — people who aren’t collectors or knife enthusiasts, who might not know the difference between a production knife and a high-end custom blade.

“It reminds me of when I was sitting at a gun show in Medina, Ohio, back in 1991,” he said. “The internet was around, but it wasn’t like today. People didn’t have easy access to custom knife makers. So they’d walk by my table, see the knives, check the price, and go, ‘Oh my gosh.’ And that gave me the opportunity to explain.”

As they held the knife in their hands, something changed. “You’d see that enlightenment come over their face. Then they’d buy the knife, come back two months later, and tell me how they’d dressed out ten deer, or a bear, or processed game for all their buddies — and never even had to touch the edge. That’s when they understood. That’s what they paid for.”

But beyond performance, there’s something else. Something unseen but just as real. “Pride of ownership,” he said. “It’s that feeling when you hold the knife and think, ‘Yeah, I got this. This was made by someone.’”

Each knife comes with an assembly card, signed by the craftsman who put it together. “You know who built it,” he said. “Maybe it was Amanda, or Kim, or Lane. Maybe Mike milled the blade, or Zach did the water jetting. Every step, every detail, was done by someone who cares.”

That’s the difference. “This isn’t a gas-station knife that came from China,” he said. “This is a Hinderer.”

Designing for the real world

Rick’s creations are first and foremost tools. “A knife is a knife,” he told me. “If it’s just art, then it’s sculpture. A knife needs to function, to be used. I design for that first.”

That philosophy is evident in everything from his steel choices to the ergonomics of his designs.

“A knife should work for you, not against you,” he explained. “It should feel natural in your hand, be balanced, and not create hot spots during extended use. Weight is a big factor — if a pocketknife is too heavy, you won’t carry it. If a fixed blade is too bulky, it becomes a burden instead of a tool.”

One of Hinderer’s most significant innovations is the Tri-Way Pivot System, allowing users to switch between bearings, phosphor-bronze washers, and teflon washers depending on their needs. “Some guys want ultra-smooth action, so they go with bearings,” he said. “But if you’re in a gritty, muddy environment, you want the reliability of washers. With the Tri-Way system, you get to pick what works for you.”

American craftsmanship

Like Dawson Knives, Hinderer Knives insists on making every part of its products in-house. “You’re not just buying a knife,” he told me. “You’re supporting innovation, American craftsmanship, and the best materials available.”

He doesn’t just mean that in a patriotic sense — though that’s part of it. The U.S. has long been at the forefront of knife-making technology, and Rick believes that supporting domestic makers is about preserving that legacy.

“Most of the knife designs and innovations you see today started here,” he said. “If you want that level of quality, you need to foster it.”

That commitment extends to every step of the process. “We don’t order parts from overseas. We don’t cut corners. When you buy one of our knives, you’re getting something designed, engineered, and built by American hands.”

The mind of a maker

Despite Rick Hinderer’s insistence that function comes first, there’s no denying that his knives have a distinct aesthetic appeal. “It’s funny,” he said. “I started out making simple, rugged tools. But then I got into forging, Damascus, gold inlays — real art knives. I learned from guys like Hugh Bartrug, one of the best in the industry. Even now, my designs carry that influence. The lines aren’t just functional — they’re beautiful.”

Hinderer Knives become an extension of the person using them. That’s why Rick encourages his customers to put them to work. “Knives aren’t meant to sit in a display case,” he said. “You don’t appreciate everything that goes into them until you use them.”

“That’s something that’s really hard to explain to somebody,” Hinderer told me. “Some people just get it. You hear about writer’s block — it’s the same kind of thing. If you try to force it, it doesn’t come. It just has to come. And sometimes, it hits you at two or three in the morning.”

He usually rushes to write it down.

“I’m afraid it’ll go away,” he told me. “Later, I’ll look at it and think, ‘My gosh, I think this will work.’”

His wife knows the look by now. “She calls it my ‘thousand-yard stare,’” he said, laughing. “She’ll ask me what’s wrong, then she’ll remember — ‘Oh, you’re thinking about a knife.’”

But before pen ever meets paper, the design takes shape in his mind. “A lot of times, I won’t even sketch anything until I’ve worked through it mentally,” he said. “I think about the lines, the mechanisms — how I can improve something, what adjustments I can make. I’ll go over it again and again in my mind before I ever put it down. Because until I see it clearly up here,” tapping his temple, “I don’t know what’s worth writing down.”

That’s the mind of a maker — always turning, always searching for the next step, the next refinement.

“Looking back, I can see how every piece of my life led me here,” he told me. “The horses, the fire department, the blacksmithing — it all came together. That’s God’s hand at work.

Please note that the company profiles and product recommendations that Align publishes are meant solely to inform and edify our subscribers. Unless explicitly labeled as such, they are neither paid promotions or endorsements. Even in cases in which a company is a paid sponsor of Blaze Media, Align editorial content is created independent of any commercial relationships.

Slammin' Sammy Swindell, the fiercest driver dirt racing has ever seen

Sammy Swindell is a race car driver, a motorsports legend. So naturally, I wanted his opinion on Mario Kart.

"Mario Kart?” he asks, either amused or annoyed; it’s hard to tell with Sammy. “Yeah, I’ve played a little. But racing video games don’t feel real. They don’t give you the full-body experience."

'When the car gets off the ground, you’re not really in control. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m at and where I’m going. I try to get back in control.'

He means it when he describes racing as a full-body experience. His aggressive driving style is what earned him the nickname “Slammin'.”

Precision at any speed

Few figures in sprint car racing command the same level of respect as Sammy Swindell. His work uniform has at various times included sponsorships from STP and Hooters. NASCAR described him as “arguably one of the greatest sprint car drivers ever.”

Born in Bartlett, Tennessee, in 1955, Swindell built a career on raw speed, mechanical precision, and an unmatched competitive fire.

He first turned heads in the 1970s, making a name for himself on dirt ovals across the country. But it was in the World of Outlaws circuit where he cemented his legacy.

Over five decades, Swindell has collected hundreds of victories, multiple championships, and a reputation as one of the most talented — if sometimes polarizing — figures in open-wheel racing.

As motorsports site the Driver’s Project notes: “It doesn’t matter if you love him or hate him, when Sammy Swindell shows up at a racetrack, things always get more interesting.”

I chatted with Sammy in early February. He has a reputation for being dry, almost hostile, but as he’s said many times, racing is his job, and he builds his own cars. Most of the time, when someone approaches him, he’s distracted by work. And it happens a lot; in the racing world, he’s a celebrity.

Swindell at the 1987 Indianapolis 500. Photo courtesy Sammy Swindell

Track tactician

He was more friendly than I expected, but focused, his Tennessee drawl leavened with the stoicism of an engineer-minded athlete. He smiled and laughed a few times but quickly returned to his gravitas.

Halfway through our chat, I realized he’s not grumpy — he’s analytical.

"I've got to meet a lot of really, really smart people," Swindell tells me. He learned a lot from his friend Henry "Smokey" Yunick, the legendary stock car driver, mechanic, engineer, and tactician.

And that’s the word I’ve been grasping for: tactician.

Toward the end of our interview, he showed his cards a little.

I mentioned that in any sport, once you win the biggest prize, everyone studies exactly how you did it — your equipment, your methods, everything is exposed. And the test after that is whether you can win again once everyone else catches up.

Swindell has done this repeatedly. How?

"Part of it is just to keep as much as you can to yourself," he says. "And sometimes, you throw things to make them look somewhere else when the important stuff is over there."

Giant among 'midgets'

I first attended the Chili Bowl Nationals in 2024 while writing a story for Frontier magazine. I fell in love with the chaos and fervor of the event —the Super Bowl of dirt-track racing, drawing 20,000 people to Tulsa from all over the world.

Swindell at this year's Chili Bowl. Brendan Bauman, courtesy of Sammy Swindell

The indoor midget car race is a brutal test of skill, where conditions change every lap and drivers claw their way through deep fields just to make the main event.

This January, I returned for the 39th annual Chili Bowl, and Swindell was there, as always, drawing a crowd everywhere he walked.

He’s comfortable with the racing press. Once, during a live interview, he paused mid-sentence to bark at someone, “Come back here, you little pisser, POS!”

Swindell has won the Chili Bowl Nationals a record five times, a feat that cements him as one of the greatest dirt racers of all time.

Bryan Hulbert, a motorsports legend in his own right and the Chili Bowl’s announcer, told me that “Sammy’s legacy helped make the Chili Bowl what it is today.”

His dominance as a driver and car owner set the bar higher for everyone racing against him. Hulbert said Swindell’s “ingenuity in car design was ahead of its time,” with others only now starting to catch up. The same goes for sprint car racing — Swindell has “contributed more to the performance and engineering side of the sport than most realize.”

Dirt-track dynasty

Swindell’s father served as president of the club that ran the races around Memphis.

At 15, Sammy began his own racing career at Riverside International Speedway, winning in just his third race.

He won six races that first season. By then, he was already moving through different classes — sprint cars, modifieds, late models — anything with wheels and an engine.

"I looked at it as a job," he tells me. "The better I did, the more rewards I got. More sponsors, more money. It was just about putting everything I had into it to be the best."

Swindell spent two years in college studying physics and engineering before committing to racing full-time.

His mechanical instincts gave him an edge over competitors, as he built and fine-tuned his own cars. "I want the car to do the work, and I just guide it. If you can set your car up to do things others can’t, passing them is easy."

A three-time World of Outlaws champion (1981, 1982, 1997), Swindell was a dominant force in sprint car racing for decades.

Despite his intense, no-nonsense approach on the track, his impact extended beyond his own career. He shaped modern sprint car racing through his innovations and mentorship of younger drivers.

Hulbert observes that Swindell “races everyone hard, but not as hard as he raced his son, Kevin.”

Hulbert recalls their first-second finish at the Chili Bowl — his first time announcing the event — and compared it to the fierce battles between brothers, where rivalries produce “some of the most brutal racing you’ll ever see.”

That race came down to the final lap, and Swindell “made his son earn every bit of that win and then some.”

The only other time Hulbert had seen Swindell race with that level of intensity was against Steve Kinser, a rivalry that defined an era of sprint car racing.

Crash course

Crashes are a part of racing. Sprint cars flip. They land hard. Steering wheels and rubber can launch into the bleachers, right over chain link and beer cans.

But Swindell treats wrecks as he treats the rest of racing: as a problem to be solved.

"When the car gets off the ground, you’re not really in control. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m at and where I’m going. I try to get back in control."

He leans toward impacts rather than tensing up. "Some guys try to fight it, but you can’t. You just have to go with the flow."

It’s the same mentality he brings to racing in general.

At 69, Swindell still carries the same philosophy: Win, then move on to the next one. "I never thought of quitting. If I had a bad night, I just wanted to figure it out and do better."

I asked him if time slows down in a crash.

"Yeah, sometimes it seems like it takes a half hour, but it’s only a few seconds," he says. "The whole time, I’m just trying to gain control again, or whatever control I might have to make it stop or make it slow down or make it easier on myself and the car."

He pauses.

"I don’t know, maybe that’s just me. I don’t really hear too many people talk about that stuff — what they do in a crash. But yeah, I’m trying to get back in control."

The education of failure

When asked about the races or particular nights he often revisits, Sammy Swindell paused thoughtfully, considering the many tracks he's conquered. He reflected that each victory carries its unique memory, shaped by subtle differences from track to track.

Early in his career with the World of Outlaws, Sammy developed an analytical approach. "I'd look at a new track and ask myself what it reminded me of. If it resembled another place where I'd done well, I'd start with that familiar setup." Yet he emphasized that each track, no matter how similar at first glance, has distinct characteristics — corners, radius, banking — that must be mastered individually.

When our conversation shifted to the emotions tied to winning — the celebratory moments exiting the car, hoisting trophies, or holding oversized checks — Sammy offered an intriguing insight.

“Winning simplifies things," he explained. "It means you're not scrambling to repair the car. Your job becomes basic maintenance, setting up for the next race."

Conversely, a poor performance sends him into a meticulous review, examining missteps and setups gone wrong.

“You learn more from the nights things don't go right," Sammy noted thoughtfully. "You discover what's off. It's easier to make mistakes than it is to get everything exactly right."

I found Sammy's perspective refreshing, particularly since many racers admit winning adds pressure to repeat success. But Sammy sees it differently. For him, victory isn't an added burden; it's confirmation that he's met his goal.

"Winning never felt like pressure," Sammy said. "It was always the aim. Once I achieved it, the tension lifted. The next night was simply another chance to do it again."

'Four Against the West' goes behind the legend of Judge Roy Bean — and his three brothers

Joe Pappalardo writes history the way it should be written — loud, unruly, drenched in blood and whiskey, peppered with characters who refuse to be forgotten.

His latest book, “Four Against the West: The True Saga of a Frontier Family That Reshaped the Nation — and Created a Legend,” continues this legacy. It follows the four Bean brothers — Roy, Sam, James, and Joshua — who each left their mark on the Old West, navigating battlefields, courtrooms, and saloons, somehow able to bounce around the Wild West at its most unruly.

'More reporting is always the answer. If you’re in a jam, call another expert, pull another record, find another angle.'

Roy Bean, famously dubbed “the Law West of the Pecos,” may be the most recognizable of the bunch, and while the book opens with him, Pappalardo makes it clear that the real story is a family saga, not just a single outlaw-turned-lawman myth, although navigating that mythology is a huge part of the fun.

“I thought, let’s do a quadruple biography, candy-cane their experiences together,” Pappalardo told me. “You’ve got a pretty good book that really covers everything about the Old West — the Santa Fe Trail, California, New Mexico, the Civil War, the Mexican-American War. How could you go wrong?”

Just tell the story

I caught up with Pappalardo in early February, three months into his book promotion tour, fresh from a lecture taping for C-SPAN.

As a nonfiction author, Pappalardo captures the enormity of life with cinematic grit, even in his account of the history of the sunflower. What you get when you read his books is writing that breathes, scenes full of motion, carried by sentences that are fun to read.

It’s full of vivid passages like this one, the kind that lift you into the beauty and commotion:

The steamboat creeps innocently upriver, sternwheel churning a wake that shimmers in the moonlight. The vessel is loaded with passengers from New Orleans, where an insidious disease is emerging among recent immigrants there. And some on board, destined for the docks at Kansas City, are contagious.

It’s readable without losing the mysterious vitality of literature. In an era of gimmickry, Pappalardo achieves a forgotten maxim among writers: “Just tell the damn story.”

Pappalardo eschews the jumbled postmodern approach, where time is scattered into shards of disassembled events, for the river-like flow of a sequence in natural order. Better yet, he scripts the historical account in present tense, so the movement feels constant. This intensifies the animating spirit of the era, growing in the reader with each turn of the page: go west, go west, go west.

Manifest destiny

Details. Richness. Scenery. Color. The blood of existence. You get access to the thoughts and feelings and secrets of the characters. Immediately, you’re pulled into their minds, even their souls.

But while “Four Against the West” reads like fiction, all of it has been meticulously verified, woven so nimbly that even the footnotes feel native.

There’s so much nature, so much wildness, so much rugged earth. All the more beautiful when civilization crashes into it, punctured by slavery or cholera.

Like this passage:

Joshua Bean walks out of the Gil’s house, savoring the sunset view of the harbor, the rolling hills of the Mission Valley, and the mountains stretching off to his right. A dirt road from Old Town follows the north bank of the valley to Mission San Diego. The open land surrounding San Diego is crawling with roaming cattle, and every so often he can spot bacteria in sombreros and loose-fitting white shirts, trailing the herd on horseback or lounging in the shade of trees.

Pappalardo’s craftsmanship is silent. One device he uses, for example, is suppositional narrative — he tells us what the characters “must have” felt.

In order to pull this off, a writer has to have gathered an incredible amount of information, far more than what winds up in print.

Then he sprinkles in philosophical observations and moral principles. He captures the social and political realities that dictated the era. Commerce, education, transportation, health, leisure. Legal theory, military strategy, economic orthodoxy, religious dogma — all captured by the flux of the narrative.

Even food and drink: You taste as you read.

Granular details

There’s quite a skeletal system underneath the swirl of this long-form creative nonfiction. Pappalardo fortifies all this storytelling with data.

His background at Popular Mechanics, the Smithsonian, and the Associated Press trained him to dig deep.

“More reporting is always the answer,” he told me. “If you’re in a jam, call another expert, pull another record, find another angle.”

His approach avoids the sweeping generalizations that plague many histories. Instead, he focuses on the beautiful minutiae of the characters he resurrects.

“You learn history better when you see it through the eyes of the people who were there,” he said. That means looking at what they ate, where they drank, how they survived.

Pappalardo’s obsession with granular details led him to Roy Bean’s time in San Antonio, where the infamous judge presided over spectacle and chaos.

Law and disorder

Bean’s story proved irresistible to the anti-Hollywood postmodernists of the 1970s, filmmakers who fought the industry’s sanitized depictions of history — often at the cost of their own careers.

The real Roy Bean — born Phantley Roy Bean Jr. — was no frontier hero. He was a con artist, a rootless huckster who turned justice into a sideshow. His courtroom was a saloon, his rulings improvised, more entertainment than law.

“Roy didn’t just pass through places — he got run out of them. That tells you something.”

The self-styled "hanging judge" is often portrayed as a rough-edged arbiter of frontier justice. In reality, Pappalardo said, Bean was more of a frontier grifter than a judge. “He brought more crime and disorder to his small town than he ever supplied in law and order.”

Still, Roy Bean is the hook, and his mythology looms large.

"Four Against the West" tears down the myths of Roy Bean to reveal the man beneath: outlaw and lawman, con artist and businessman, drifter and legend.

“Roy Bean is sort of a clown later in life,” Pappalardo tells me. ”He was a pioneer for celebrities who were famous only for being celebrities. So he's a modern creation in a lot of ways. He's a modern man in that way, coming out of this frontier. And yet he is the symbol of the frontier for a lot of people.”

Assume it's a lie

When asked how much of Roy Bean’s legend he had to discard, Pappalardo was blunt: “If I didn’t know for sure, it didn’t go in.”

He said that while most of Bean’s biographers did a solid job of documenting his life, Roy himself was an unreliable narrator. “If Roy tells a story, assume it’s a lie. If his brothers contradict him, assume they’re telling the truth.”

One of the biggest revelations came from old newspapers that painted a different picture of Roy’s infamous rope burns — the supposed result of an attempted lynching.

“We don’t actually know what happened,” Pappalardo said, “but we do know he was shot while raging drunk in a store, and the newspaper basically said, ‘Good riddance.’”

That kind of detail reshapes history, giving it the rough texture of real life instead of the clean arc of a Hollywood Western.

“Four Against the West” does just that, peeling back the myth to reveal the men who lived, fought, and lost on the frontier.

In their brother's shadow

Because Roy Bean’s brothers each shaped the West in their own ways.

“At least two of them,” Pappalardo said, “are probably more historically significant than Roy.”

Sam became the first sheriff in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

Joshua was the first mayor of American San Diego and an early militia leader.

James saw both success and failure in Missouri, where he played the role of both lawman and first responder.

Together, their lives paint a messier, more complex portrait of a time when civilization and lawlessness blurred.

That’s the history Pappalardo thrives on — the kind that sprawls beyond legend, tangled in contradictions and larger-than-life figures.

“People think these guys were shaping some grand arc of manifest destiny,” Pappalardo said. “But really, they were just trying to get by.”

A crucial breakthrough

Pappalardo spent time in New Mexico, Texas, and California, sifting through archives, walking old trails, and standing in the ruins of railroad camps.

“Going to places always delivers the best stuff,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re going to find until you crack the pages open.”

One of his biggest discoveries came in Mesilla, New Mexico, where he unearthed a never-published interview with Sam Bean. “It was huge,” he said. “There it was, the story of his falling out with Roy and how they reconciled at the end of their lives. I didn’t have an ending until I found that.”

He also spent time at Roy’s old haunts, including the ruins of his first saloon. “You know you’re in the right spot when the ground is covered in broken beer bottles,” he joked.

The forgotten Bean

Of the four brothers, James Bean is the least known, but his story struck a chord with Pappalardo. “He was Independence, Missouri’s justice of the peace, what a justice of the peace should be — unlike Roy, who was a mockery of the role.”

James had terrible luck, getting caught up in a marriage scandal and finding himself at the center of violent crimes. But he took his responsibilities seriously, acting as first responder to suicides and murders.

James' final years were spent in a poor farm, where he organized a library to give the other residents something to read.

“Even after everything that happened to him, he still had that Bean spark,” Pappalardo said. “And he made sure his story made it into the newspapers, so someone like me would find it.”

A knack for showing up

What emerges from Pappalardo’s work is not just a history of four men but a panorama of an era that refuses to sit quietly in textbooks, too often lost in the antics of fiction.

It’s raw, violent, full of schemes and ambition, and populated by men who, for better or worse, made their mark. Their stories live on, not in sanitized myth but in the dust and grit where they were truly forged.

The gift of “Four Against the West” is the cohesion it accomplishes in capturing the full story.

Despite their flaws, the Bean brothers had a knack for showing up at pivotal moments in history. Whether leading militias, running saloons, or getting tangled in gunfights, they were always in the thick of it. And while Roy Bean became the pop-culture icon, Pappalardo’s book gives his brothers their due.

“The frontier wasn’t a neat, heroic place,” Pappalardo said. “It was a mess. And these guys thrived in the mess.”

Christianity makes a comeback

Churches are filling up, Bible sales are booming, and prayer is drifting back into daily life. Even Joe Rogan, a barometer of pop-culture skepticism, has hosted believers and Christian apologists.

In the realm of sports, this shift is even more pronounced. UFC fighters and NFL stars openly declare their faith.

Culture says to follow your emotions. Sports — like Scripture — teaches the opposite.

Then there’s Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla.

The Undertaker got baptized. Olympians defied the rule against "religious demonstrations" and openly praised Jesus for their victories. Given the excesses of the opening ceremony, this defiance was warranted.

Christian athletes have devoted themselves to testimony. Their faith is central to everything they do. It's in the way Caitlin Clark responds to hostility on the court with Christlike kindness. And in Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard's frequent interjections of "Jesus bless." And in Ohio State quarterback Will Howard's response after beating Notre Dame for the national title: “First and foremost, I got to give the glory and the praise to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Even in the heat of competition, faith finds its way onto the field. After a hard-fought game, Texas Longhorns running back Nik Sanders had a question for Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo: “Can I pray for you?”

“The influence of athletes is huge,” Fellowship of Christian Athletes Chief Sport Officer Sean McNamara told me, “if they can market products, why not use their platform to share faith?”

Faith and athleticism

Athletes have always shared their faith. But lately Christian athletes are more assertive, less shy. Faith and athleticism seem like a natural pairing.

I spoke with Matthew Hoven, an associate professor of sport and religion at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta, about this relationship.

Both sports and Christianity, he explained, focus on shaping character, fostering teamwork, and encouraging self-denial.

“There are many parallels between the life of faith and a life in sport,” he said, adding that even prayer can find a natural place in the athletic domain.

Sports, he told me, are not just physical but spiritual.

The connection isn’t limited to individuals — it’s woven into the history of sports themselves. James Naismith, a Protestant minister, invented basketball at the YMCA as a way to teach moral discipline through physical activity. In Canada, Father David Bauer, a Catholic priest, founded the country’s first national ice hockey team.

College football began at Christian institutions. In tough urban neighborhoods, Catholic priests often used boxing as a way to mentor and guide young men.

Fellowship on the field

What if Jesus had been a coach? That's the question McNamara poses.

"He would’ve been incredibly successful," McNamara says. "Who wouldn’t want to play for a leader who puts others ahead of himself? If you think about all the biblical principles, all that Jesus modeled, that kind of coaching would bring both victory and joy.

"At the cross of Christ, we’re all on equal footing — just like when the ball rolls onto the field," he says. "No matter where you come from, what you look like, or your background, sports create a unifying space, just like faith does."

As a longtime coach, McNamara notices how teams instinctively gravitate toward unity. "When a team breaks a huddle, they often choose to shout 'family' because they feel that deep connection," he says. "That mirrors what we experience as Christians — we’re brothers and sisters in Christ, bound by something greater than ourselves."

Sports also teach lessons about seasons of life. "Every team experiences beginnings and endings, just like we do in our faith journey," he says. "And while new ideas come and go in sports, the fundamentals never change — just like God’s word. The basics of the game, the things that lead to success, are timeless. The Bible is the same way — it's our playbook for life."

Strong mind, strong body

Plato was a talented wrestler. Several historians have even argued that “Plato” was actually a nickname that arose from the philosopher’s grappling tactics. There’s even a legend that Plato often broke into flexing his muscles mid-argument as a kind of rebuttal.

The ancients generally believed equally in mental exercise and physical training. In fact, prevailing thought linked physical ability with mental and moral growth. The improvement of the body was fundamental to the cultivation of virtue.

Plato believed that being physically strong or skilled isn’t enough to develop a good mind or character. But rather, a strong mind and good character strengthen the body.

Enlightenment thinkers began an ongoing centuries-long shift toward a scientific conception of the body, an elevation of the cultural and social functions of the mind.

Muscular Christianity

The Industrial Revolution saw a return to premodern notions with the rise of muscular Christianity. As men moved from farm labor to sedentary factory jobs, Protestant leaders worried that physical and spiritual fitness were declining.

Athleticism could bring theology to life. This moral dimension rose from the propriety and conservatism of the Victorian era, which has since been mythologized as a squeamish epoch full of people who dressed piano legs in trousers to hide their wooden nakedness.

In reality, proponents of the philosophy wanted to regain a masculine energy that arose from physical training. An emasculated society, they held, was prone to a brand of collectivism that discarded the nation.

Muscular Christianity migrated to America in time for Teddy Roosevelt to model the power of rugged manliness.

Who gets the glory?

A high-level athlete, as David Foster Wallace once observed, must "visit and test parts of his psyche that most of us do not even know for sure we have, to manifest in concrete form virtues like courage, persistence in the face of pain or exhaustion, performance under wilting scrutiny and pressure.” This mental strength, combined with the humility to glorify God rather than self, elevates the Christian athlete’s calling.

Success, in life and sports, is never fully within our control.

With this in mind, I spoke to Luis Fernando Aragón-Vargas, a professor at the University of Costa Rica, who has written extensively about the intersection of faith and sports. His nine-part series, “The Christian Athlete,” serves as a road map for athletes seeking to align their ambitions with their beliefs. For Aragón, the central question every Christian athlete must ask is: “Who gets the glory?”

Not the performers, who could easily fall into the idolatry of fame. Success is a gift.

He challenges athletes to examine their motivations, even suggesting that they imagine rejecting trophies if doing so would better honor God.

To Aragón, athletic talent is a pious gift — a responsibility to steward, not a tool for self-glory. Athletic competition, when viewed through this lens, becomes an act of worship, a way to honor God with the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.

This perspective is rooted in Scripture. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, uses athletic metaphors to illustrate spiritual truths: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

Sacrifice and dedication should guide all pursuits.

In 2 Timothy, Paul reflects, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Prayer as discipline

What does it mean for a Christian athlete to let his faith shine? Is it in the postgame prayer, broadcast to millions, or in the quiet moments when no one is watching?

Athletes live in the tension between public and private faith. Their victories and failures unfold in real time, under the world’s gaze. That vulnerability can be daunting — but it can also be a strength. Like the tax collector in Luke 18, they’re called to humility, to a faith that acknowledges dependence on grace rather than self-sufficiency.

The Christian athlete’s life is not about escaping vulnerability but embracing it as a path to authenticity. Prayer plays a central role in this balance — not just as a moment of personal connection with God but as a disciplined practice of listening and humility. Like athletic training, prayer requires focus, endurance, and a willingness to align oneself with a greater purpose.

The awesome moves of a gifted athlete are an outcome of prayer.

Jesus warns against performative faith in Matthew 6, calling His followers to pray and serve in humility. Yet in Matthew 10, He commands them to proclaim their faith boldly. The challenge for Christian athletes isn’t choosing between private and public devotion — it’s living with both, ensuring that what’s done in the spotlight is rooted in what’s cultivated in secret.

The value of failure

"Competitive athletics is broken," David Fraze told me.

Fraze, a longtime youth minister and professor at Lubbock Christian University, has spent 36 years working with Christian athletes. He co-authored Practical Wisdom for Families with Athletes, a guide to balancing competition, character, and identity.

Fraze believes faith changes the game.

Fraze touts the value of failure, an idea too often overlooked in youth sports. "We have Little League and Pee Wee, where we’re way out of balance," he says. "We’re giving them rings for winning a weekend championship. That’s sick."

Young athletes rarely get the chance to fail in a healthy way. When they do, parents intervene — switching teams, blaming coaches, throwing money at trainers.

But real growth comes through hardship, through discovering limits and learning to work within them.

For Christian athletes, this lesson matters beyond sports. "The Christian life isn’t about avoiding hell," Fraze says. "It’s about transformation." And transformation, like success in sports, comes through discipline — through small, daily habits that prepare a person for the moments that matter. "

Identity over emotion

“We process thousands of thoughts per second — maybe billions subconsciously,” Fraze told me. “I could tell you, ‘You’re great, you’re talented.’ But one doubt — ‘I messed that up’ — can wipe it all out.”

It’s not just sports. A single negative thought can drown out a flood of encouragement. And for many young athletes, those thoughts aren’t just internal — they’ve been reinforced by parents, coaches, or peers. “A lot of these kids have been told they’re stupid, fat, or not good enough,” Fraze said. “It takes a community to undo that kind of damage.”

That’s why sports matter beyond the game. A coach, a teammate, even the structure of a team itself can rewrite the narrative. “What do you bring to this team?” Fraze asks his athletes. “Because if your identity is tied to your batting average or your 40-yard dash, that’s a rough life.”

The sports world calls it mindfulness. Fraze sees it as something deeper — focus, discipline, and faith. Athletes train their bodies through repetition, refining small details until excellence becomes second nature. Faith works the same way. Prayer, worship, virtue — habits shape performance under pressure.

“Our identity determines our actions, then our feelings,” Fraze said. “If I start with feelings — ‘I’m tired, I don’t care’ — everything falls apart. But when identity comes first, everything else follows.”

Culture says to follow your emotions. Sports — like Scripture — teaches the opposite. A quarterback stepping into the arena may be struck by fear, but his training dictates his actions. Likewise, a Christian’s actions aren’t led by temporary feelings but by the identity given to him in Jesus Christ.

Deny yourself and be free

While modern life often encourages isolation and self-interest, Christian athleticism values connection. Sports provide a unique opportunity: to engage with the other is to step into a space of vulnerability and transformation. It is through the other — our teammates, opponents, and communities — that we redefine ourselves and encounter God.

For Christian athletes, this dynamic is lived out in countless small acts: the teammate who sacrifices personal glory for the team, the opponent who shows grace in defeat, the fan inspired by an athlete’s humility.

To run the race

Sports reveal humanity. Christian athleticism takes us even farther. It’s about striving for excellence while remaining humble, using sports as a platform to reflect something greater than ourselves.

The race Christian athletes run is not for trophies that tarnish or records that fade. It’s for a crown that lasts forever. Their boldness, discipline, and faith offer a powerful witness to a world hungry for something deeper than the game.

Sportswriter Ring Lardner is said to have said, “The only real happiness a ballplayer has is when he is playing a ball game and accomplishes something he didn’t think he could do.”

This definition does not apply to Christian athletes. They’re too intentional. The ultimate goal is not to win but to testify. Their platforms, their discipline, and their faith all converge in a single mission: to glorify God.

In their wins and their vulnerabilities, in their public prayers and private devotions, they invite the world to see something eternal.

In every act of sportsmanship, every moment of grace, they echo the words of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

The wild and tragic life of Audie Murphy, the war hero who became a movie star

About a year before Audie Murphy died, he told his life story to a reporter from San Antonio. The interview became a profile titled “A Different Kind of Hell.”

Murphy was in rough shape. Heavyset and bloated. Sad, with bursts of hope that bordered on mania. Washed up and broke, recently divorced, he spilled his guts to the interviewer. He spared no one, least of all himself.

Later in life, Murphy admitted, 'The only thing I’ve ever found I was any good at was war, which is a terrible thing.'

“I had one hang-up as an actor,” said Murphy. “I had no talent. I didn’t hide that. I told directors that. They knew. I didn’t have to tell them. They protected me. I made the same movie 20 times. It was easy. But it wasn’t any good. I never got to be any good. No one helped me. No one cared if I got any good or not. They used me until I was used up.”

Courage under fire

Audie Murphy began life with nothing.

His childhood was bleak, as one of 11 children on a dirt farm in Texas. His father abandoned them; then his mother died when he was 16. He only achieved a fifth-grade education.

Then Pearl Harbor was attacked, plunging America into World War 2. Murphy was short and scrawny and only 16, but he managed to sneak his way into the U.S. Army.

Coincidentally, Murphy was first sent to Casablanca, the setting and title of one of the greatest films ever made.

His battles spanned from North Africa, where he puked in the mud out of fear, to the beach invasions of France and Italy, then into Hitler’s shrinking stronghold. He said that his rifle was “beautiful as a flower and more trustworthy than your best friend.”

He fought in scorching heat and lifeless cold, killing men with his bare hands.

Once, he leaped into an abandoned tank, manned the machine gun, and fended off 250 Nazi soldiers and six tanks. Over the course of his combat, he killed at least 100 enemy soldiers, captured 100, and wounded 500, though he never wanted to know those numbers.

His bravery earned him 24 military honors, more than any other WWII soldier. He remains one of the most decorated soldiers in American history.

"I never liked being called the 'most decorated' soldier,” Murphy later said. “There were so many guys who should have gotten medals and never did — guys who were killed.”

Youth and ignorance

Murphy witnessed unimaginable horrors. "You never forget these things," he later said. "They etch themselves in your brain, and you keep seeing them. You try to put them aside, but they’re always there.

He fought until May 1945. He kept getting wounded, only to bounce back and return to the battlefield.

He often reflected that being a good foot soldier required youth and ignorance — qualities he had in abundance. At first, he believed he was doing the right thing and saw himself as a noble killer. But by the end of the war, he was hounded by doubt. When news of peace came, he stopped killing, even though the fighting continued. His aim faltered; his heart was no longer in it: “The desire was gone.”

It was all over before he turned 21. Returning home to a hero’s welcome, he told his story in a memoir, “To Hell and Back” (1949). James Cagney discovered it and invited Murphy to Hollywood. Murphy played himself in the film adaptation, and from there he became a Hollywood fixture.

Co-starring with Jimmy Stewart

Audie Murphy starred in 40 films, but I want to focus on “Night Passage” (1957) — one of his rare villain roles. “Night Passage” ranks among my top 10 Westerns — maybe higher. Critics hated it. Audiences didn’t care. Even with Jimmy Stewart and Murphy sharing top billing, the film faded into obscurity.

It’s mostly known for the drama behind the scenes. Murphy allegedly punched a horse in the face. Anthony Mann, the original director, hated the script’s stale brother rivalry and thought casting Murphy and Stewart as siblings was absurd. When Stewart insisted on playing his accordion, Mann quit, ending his creative partnership with Stewart — a collaboration that had shaped the Western genre.

But I think it’s a heck of a film. The story is simple: Grant McLaine (Stewart), a drifter with an accordion, returns to his railroad job to stop payroll robberies.

The film opens with whiplash credits, Stewart guiding his horse Pie through the Colorado mountains as Dimitri Tiomkin’s “Follow the River” plays. It’s a gem of an opening, followed by a massive, hilarious brawl.

Chaos builds until Murphy’s Utica Kid enters, revealing the two men as brothers — a Cain-and-Abel dynamic echoing “Winchester ’73” (1950). Dan Duryea, with his sharp laugh and perfect villainy, brightens every scene, especially his exchanges with the nonchalant Utica Kid: “You’re a funny man. You’ve always gotta be laughing inside. Well, go ahead, laugh. But get this, kid — I’m a better gun than you. Or would you like to try?”

My favorite scene is 11 minutes in, when McLaine (Stewart) guides his horse through a mountain tunnel. The light glides through darkness as he pauses, leaning over his horse, before riding into the Silverton woods.

Filmed in Technorama widescreen, it’s an unnecessary 40-second shot — but it’s enormous. It sets the pace, as any good Western should, embracing the underrated act of lingering. In that stillness, beauty emerges — raw, fleeting, unforgettable.

It’s a perfect representation of the goodness hiding in the Utica Kid, stealing moments in his quiet, calculating way. Villain or hero, Murphy holds the screen like few others could. Even in a flawed film, his presence lingers, much like the Western itself: full of contradictions, rugged charm, and something timeless that refuses to fade, even when flying headfirst into a mountain.

The ravages of PTSD

The 1950s were Murphy’s era. He played the soft-spoken hero, reactive, small, and almost frail; handsome, with a boyish face. But then you remember his war stories.

Later in life, Murphy admitted, "The only thing I’ve ever found I was any good at was war, which is a terrible thing."

For years, he couldn’t sleep, tormented by PTSD. He always kept a pistol under his pillow. His doctor prescribed Placidyl, a powerful and, it turns out, highly addictive sleeping pill.

In an Audie Murphy biography, a close friend described the damage: "Some people who saw him on Placidyl presumed he’d been drinking. The drug had the same outward effect as alcohol. Audie never drank." Murphy eventually locked himself in a hotel room to break free from the drug's grip.

He was terrible with money and fond of betting on horses.

'Washed up'

Everything changed for Murphy in the 1960s. His brand of hero had been replaced by the anti-Western antihero rebelling against conventions, apathetic to the great wars. The acting jobs vanished. Friends abandoned him.

“When word gets around you’re washed up, no one will touch you with a 10‐foot pole,” he said in the interview.

You take a little tumble, and suddenly they can pass you in the street without seeing you. When you call, they’re never in, and they never return your calls. They’re afraid you’ll ask them for a job. Even the hangers‐on move on. People who used to invite you to parties stop inviting you. The good tables in the swank restaurants go to others. Soon you’re lucky if you’re eating.

At 45, he was living in a furnished garage attached to his former home, $1 million in debt, and reeling from his second divorce. All of his miracles had disappeared. So he jumped at an opportunity in Virginia to be an ambassador for a company that sold pre-constructed houses.

Then, in May 1971, he and five others from the firm flew from Atlanta on a twin engine Aero Commander to Martinsville, Virginia. They got caught in a thunderstorm. Their plane crashed into a mountain in a wooded valley near Roanoke, Virginia.

All six died.

Murphy’s Hollywood friends didn’t show up for the funeral. He had been expelled.

"Life in Hollywood is not my idea of living, but it’s the only life I know," he once said. "Sometimes I think it might have been easier if I’d died on one of those battlefields. I wouldn’t have been unique. Lots of good boys died back there. I’m no better than they were. Who knows what they might have come to? A lot of 'em might have come to a lot more than me."

For one Irish fan, a glimpse of America

My dad grew up in Thurles, a small town in County Tipperary, Ireland, in a family unimaginably poor. One winter, they tore steps from their stairway to feed the fire. Movies, especially Westerns, were his escape. Like countless kids around the world, he found a hero in Audie Murphy.

Every time Murphy emerged on the screen, my dad and his friends would cheer and shout, “The boy!” (The boy was always the good guy.)

“There was no one else like him,” he’d say as we watched Westerns together when I was a kid.

It wasn’t just the movies; it was the posters that always caught his eye — towering images of Murphy hanging on the walls of Delahunty’s Cinema, the one everyone called “the one below.” The Capitol, “the one above,” was fine, but “the one below” was magic.

Even now, when he sees Murphy on the screen, something in him glows — a young boy, believing in heroes. Those Sunday matinees feel closer somehow, as if the years don’t matter.

For him, Murphy wasn’t just a movie star; he was the glory of America — the country my dad fell in love with through the silver screen.

Freedom, for him, wasn’t an abstraction. It was Murphy riding across the screen, six-shooter in hand, standing for something unshakable. It was America: distant, mythical, yet somehow close enough to touch.

Murphy’s story — the poor boy who became a war hero, a movie star, a symbol of American grit — spoke to him. It’s part of what drove him to move to America, part of the reason I’m here today.

And it was not an act: Audie Murphy described himself as a “super patriot.”

In the book “Audie Murphy: American Soldier,” Murphy talked about a visit to a French schoolyard at the end of World War II. He heard children singing and felt something bigger than the moment. It reminded him of his home.

“The true meaning of America, you ask? It’s in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman’s badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper. In all these things, you’ll find America. In all these things, you’ll find freedom.”

Kingstone Studios: Spreading Christ's kingdom through comic books

Art Ayris thumbs through a pile of mail on his desk, then raises several envelopes. “Here's two letters from prisoners: ‘Send us your comics.’“

Every day, Ayris, CEO of Kingstone Media, gets these requests for the Kingstone Bible — a three-volume graphic novel adaptation of the Good Book.

In America, only 7% of people have read the Bible cover to cover. 'If only 7% of people read the instruction manual for something, you’re going to have a problem,' says Aryis.

He chats by video from the headquarters of Kingstone Studios in Central Florida. Behind him are displayed posters from his various releases.

He’s lean, a lifelong jogger. With his black mustache and his shock of white hair and his striped gray shirt, he looks like an off-duty firefighter. Calm demeanor, somehow able to become passionate without losing his tone or his cool.

He tells me that the average inmate has a third-grade reading level. “They just haven't really gotten the education they need. They certainly haven't gotten the spiritual education that they need.”

He feels deeply for inmates — their blood has quite literally run through his body.

'They gave blood to save my life'

Ayris was 4 at the time. His father, a contractor, was pushing a lawn mower and didn't realize his son was behind him, when a projectile piece of wire flew from the machine, striking Ayris in the stomach.

“Then I can remember laying on the seat of the car as he's driving me to the hospital and, you know, blood coming out of my intestines.”

He arrived at the hospital in critical condition, but the real danger wasn’t just the injury — it was the rapid loss of blood. The hospital didn’t have enough.

In a desperate move, doctors reached out to the local prison. Inmates came to donate blood.

“They gave blood to save my life.”

An unlikely beginning

Ayris’ passion for comics didn’t begin in the traditional way — he wasn’t a child who spent hours drawing on everything. His mother, an accomplished artist, had passed down an appreciation for creativity, but Art’s path was far from conventional.

Growing up, he was known more for being a “rounder” in school, often suspended for his antics. Deep down, Ayris was bored with school and not interested in conventional art. Yet even as he found trouble in his youth, he also found the beginnings of something greater.

A fateful choice

Ayris comes from several generations of American soldiers, with family in both world wars. His father was a veteran. His favorite uncle died while serving as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

At 18, Ayris was ready to continue this legacy. But at the last minute, his parents urged him to go to college instead.

There, he began his lifelong soldierly role in a different kind of battle: a campaign of ideas and theories.

A deeper purpose

Ayris describes his life as one marked by torpedoes — unexpected crises that have forced him to confront his own mortality and the deeper purpose of his existence.

He recently told his wife: “When I really do drop, you’ll know it’s God’s will because He’s kept me alive through so many of these episodes.”

When he was 19, gangrene set in from his childhood injury, nearly killing him again.

“The doctors told me, ‘We have to operate immediately,’” he recalls.

But the first procedure didn’t solve the problem. As complications mounted, Ayris was given a grim prognosis: one last attempt at surgery, or he would need a colostomy.

“I was 19 years old, weighing 135 pounds — I looked like a POW,” he says. “They didn’t know if I was going to live or die.”

At Ayris' lowest point, when survival was uncertain, a Presbyterian pastor visited him in the hospital: “He shared the basics of the gospel,” Art tells me. “He walked me through it — acknowledging I was a sinner, believing Christ died for my sins, and confessing Him as my Savior. And it just made sense to me. My whole idea of living for myself seemed so stupid.”

Though the transformation didn’t happen overnight, that moment planted a seed. “It took me a while to get all the partying out of my system,” he admits. “But by my early 20s, I had fully committed my life to Christ.”

The experience of nearly losing his life imbued Ayris with a sharpened focus on eternity. “God gives us a great life here, but even the best life is so short,” he reflects. “I’ve lost friends who’ve stepped into eternity, and it’s made me realize that the next life is what I really need to prepare for.”

A born educator

Ayris' greatest talent lies in sharing knowledge. He was destined to educate.

In his 20s, he became a pastor while working full-time as a teacher and a football coach. It didn’t take long for him to confront challenges in the education system. “It was horrendous, what I saw in the public school,” he recalls.

He was hired by the only fully unionized school in the county, where fellow educators immediately pressured him to join the teachers' union. Reluctantly, he signed up.

“When I started reading those magazines from the [American Federation of Teachers] and the [National Education Association], it was like reading the manifesto of the Communist Party,” he says.

Within a year, Ayris left the union. “I didn’t care who got upset with me. I just got out.” The experience cemented his conviction that education in America needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Not long after, the church asked Ayris to leave his teaching position and join full-time ministry. “It was a good genesis,” he says, reflecting on how his path eventually led to creating comic books. “I’ve always had a conviction that Christian media should be better.”

Spreading the 'instruction manual'

While serving as a children’s pastor, Ayris noticed a concerning trend. Many of the kids he ministered to had little or no knowledge of the Bible.

Worse yet, in America, only 7% of people have read the Bible cover to cover. “If only 7% of people read the instruction manual for something, you’re going to have a problem," says Aryis.

So he set out to make the instruction manual more accessible.

He noticed that these same children were captivated by graphic novels and manga — stories that often lacked uplifting or meaningful messages. Rather than settling for the limited and often uninspired materials available for children’s ministry, Ayris saw an opportunity.

“There’s no reason we couldn’t create a Marvel for this market,” he says. His vision was simple but bold: Use comics to connect kids to the Bible in ways they could understand and enjoy.

The Kingstone Bible

Kingstone Studios

With this idea in mind, Ayris co-founded Kingstone Comics. Partnering with a team of 40 illustrators — many of whom had worked for Marvel and DC — he set out to create high-quality, engaging content for a new generation.

But for Ayris, Kingstone’s mission couldn’t be more different. “DC just had the Joker being pregnant, giving birth to a baby, and all that trans junk woke stuff,” he says.

The company's first major project, the Kingstone Bible, combined stunning visuals with compelling storytelling, offering kids and adults alike an accessible way to engage with Scripture.

"We’re not competing with Christian publishers,” says Ayris. “We’re competing with Marvel and DC.”

Batman and the gospel

Christianity has always had a rich relationship with the arts.

From gospel murals in ancient catacombs to the timeless masterpieces of the Renaissance, believers have used creative expression to communicate truth.

“If there’s anything that’s creative, it’s God,” Ayris says, marveling at creation’s diversity, from the weirdness of the platypus to the complexity of human beings.

At Kingstone, this divine creativity fuels the mission to share faith through modern storytelling, using comics and animation as vehicles to reach new audiences.

For Ayris, Kingstone’s work is part of that long tradition, a continuation of weaving the sacred into the creative.

But instead of stained glass or symphonies, Kingstone builds stories with panels, ink, and bold visual narrative — tools designed to resonate with today’s generation.

US Comics

As Kingstone grew, Ayris saw another cultural need: reclaiming America’s history from narratives that diminished its greatness. In 2023, he launched U.S. Comics, an imprint dedicated to celebrating America’s founding, its heroes, and its struggles.

The first series takes readers through the early days of the nation, from the arrival of the Pilgrims to Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.

The response to U.S. Comics has been overwhelmingly positive. Readers praise the depth and the comics' ability to make American history come alive.

U.S. Comics highlights the profound influence of Christian values on the country’s formation. “The founding fathers weren’t perfect,” Ayris says, “but there’s no question that America was founded on biblical principles.”

Kingstone Studios

The art of storytelling

Comics are a unique medium, relying on the sequencing of frozen images to create motion and life. Each panel is static, yet together they unfold dynamic narratives, immersing readers in vivid worlds of action and emotion. This makes comics a uniquely powerful medium for redemptive storytelling.

The superhero genre exemplifies this power but can only take it so far. Iconic figures like Batman battle villains across fiery landscapes and glittering utopias, their capes and armor symbolizing timeless clashes of good versus evil.

Despite their cultural impact, comics have often been dismissed as lowbrow entertainment, a diversion for the masses. For decades, they’ve been undervalued as an art form caught between writing and illustration.

Through Kingstone’s pages, the battle between good and evil transcends superheroes. It becomes a reflection of deeper spiritual realities. Whether introducing young readers to the Bible or offering fresh perspectives to seasoned believers, Kingstone blends tradition with innovation.

In prayerful hands, comics carry the weight of eternity.

The Constitution

U.S. Comics has also released a graphic novel adaptation of the U.S. Constitution. Art sees this as a critical tool for educating younger generations about the principles that shaped America, celebrating the dual nature of American identity — the individual and the community.

“The Constitution, like the Bible, is a living document,” Ayris says. “It continues to shape the nation’s direction. Through these comics, we want to reawaken a sense of reverence for the Constitution and help kids understand what made this country great.”

Created in collaboration with Joe Bennett, a former Marvel artist renowned for "The Immortal Hulk" and "Captain America," the comic pairs a rich historical narrative with striking visuals. It has quickly become one of Kingstone’s best sellers, reflecting a growing appetite for stories that honor America’s ideals and values.

Samaritan Inn

While building a career in comics, Ayris remained deeply committed to his local community, particularly through First Baptist Church of Leesburg, Florida.

Ayris spearheaded the founding of the Community Medical Care Center, a free clinic serving uninsured and medically vulnerable individuals. With the help of 50 volunteer doctors and eight dentists, the clinic now provides health care to over 7,000 people annually.

Then, working with his congregation, Ayris led the effort to transform the Big Bass Motel into the Samaritan Inn, a shelter for homeless families.

It was no small task. Converting the aging motel into a functional shelter required heavy finances and widespread community support.

He retold the story in his film “No Vacancy” (2022), featuring Dean Cain.

“Community is key,” Ayris says. “It's very important that communities pull together. When I made that movie, I wanted to show what happens when a community and a church work together.”

'A big Trump guy'

“I’m a big Trump guy,” Ayris says. “I’ve put up Trump signs, even out here in Webster. Sometimes, because I’m a pastor, people get a little frustrated with me. But I think they misunderstand.”

Released on June 14, 2024 — Flag Day and President Trump’s birthday — ”Trump 2024: Restoring the Glory to ‘Old Glory’” is one of U.S. Comics’ standout projects. The special-edition comic celebrates the story of Old Glory.

Flags carry a special resonance. They represent more than fabric. They embody the human condition.

“It is not just a piece of fabric. It’s a symbol of everything sacrificed for this country,” he tells me. “And if somebody starts spitting on the flag or trying to burn it in my presence, there's gonna be a hoedown.”

The heart of compassion

Most comics are mythology. They offer fiction and fantasy, a world of gods and heroes that hint at universal truths but often fall short of reconciliation. While there are plenty of historical comics, none quite matches the specific passion found at Kingstone, which has used the medium’s strengths — its ability to captivate and inspire — to openly proclaim the gospel.

In comics, heroes are often portrayed as mythical figures, elevated through their sacrifices and victories, becoming larger than life. But Kingstone’s heroes reflect a different kind of narrative. They draw from the Bible, where God stands with the victims, not the persecutors. Ordinary geniuses, sacred nobodies.

Kingstone’s mission is deeply tied to this Christian understanding of compassion.

The left has manipulated the Christian concern for victims. Today’s ideologies often co-opt the language of liberation, accusing Christianity of failing its own values while turning compassion into a tool of control. These narratives attempt to replace the heart of Christianity itself, using the language of justice to further agendas of power.

Kingstone confronts this distortion head-on, telling stories that present true compassion. Through Kingstone's work, comic artists transform the battleground of narrative into an opportunity to reveal the heart of the gospel.

In an industry dominated by mythology, Kingstone offers something profoundly different: stories that point not to fleeting heroes but to an eternal Savior, stories that don’t just depict battles but offer the ultimate victory of redemption.

They remind readers that the greatest hero of all didn’t ascend through conquest but through sacrifice — a story more powerful than any myth could ever tell.

“I never envisioned running a comic-book media company as a teenager,” Ayris says. “But God had to actuate my life, to bring out the gifts I didn’t even know were there. Once the Spirit of God fills you, you start discovering those things.”

Racers for Christ bring the gospel to motorsports

A sheet of paper adorns fencing in the pit area: “'F' WORD $1.00 FINE. PAY THE CHAPLAINS.”

The message, written boldly, sets the tone for the 39th annual Chili Bowl Nationals, the “Super Bowl of midget racing.” Born in the United States in the 1930s, midget racing has since gone global, with tracks on nearly every continent.

'We would love to invite anyone who loves Jesus and has a passion for motorsports to seriously consider joining our team.'

But the Chili Bowl is the world’s largest midget auto event and, as Bryan Hulbert put it in his opening speech, “the world’s greatest race in all of midgets.”

Outside the Tulsa Expo Center, the Golden Driller juts 76 feet into the air, looming over the remnants of a recent polar vortex — dirty snow piled in blackened heaps. But inside, the fumigated air is electric.

Kevin Ryan

Over six days, racers and fans have immersed themselves in every twist and turn, every victory and upset. Now, on a frozen January evening, the finalists rush to write their names into Chili Bowl history.

Out of 392 entrants, only 24 have fought their way into the A-Feature race, the championship finale. The grand marshal is NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon — a former Chili Bowler.

Kevin Ryan

Community and chaos

Each night at the Chili Bowl, a Racers for Christ team member delivers the invocation. For 55 years, this Phoenix-based ministry has served the motorsports community, from NHRA to dirt tracks, bringing a spiritual foundation to every corner of the racing world.

Jim Sheppard, an RFC chaplain with 20 years in the ministry and 12 at the Chili Bowl, described the group's mission: “If it has a motor, we’re part of it.”

Kevin Ryan

I spoke with Sheppard before the A-Feature, in the heart of the pit. He captured the ministry’s ethos in simple terms: “If someone has a passion for the sport and a passion for Jesus, that’s what we’re looking for.”

“The neat thing about the racing family is that everybody knows everybody,” he said. “It’s a very neat environment for building relationships.”

In the pit, there’s a sense of community and chaos. Rows of luxury trailers and mobile garages line the throughways, while drivers and crews huddle beneath team banners like Swindell SpeedLab and Abacus Racing, making last-minute adjustments and repairs. The camaraderie extends beyond the professionals, encompassing the fans who have made this pilgrimage for decades.

Comfortable being uncomfortable

Beside Sheppard stood Joey Keith, a veteran of the motorsports ministry since 2008 and with RFC since 2012. In addition to serving as a chaplain, Keith manages the South Central and West Central regions of RFC, a position he holds alongside his wife: “We travel as a family ministering to racetracks all across the central part of the country,” he told me later via email.

Keith, an ordained pastor raised in the Baptist church, credits his grandparents as his spiritual mentors. His journey into motorsports began at age 5, working alongside his father, who managed a racetrack in Tulsa, Oklahoma. By 15, Keith was racing himself, but at 26, he felt God’s call to ministry.

Recognizing a gap in spiritual outreach at local racetracks, he began leading weekly Bible studies and church services during race seasons. What started as a bi-vocational effort grew steadily, and by 2012, Keith transitioned fully into ministry, dedicating his life to serving the racing community.

“This ministry is not always comfortable,” Keith told me, “but I do not think we are called to serve and be comfortable. I tell our staff that it’s time to get comfortable being uncomfortable.”

History is filled with examples of faith shining in darkness. Over two millennia, an estimated 70 million Christian martyrs have faced terror with unshaken conviction.

Real life, they understand, takes place on the spiritual plain, not the intellectual or bodily. And life on earth spills everywhere, onto the dirt, out of dust, into mud, then back to ashes.

On the hook

The midget cars at today’s Chili Bowl are far safer and tougher than those at the first event in 1987. These tiny machines, powered by four-cylinder engines, are big enough for just a single driver to squeeze in through the roll cage. Even NASCAR once had a midget division.

Compared to the larger sprint cars with eight cylinders and 800 horsepower, midget cars have to be push-started by a truck or four-wheeler. This is also why they never stop moving — it would kill the engine.

“On the hook” is when a car has to be towed up the ramp to the pit.

Midget car racing isn’t just about skill; it’s also survival. These cars come with their own risks — mechanical failures and crashes often thin the field before the checkered flag waves. The rate of dropouts is known as “attrition.”

Attrition is a brutal reality. When a car spins and gets collected in another car's wreck, hopes of victory vanish in a split second. Arm restraints keep drivers safe in rollovers, and catch fences stand between flying debris and the crowd.

Plentiful harvest

“We’ve got guys who have been with the ministry since day one, and we also have new chaplains just starting out,” Jim Sheppard shared. Then he pointed to a nearby woman. “It’s her first event. So we have the whole spectrum covered.”

Kevin Ryan

“It’s not about a specific denomination; it’s about the heart and the calling,” Sheppard said. RFC’s team includes chaplains from diverse Christian traditions — Nazarenes, Baptists, Catholics — but their mission is the same: to train, educate, and spread the gospel to the racing community. “The most important part is the Christ-centered aspect.”

Joey Keith echoed this: “We would love to invite anyone who loves Jesus and has a passion for motorsports to seriously consider joining our team,” he said. “We get calls weekly requesting ministry support. … There is a hunger more than ever right now.”

As the organization looks toward the future, RFC remains focused on expanding its reach. There’s always more to do.

Keith closed his email with a reminder from Luke 10:2: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

His love endures forever

In the heart of Oklahoma’s Bible Belt, Racers for Christ find fertile ground for the mission. They can share the gospel freely, praying openly with racers and their families.

“Here, we’re able to be very vocal," Chaplain Jim Sheppard told me. "We can even say Jesus’ name.”

But the path isn’t always so smooth. In the Northwest, the ministry faces a different reality.

“There’s one racing group where I’m not allowed to say the name of Christ,” Sheppard admitted. But this leads to a resolution like Psalm 118 (“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”). Sheppard’s resolve is unwavering. “The relationships we’ve built over the years make it all worthwhile.”

Joey Keith echoed this sentiment, describing RFC’s approach as a full-spectrum effort to serve every corner of the racing world, to “touch every part of the event, whether it’s praying with drivers, praying for the Chili Bowl staff and safety teams, or being present in the pits with families and crews.”

Keith describes the ministry itself as a team, working together for a common purpose. The metaphor is fitting, reflecting the unity and focus needed in faith, a reminder that belief can thrive in unexpected places, even among roaring engines and dirt tracks.

Fighting the good fight

Before the A-Main, racers roll into a four-wide salute to the fans — a moment of unity and respect that electrifies the crowd.

Dirt racing isn't an end to itself. Its true purpose is not the results or even in its value as entertainment.

It is a pathway to improvement, a template for redemption. In 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul writes "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

I spoke with Luis Fernando Aragon, a professor at the University of Costa Rica. He forwarded a nine-article series about athletes who profess the Christian faith with an evangelical zeal. He argues that most examinations of Christian athletes focus on the use of religion or faith as “an inspiration to be more competitive, to train harder, to improve performance: the Christian faith as a tool.”

He offers a different angle: “Sports as a tool to help us be better Christians.”

At the Chili Bowl Nationals, faith is liberty — a God-given right, a truth rather than a theoretical concept.

Inside the Expo Center, surrounded by the smell of dirt and oil, attendees find sanctuary. Here, external conflicts fade away in the exhaust that creates such beautiful light beams through the air.

When a car crashed, my daughter gasped and said, “That’s why they need to go slow.”

Light on the dirt

As the wild final laps of the A-Feature race unfold, the dirt in the air thickens.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” declares Psalm 119.

In the humming glow of the arena, this makes sense. This light shines through every prayer, every race, and every quiet moment of reflection.

Several times throughout the Gospels, Jesus alludes to this Psalm: “Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness,” He warns in Luke 11:35. “If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”

At the Chili Bowl, that truth feels alive. Beams of light pierce the dust-filled air, creating an almost sacred radiance. People pray before races, look upward after victories, and trust in God’s protection.

The flagman waves the white flag. One lap to go — deeper into the oasis of metal and light, into the perfume of exhaust and wet clay and burnt rubber.

The record-breaking flight that started as a Las Vegas marketing gimmick

An old Ford pickup truck barreled down an empty highway full of sand, swerving to keep up with the single-engine, fixed-wing airplane puttering several feet overhead.

From the passenger seat of the truck, a man angled a bucket up toward another man who was dangling from the open door of the Cessna 172 aircraft with “LAS VEGAS: Hacienda Hotel” painted brightly on the fuselage.

On day 36, Timm dozed off for an hour during his shift. When he woke up, sweating, they were in a canyon, somewhere in Arizona, maybe California.

After the man yanked the bucket up to the plane by rope, he collapsed back into his crawl space and the plane crept a little higher, a little farther from the ground, circling Nevada, California, and Arizona, again and again and again, coming down only for supplies, twice a day.

By the end of their journey, in February 1959, the two men in the plane had accomplished a remarkable feat, and it nearly cost them their lives.

Fruitcake and mobsters

The whole adventure began with fruitcake. Apparently, Warren “Doc” Bayley, an eccentric travel columnist, liked fruitcake enough to buy his own fruitcake business.

The company did well, well enough that Bayley sold it for a sizeable profit. He used some of the money to buy land north of Fresno, California, where he built a hotel. He called it the Hacienda.

Bayley traveled a lot for his work. He had stayed in every kind and quality of lodging. For years, he had been imagining what the perfect hotel would be like. And he would build it. He knew it.

The hotel business suited him, and he quickly turned the Hacienda into a chain.

Soon, he was eyeing a much bigger, much riskier property in Las Vegas: a hotel on the then-unpopulated south side of the Vegas Strip called Lady Luck.

At that time, the Strip was an isolated, undesirable area, far from the rest of the casinos and hotels. Halfway through construction, the financing collapsed. Suddenly it was becoming too big a hassle. Everyone gave up on the hotel. They assumed that it was too far out of the way and too lavish to ever make its money back.

Undeterred, Bayley signed a 15-year lease at $55,000 a month. To succeed, he would have to make a big move. He would have to rebrand the Vegas experience.

At the time, Vegas needed it. Most casinos were still firmly in the grip of the Mafia, and the wiseguys were increasingly unable to hide the funny business, which often included murder.

Selling the Strip

Bayley's Hacienda would be Mexican-themed, a family-friendly casino and hotel in direct reaction to the seedy, salacious excess of old Vegas.

Putt-putt golf course. Go-cart track. A massive swimming pool. All at reasonable prices. Retirees from all over America would flock to the Hacienda’s iconic sign: the horse and rider in neon. And he was right. But in those early days, it was all dust and empty rooms.

All he needed was a gimmick. He’d tried the usual avenues: coupons, advertisements, faux word of mouth. He even hired attractive women to hand out flyers to passing cars.

It was time for something more drastic. Like any good salesman, he appealed to our imaginations.

Come fly with me

Human beings have always wanted to fly. We’ve always looked to the sky for hope. It’s where we’ve always wanted to go.

In his lifetime, Leonardo da Vinci wrote over 35,000 words and drew more than 500 sketches about flying machines and the nature of air. He was obsessed with bird flight. He wrote: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Da Vinci could never have foreseen the industrial revolution, not the way it came about.

The first commercial liquid-fueled internal combustion engine was invented in 1872. Aviation began 31 years later, on December 17, 1903, with the Wright brothers, who after four years of research and design efforts, made history with a 120-foot, 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina — the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine.

We’ve gotten used to flight by now, so it’s easy to forget that it’s only been a little over 100 years. Easy to forget that every time a plane takes off or lands, it’s a miracle. It’s unbelievable that a 300-ton Boeing 747 can fly through the sky, safely, full of passengers and stale pretzels.

Still, miraculous as flight is, most of us find air travel tedious, mind-numbing, and claustrophobic. An hour on a plane is enough to irritate many people. Twelve hours is unimaginable. Any longer than that, the flight attendants better have an endless supply of tiny wine bottles, or else people will start snapping.

What kind of lunatic would test the limits of sanity by staying on a plane one minute longer than needed?

A lunatic's bet

That lunatic was Robert Timm, one of the slot machine mechanics at the Hacienda.

Timm was a bear of a man. He’d been a bomber pilot during WWII, and he had a passion for flying. He convinced Bayley that an endurance flight was exactly what the Hacienda needed to make a name for itself.

Cleverly, Bayley designated it a fundraiser for cancer research. It was gambling, but for a good cause: People would guess how long the plane would stay in the air. The person who guessed the closest time would win $10,000.

It would take a year or so to build and customize the Hacienda Cessna 172. Now an aviation icon and the most-produced plane of all time, the Cessna 172 had only been available since 1955.

Timm and another mechanic installed a 95-gallon Sorenson belly tank on the plane. That way, they could refuel midair with the help of a Ford truck and an electric pump. They also rigged the plane so that they could change the engine’s oil mid-flight.

Roughly the size of a Toyota Camry, the cabin of a Cessna 172 can snugly seat four people (but not a toilet). They removed all the seats except for the pilot seat and converted the rest of the cabin into a tiny makeshift living area.

Timm had tried marathon flights three other times, but never stayed in the air longer than 15 days.

His second attempt came to a halt with a massive boom. As he wrote in his journal, “at 4 a.m. one morning the entire sky lit up." He had been in the air during one of the 57 above-ground atomic bomb detonations set off during 1958 in the Nevada.

To complicate things further, there was a brand-new flight endurance record to contend with. To beat it, the men would need to remain in flight for over 50 days.

Medallion status

Timm and his co-pilot, John Wayne Cook, took off from McCarran Field in Las Vegas at 3:52 p.m. on December 4, 1958. To ensure that the men couldn’t land the plane surreptitiously, a chase car painted white stripes on the aircraft’s tires from below. These would scuff should they touch down before their official landing.

Most of the time, they refueled in Blythe (a desert town on the California-Arizona border) or swung out to Yuma, Palm Springs, or Los Angeles — where they made the occasional radio or TV flyby.

Confined to that cramped space, their everyday life resembled that of a prison inmate’s: lots of aimless reading and repetitive exercise and never-ending games — anything to pass the time as they buzzed around the sky. They had a little sink back there, and they “showered” by pouring bottled water over their heads.

They refueled twice a day, mid-flight, as a hose from the Ford tanker truck latched to the belly tank.

The two men piloted in four-hour shifts and did their best to sleep whenever they could, on a four-by-four cushion made of thick foam. It was hard to sleep, with all the rattling and mechanical groaning.

Asleep at the wheel

On January 9, day 36 of their flight, Timm dozed off for an hour during his shift. When he woke up, sweating, they were in a canyon, somewhere in Arizona, maybe California. Luckily, the autopilot had done its job.

Years later, he told a reporter: “I flew for two hours before I recognized any lights or the cities. I made a vow to myself that I would never tell John what had happened.”

Though he never said anything to Timm, Cook was aware of the near-disaster.

“… it was 2:55 a.m. and he [Timm] was fighting sleeplessness. On autopilot fell asleep 4000 FT over Blythe Airport found himself ½ way to Yuma Ariz 4000 ft. Very lucky. We must sleep more in the day time.”

All their food had to be mashed into thermos jugs, which were hoisted up with their daily supplies. Every other day, they got a quart of bath water, a large towel, and soap.

Darkness visible

A little over halfway through their journey, the plane’s generator went out. It had powered the plane’s interior lights and heating and was used to pump the fuel into the wing tanks. After that, they had to use a hand pump to move fuel up to the wings.

When it got really cold, they wrapped themselves in blankets, shivering. They had flashlights and had strung some Christmas lights through the cabin, but other than that they flew in the dark, a beautiful, endless darkness.

Cook wrote in his journal: “Hard to stay awake in dark place — can’t use radio — can’t use electric fuel pump. Pump all gasoline by hand, using minimum lights. … Don’t realize how necessary this power until all of a sudden — sitting in the dark — no lights in panel to fly by — flashlight burning out — can’t see to fix the trouble if you could fix at all.”

By the end of the marathon flight, they’d lost the tachometer, the autopilot, the cabin heater, the landing and taxi lights, the belly tank fuel gauge, the electrical fuel pump, and the winch.

Several times weather interrupted their refueling, and they had to scramble for a new opportunity, eyes shifting from clouds to fuel gauge, over and over.

They broke the record on Jan. 23, 1959, but kept going for another 15 days, until the spark plugs and engine combustion chambers became loaded with carbon, weakening the plane’s engine.

64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes. They’d flown over 150,000 miles through the air, roughly six trips around the planet.

The record stands to this day.

After the flight, Cook said: “Next time I feel in the mood to fly endurance, I'm going to lock myself in our garbage can with the vacuum cleaner running. That is until my psychiatrist opens up for business in the morning.”

Secretly, however, I’m sure he missed that feeling, the way he lived in the clouds, in the blue of the sky, high above everything, soaring like a bird.

The strange and wonderful history of Vaseline

Goop. Sludge. Translucent putty. Petroleum waste.

Better known as Vaseline, which translates roughly to “water-oil.”

During NASA missions, astronauts brought Vaseline along as a multipurpose tool. In space, it was used for everything from skin care to lubricating equipment.

A household staple. A simple invention with humble origins and a multitude of applications, from the cosmetological to the astronautical.

Sticky muck for cuts and burns

Vaseline was invented in the 19th century by a 22-year-old chemist named Robert Chesebrough. Chesebrough discovered the medicinal potential of petroleum jelly while visiting oil fields in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The oil workers kept smearing sticky muck over their cuts and burns. It was a drilling byproduct they called “rod wax.”

After six years of research and experimentation in his lab, Cheesebrough refined the crude sludge. In 1870, he took his product to the streets under the name Vaseline.

What an unlikely sales pitch: “Smear this oil byproduct on your baby to cure diaper rash or slather it onto your face to cleanse your pores.”

America had spent seven decades being duped by snake-oil salesmen touting scientific wonders. Meanwhile, actual advancements were beginning to multiply. The discovery of bacteria was only a few years away, along with aspirin, vaccines, and chloroform.

A medical product had to provide results — quickly — in order to succeed. But Robert Cheesebrough had a plan for his miraculous goo.

A marketing masterstroke

In addition to his work as a chemist, Cheesebrough was also a marketing pioneer. He realized that people had to see the healing power of Vaseline in order to believe.

So he gathered a crowd, then cut and burned himself. With the confidence of the CEO of a bulletproof vest company, Cheesebrough told the gawking onlookers that he’d be back in a couple of days, good as new. And sure enough, his injuries had healed, without becoming infected.

His bold spectacle caught people’s attention.

He was also one of the first marketers to offer free samples. Pharmacies refused to carry the product. So he passed out glass jars of Vaseline directly to the people.

By the early 20th century, Vaseline had established itself as one of the most recognized and trusted brands in America.

Vaseline’s story even stretches into the space age. During NASA missions, astronauts brought Vaseline along as a multipurpose tool. In space, it was used for everything from skin care to lubricating equipment. Its versatility in such extreme conditions shows just how useful a simple product can be, even beyond the boundaries of Earth.

Mother Churchill's favorite

Vaseline also found its way into fashion.

One of the earliest celebrity endorsements of Vaseline may have come from Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill. She praised Vaseline for its beautifying benefits.

This blending of skin care and ornamentation was useful in the world of makeup, one of the great tricks of movie stardom. Since at least the Silent Era of Hollywood, actresses used it to glow on-screen. Marilyn Monroe supposedly used this technique.

In the 1950s and ’60s, men used Vaseline to glue their hair into perfect suavity. It wasn’t just for the well-groomed Don Draper types; working-class men also embraced it as a cheap way to control unruly hair. Like any good fad, this wasn’t pain-free: Vaseline is brutally difficult to wash out of hair.

Over the decades, it has shaped smiles at beauty pageants and kept brides luminous at their weddings.

Its most recent appearance is trend of slathering Vaseline onto your face overnight, in the viral TikTok trend known as “slugging.”

A spoonful a day

Over the course of its 150 years, Vaseline has been used medicinally in a variety of ways.

Diaper rash is one of the most common ailments Vaseline is used to treat today. Any parent knows how valuable this remedy is. At one point, it was even used to treat croup, the hacking respiratory illness that affects children. Today, people still apply it to kids’ chests and necks to offer relief from coughing.

In the early 1900s, Arctic explorers applied it to their skin in order to prevent forstbite as they trudged to the North Pole. This tactic is interesting in that it was a matter of survival, not relief.

But one of the most amusing examples comes from the inventor himself, Robert Chesebrough. When he was hospitalized with a case of pleurisy, he convinced his nurse to cover him in his redemptive balm. He believed in the healing power of his creation so deeply that he ate a spoonful of Vaseline every day.

Cheesebrough lived to be 96. Who knows? Maybe if he hadn’t eaten so much petroleum jelly, he could have made it to 100.

Work-first mentality

The college glut

Get in, get out, get working

'We're all about second chances'

Skill-based success

Once a horseman ...

Renaissance man

'I just did what made sense'

Pride of ownership

Designing for the real world

American craftsmanship

The mind of a maker

Precision at any speed

Track tactician

Giant among 'midgets'

Dirt-track dynasty

Crash course

The education of failure

Just tell the story

Manifest destiny

Granular details

Law and disorder

Assume it's a lie

In their brother's shadow

A crucial breakthrough

The forgotten Bean

A knack for showing up

Faith and athleticism

Fellowship on the field

Strong mind, strong body

Muscular Christianity

Who gets the glory?

Prayer as discipline

The value of failure

Identity over emotion

Deny yourself and be free

To run the race

Courage under fire

Youth and ignorance

Co-starring with Jimmy Stewart

The ravages of PTSD

'Washed up'

For one Irish fan, a glimpse of America

'They gave blood to save my life'

An unlikely beginning

A fateful choice

A deeper purpose

A born educator

Spreading the 'instruction manual'

The Kingstone Bible

Batman and the gospel

US Comics

The art of storytelling

The Constitution

Samaritan Inn

'A big Trump guy'

The heart of compassion

Community and chaos

Comfortable being uncomfortable

On the hook

Plentiful harvest

His love endures forever

Fighting the good fight

Light on the dirt

Fruitcake and mobsters

Selling the Strip

Come fly with me

A lunatic's bet

Medallion status

Asleep at the wheel

Darkness visible

Sticky muck for cuts and burns

A marketing masterstroke

Mother Churchill's favorite

A spoonful a day

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