Latah County Oral History Collection

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Often they'll have it in quite late. I didn't mean to have somebody I met for dinner right away, but everything just seemed to go against me. I just couldn't find. I don't know anything about writing up things for the paper. My sister would be good at it because she was just a natural composer. She could just write compositions or anything.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She wrote such a wonderful story, in my view, of anything in the world. And about our trip from California horseback. She and I, you know, to save her passes. We didn't want to leave there, so we moved up here and she and I, we wrote our hardships every step of the way from California to Moscow. Took her just a month.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I was only 12 and it was a ball for me, but a hard trip on my mother. But she was a widower, my father. That's why she had to leave the farm. So we went from up here where all her relatives were, would come here from Illinois and settled here. I come here, so we wrote a porch back and she gave that is when she was going to university.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She's four years older. And I when she was going to university, she knew that. I don't suppose she told you that? What did she know? How much you drag it out of her. But she she had to have a theme of some kind of knowledge. And I entertained the assembly very turned on each one. Have to take their turn when you know when I'm coming.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: So she didn't. She couldn't think of anything that she could write they'd be interested in, and that would be that. So she meant she kept a diary that and I didn't you know, she kept a diary and been having a good time. So she gave the diary, kept the diary, and then she made a she composed my son.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I said, and I should have been a composer and a writer because it's just as natural for her and it isn't for me at all. So she did. And I guess I never heard it, but I guess it was wonderful. And the kids, the big audience she had there from Home university, you know, and she was kind of nervous, I guess.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But they just required as much and they were just spellbound. When it's all over, I want her to go to that. Did you really do that or just that kind of provoked her? And she said, I'm not sure I can prove every word of it. And then, you know, just just a few days later, that university building burned down, the old university burned.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And we could sit up there all night in our house on spots with modern Subha, you know, and look right down and watch it burn with that. And I went and learned she just cried because everything she had all her notes and everything were in it and everything she'd prepared. And this this diary and all of that stuff.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: We lost it all. Well, Mr. Newman up here, and he was principal of schools, and he came to me and he wanted that story to put in the paper. And the paper came to me and they wanted it and everybody wanted that story. I couldn't do anything about it. They've done that for years. They still do because it's gone and she can't remember it.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She says. She said she thought she could find some of the maybe that part of the diary or something, but she never did and she never tried very hard. I guess she uses then she she quit school. She had a nervous breakdown and losing all that and her work and all the books and she'd have to go and she had to walk back and forth.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: It was a mile and she wasn't. She was quite frail, so she just didn't go back anymore. And she got married and went out on the farm and out there she went to religion. She had a beautiful home there and even lived in hardships. Just gorgeous.

Sam Schrager: Well, what how do you remember that trip on the way? Do you remember very much about it?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: not like she did the places we stopped and things like that. You know, I just remember.

Sam Schrager: That was a pretty calm trip. It was pretty adventurous.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, in some ways, and often hard on my mother because we had four horses on one big wagon and my brother rode that, too. They didn't want to come that way, but it's the only way we could get the horse. They didn't have carts for taking horses like to do now, and they didn't have good roads like they do now.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: They didn't have automobiles like they do now. That was 1930 and I was 12 the day we left there. But we would like to ride and I'd ridden ever since. We don't have to sit on a horse. And we we raised we were on a big cattle ranch and here in Nevada mountains with a five foot in a valley and that beautiful.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: We could just get all game and all appreciate anything you wanted. Just go out. Maybe just sometimes they come right down in the yard there and things, you know? And the nicest water. There was three streams run through our farm and it was a hey, hey country to pay for the cattle. And and then we had the government range in the wintertime, in the summertime, while Hay was getting ready to do that, we didn't raise range and things like that.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And it you could go and get three or four deer. They used my pony a lot for that because you just come with here and couldn't show and you wouldn't, you know, and they'd come back and poor Johnny. I was telling Johnny I had two or three, but he was my favorite, but it had him just covered. You can just see there's a little deer overhanging them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And then they of course, they had no refrigerators in those days or anything like that. You know, they had fewer of the, you know, and they could go down in the swamps and get ducks and geese.

Sam Schrager: They they smoke them. Either can.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But smoked it. And then we had cellars and and put some of it you brine and made sausage and put it down and my mother was a wonder and she never done anything like this little bit of a thing that she did at all. I would like to had a whole history of my mother's life. My life she lived it was moved was they were homesteading thing and wild animals would come down, you know, right down to your door and they'd come down and kill the chickens and tell her everything.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And once in a while the men were gone. And once she went out and we were little tiny kids, my sister and I and I went out and her great big rattlesnake out there all coiled up. And we were all the cats. We had cats and kittens were all piled up around, you know, in a circle. And they had you be hypnotize them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And we had these piled up. And then it was kind of the flipping, you know, and making those rattly noises. And my poor mother, she could always use her head in a time of climax, you know, And she didn't have a gun. So she went back in and go back and get an ax. It was a woodpile and that and if she didn't chop that thing and to save all of the cats and dogs and everything, they just hypnotize little things.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: They just they were just, you know, as if they were dead and then another time a mountain lion come down and got one of the kids out in the yard where the cows were and she was milking. Man, my father was gone. So she was milking and she didn't know what to do. So she got the aunt big dog.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: He was just cowering up against her and trying to crowd up for she didn't know they were going around. He kept crying and kept pushing up the arms to kind of get her to go out, you know, for the know that you but she didn't know what was the matter. And then she got up, looked around, and there he was just really didn't get one of the cows on the ground there.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And so she just opened the door and let the cows been the best they could get. Got to go with her. And she went down to the house. And I guess after he got Bernie was satisfied, then he got enough to eat, so he left. But she just had things like this all the time. We fell. I fell on them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: So when I was just a little thing, I don't know, average, of course, I was in a rock, ginger and a stick of wood in front of me to keep me from going over on my head. But I do little too hard. And I went over that until I red hot stove and I want to get all scars.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But and that my whole chin was just purple for years and it just like just left my skin on the stove. Well, she was 25 miles from my doctor. No road, no home life. She said that she was a perfect nurse. She never had training. But that little valley where we were, she everybody died. She had help lay him out.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And every time anybody was going to have a baby, they'd get on a horse and come to her. No phone, you know, over of the mother at all, and get on a horse and go prepare and, you know, take care of her, charge The thing for anything she ever did. And she was just Aunt Laura and everybody.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She certainly deserved a lot of stars in her crown. I hope she she to me, she's the most wonderful human being I've ever known to think what she went through and she.

Sam Schrager: And what did she say to move up here?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, she thought, well, you have a better chance to get an education because we were 25 miles from her place. We could go to get a education and found hers is the county seat of Modoc County. We were in the seat of the oldest in the war in Modoc, Indian War. We had to go out and pick up a lot their audience and things.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: You know, we brought them here. And my boy that stayed with mother to go through and near because it was rough for I couldn't get enough. They had a farm out here so she camping and all for nothing been burned washed farm and everything like she always did. goodness. How people complain now about things she had nothing to do with.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: There was nothing modern in those days. But we bought a home here and then we went on this girl and she was disappointed that we didn't. Would she want us to take music, which we did, and to give us the best she could? You know, she didn't have a lot of money, but she wanted to get good. So that's why we came up here and we couldn't stay there and run Little Farm.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: You had to hire help. And they were quite a big place and and all the cattle, beef cattle had been sold. So many factors.

Sam Schrager: So what kind of things happened on long trip?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, I know.

Sam Schrager: With the horses pretty hard to.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, we had an awful time when we got down here on Tuesday. There was a ferry across the river down at Louis, and there was no bridges then. And the horses were scared of ferries. And I never seen one, never been on one on some of the horses for quite a while. We were bringing the extra extra horses out, driving them down.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I were, but they followed the Kings pretty well. But when you go to that ferry, well, I mean, it got on with the wagons all right. And their horses were so worn out, I didn't have much. And they got scared and they broke loose the loose ones and went up the river, you know, just broke down. And that mother was just keep bringing her hands down.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: We went after what we had to get out of and bring them back to see or get. Maybe they get in trouble with the same people too. Of course it wasn't. Things weren't modern and nobody thought anything about those things in those days and not every day. But anyway, we finally did get and headed off and for a moment it just hysterical.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She just thought we'd go off into the river and they would or something. She just knew we would. But that was the most exciting thing, I guess that happened. But many times we had to drive. Maybe think, what a party. I guess before forever. That's an awful lot for 40 miles. Couldn't come to any water and places to stay all night and feed the kids, you know.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But I can't. Stella could be. She'd be a lot better about that. We'd talk to her about it.

Sam Schrager: And I did. But I was just wondering about, you know, about your reactions. If you. If I knew about her. What she said that.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She didn't enjoy it. Yeah, she's not that kind. You know, she'd like to stay in the house and cook some of the things like that that.

Sam Schrager: Not that you enjoy the camp.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: yes, I did.

Sam Schrager: How did. How did your camp work?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: wonderful. We had it all planned, planned and all the wonderful. And we had this big wagon. Great, big old. I don't know, like big enough was covered like the prairie schooners, but it was bit like that and had everything in good shape. And this of the two horses, if they had lost a shoe and her brother brothers were real good, some of them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And fact they're part of the heart of America at night, we all well, don't think it was a pretty little. It was. You like to take a nap once in a while. Wanted to get into a town, you know, once in a while. And there's too many. And I'm worried about it. Terrible. But we we made it, and she didn't.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: He promised he wouldn't. When me left out her, she promised her sisters and the rest of her family there be more than 20 kids. They're all dead now. Everyone. I'm usually one of them. And she had never told my family. And the first time I've ever had sisters, most of them were out in the west someplace and Oklahoma around here.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But anyway, we got we had to make those extra long trips and cause everybody in the horses, we just completely begged them. Coming up the hill that same day we had the back to the ferry was the old highway comes up a different way and it's just nothing but a trail you might find. The horses gave out, kept giving out on the wagon.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Big wagon. So we never stopped putting another marshal. We had a masters. We were driving. It could be used, you know. So we stopped putting more horses myself, I'm sorry, farmers. And they were so faithful. But yeah, we got here. And I remember when I get to the top of a hill and all that, so I always my mother just crying.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She just like, God, I guess that would maybe get through. But I didn't get anything about me. Then when I got in town, the horses just scattered. We didn't know what to do.

Sam Schrager: Did you? Did you know or the family was?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Not exactly. But we didn't have any. We found them. The not so nice feller, Bunyan Starnes lived out that way. I later was in school with him and he was about my age and he come along and we found the town. He helped us and he helped me get past the other end. And he told us about me.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And he was a crook, but he helped drive me to Moscow. And we ask for money for the Howard Springs grandmother system. And he wasn't funny with it, but they had a big barn and we put the harshest stuff up for the night. The worst thing of the whole blizzard. My mother's brother lives around in this corner house.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: He wanted us to bring the horses. He said it was no surprise for him here. He says it would be best to bring with it because we have quite a lot of my minorities and it's kind of a hobby, but it's all of us. But, you know, by that time, the bottom went out of horses and I was old enough to knock off of him and we just couldn't sell them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And we they put them out there on those, just on those sort of stacks of strong. That's all I had all winter. They were not used to that to in the barn from having my hay. I don't know. They, some of them died, dried up and that just broke our hearts and we couldn't sell them to anybody. Nobody wanted horses because they just couldn't pay.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: What I'm trying to get it didn't want. So that was an awful heartbreak for my mother after coming up here to save our horses. And that was one way I never have been treated before. I they got us up here and we're so faithful here this year and then lost month. And then I had to sell my volume and I've known that I never would have come.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I guess I cried if I cut off part of his main put a ribbon on it and care for four years. I took the money and bought myself a lot if I was going. Looking very good too. So you know about it. And we have had a party with my mother and my sister had an awful rocky road.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: She had a hard time communication from the work all the time. You keep busy.

Sam Schrager: Busy mother.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, she almost had to. We didn't have enough. We had all the things they were managing after she died that we sold.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But, you know, maybe so. Maybe, you know, I'll say, Well, we had one of the best farms and he was a good farmer and then have had insurance. So the family run out with my son is the last one, or she's got children or grandchildren and all have not like the marriage of.

Sam Schrager: Well, when you went to work for pennies, you were the you were the first player. How many other people were working then? I don't know. I don't remember that. Was it a pretty big store at home?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: This was a small store to drive down here on the farm where I was. Okay. You know, the first store here, this picture you can imagine might be finished was a dinky little town. And wintertime time.

Sam Schrager: What it was what was it?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: How long after it cleared? Forgot the person you may not even want. Find out any of that stuff.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. what was it when you first when was word opinions? Was it still called the Golden Rule and Open?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Have you read that? It's all in there. Mr. Brewster's coffee was one of the prime seats. That story. And it takes a long time. But the best thing to do is read the whole thing and. And just cut off what you think I'd like to have it in here. But how successful she was with this over here then and she left here.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I think that in an instant most people are here. She was stage at the age of 61. Most of us think of retirement. She wrote this because her children wanted to leave, but she didn't want to write anything about that. And they said that she had this girl, my brother and I want to say something about what their going to like.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, we're going to go. And she wrote Mrs. Coffee A to me and wanted information about what all the stores and we opened and different ones and I could tell about because she wanted to get them all in here. But she had been associated with me. She was the these people here all penny man, they every one of them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: This is me here. And then I wonder if you just dad is in the paper. His sister was working for him and he were from here, and he told me stories when he got so he knew enough. You know, he was in managed Colfax store.

Sam Schrager: Which was one of these youth that.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I was in, but I wasn't married and my husband wasn't here. And so we were I mean, you know, every one of those were couples that had stores here, around here someplace. And I couldn't bring Mr. Coffee. And she had this party and dinner for us. And this was taken at the same time you way and so forth.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And those are the things the girl I think I'll send addition and I've got two of them, but I don't want to keep it in a dorm once. And this the this car and some of the name of it, an old timer. But it was a very valuable car. And this back, you know, that's up you see the shovel down here they confiscated during the war, you know, and they confiscated the volume over there and wouldn't let him take it home with my last name.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: He was stole a year or two getting it. But this is Mr. Penny or Mr. Penny sister here, and that's Mr. Penny. She wasn't married yet, and Mr. Penny's wife was dead. And then these children all belong to a penny. Some did not. And this is a shelter. But this little girl here with his sister's little girl wasn't appropriate.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But they all came on their mind and knew it all. And a little five and a half. And I go through it some way. But he finally got his car back and I think, I guess it cost an awful lot to run it because it was a big, heavy thing. And and one of the first cars, 19 three, you know, there were two men about her about me start with and you take this you you go through it won't.

Sam Schrager: Take them.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But I can't do anything about it.

Sam Schrager: Well the penny the have given the same kind of stock because it.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Was only for some of them stores hadn't had their big money. So she had one in program. The county's the biggest director and a bank. And I guess they got one more time. I have know, so I don't know. But they said you can buy anything. You couldn't find any big department store even. Thank you. Same here. I think they're just great.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: We, of course, wasn't even making that one. That moved a couple of times. And same store number ten years this opportunity for himself. this was interesting to me. And I think that that was nice. But my paper. But I don't know how you're going to get off the paper. And I wanted him right away.

Sam Schrager: Ultimately this way.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But she's so busy, I don't know how she can do it. The company was expanding rapidly. Well, the name was changed in 1913, January 1913, the No new stores name was changed to the J.C. Penney Company. Now that is is put in the paper now. And it was incorporated to Salt Lake City in Salt Lake City under the Utah law was to name has incorporated in Berkhamsted south is one of the 20 something you know I don't know what it meant after all.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well it's kind of something, you know, they find solutions. A lot of this is in corporate settlements. And, of course, you know, first you mentioned that she was a wonderful man here tonight. Mr. Penny died. She wrote me. But a few days later, she was in bed and was really, you know, had five or had her last reading liver.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And she heard that announcement, which she said it was later said she got so much. I mean, everybody knew somebody.

Sam Schrager: Did he come out personally and and then visit the store here in the open.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Knowing that it might be visited always very wrong. And he was able to do or she didn't get through, but he did go wrong last year, but not the last few, because he was 96 years old, maybe five or six. Funny guy. And his goal, he wrote me every Christmas and I swear you wrote me. Well, he passed my five now.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: He was pretty sure he'd make 100 and he would have only been found if he can't. And after that, he mentioned your family. He had a wonderful, wonderful wife. And she writes me darling letters. Well, if I had met her at the Mother of the Year banquet in New York City, they had a big man at one of the swankiest places there.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I forgot what it was. And she told me and she had a piece of paper. So when you come back, she don't mind putting pieces of paper, but you know, I don't like doing that. I just don't what I want to put in when I want to keep out hard, I just want to get somebody to do that for me.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Anything. I don't try to keep that stuff up there, but I never meant to be seen about him up there. I don't know what's the matter with the mind. I gave him the four tears that I had, and I guess reason was every place I had seen Big Harry Brown or Courtier home.

Sam Schrager: Very big and.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Big, in fact, about our family here in New York, Mr. Bennett. And every year when I had to clean house and redecorate, well, you got no one, of course. And so they didn't have anything. They just pulled him up. But when he was out, business was there. We just moved in this new house. He got real nice home, big home.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But there was big doorways between that. And they're all going upstairs, you know, And for me, type family and it's so warm there and he didn't very many have furnished. We just turn it off and we just used the fireplace and then to be a little chilly in the evening sitting out. So he said, I think that's what I'm going to do when I get home.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I guess, you know, Joe Regan, I'm going to send you those for two years and just sit here. And I said there was a big Norway, there was an open, you know, double talk. And he says, I have to just sit here because I came out and all. And so then he measured and left around there and left very long after that.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I got there, so I never had too many heard of my mother. I got this big package besides that, he had 12 yards of lovely velvet, nice velvet to match. real good and golden brown. But the poor tears were smoky and smile that way. You know, they don't the way they never get done. Very small. And from the outside, you know, big city that way.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But he didn't tell. But they were awful heavy. And I never knew what to do with them. And they were interline too happy, you know, not just to two thicknesses, but then it was Lightning McQueen, of course, the quarterback behind me, and I always dreamed I would use them and how they were so wonderful. But I didn't. And I, we moved too many times.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I got tired of just selling a home. Like I said, I'm not the one that should stay in a hotel or rent or something, but I know what I have to go on ahead to not get started on. And then I left.

Sam Schrager: Well, how many stores did did you did you start? Well, we.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: You see in those days you could.

Sam Schrager: The.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: A man and when he was able to run a store then you could start him might on a new store and you would get a third interest in it. And then we had a third interest in five stores and I went over there. It was a mess when we had this bank because everything was just looming over there, just getting ready to be through.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And so that was then they had to write a new law. You couldn't do that anymore. You had So we had to make a conversion. We had to sell all of my stores, you know, an interest. And that's where we got so much money we had, which then was $500,000. I mean, for a third interest, that was big.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Then. Now we first that we were five that. But he put it on the stock market. He'd just gone crazy on the stock market, buying and selling big blocks of stock that you could buy it for a very small margin in those days. And then then you had to pay for it if anything happened. Well, then this just about two years after that, he got in real deep and 1929 and thirties when we had that awful depression, everybody lost partner putting off, leaving their homes and you couldn't even write a check.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Good check on what you in the bank. You couldn't get your money out of Mexico. No, I and so he had to they closed down on him and my loan on it margin Medicaid. It took everything with me and we lost our home and lost everything. And then he lost his house. Never had anything since.

Sam Schrager: Well, how long did the coffee stay at the Penny store here in Los?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And we said, Well, I guess it's in here someplace. So they came in. They opened the store in 19. I don't know when he came. He died in 35. She was would be like 35 now and I would wanted this in the paper kind of. Anyway, however, it was the year she did, she bought this business of the she but she rescued a faltering product called Individual Boots by forming a new company to manufacture and distribute this novel for Rainbow Rainbows.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: However, it was over a year before the first sale was made and most ordinary people would have given up and in a minute minimized. I can't read where you're sitting. I see their offices, but Mrs. Coffee saw the potential and persisted until original Boots became a household word. After many years of active participation in when it was certain the company would survive and be successful.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Mrs. Coffee sold her interest in the business and retired. That's when she turned it over. I didn't know, she told me, because her kids are still running it because they spoke about, I guess, sold it to them. Mrs. Coffee enjoyed creating poetry about that.

Sam Schrager: Would you know, how long did did you work for them in the school store?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, I left there in 19. That's I got married and left the next day and went through to thing, you see. And I was married you a 5920 seconds now prior to 27th. And then I left here in May.

Sam Schrager: It was in 19 1913.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: And so I was only with them about three years.

Sam Schrager: In the store. Change a lot in those three years. you grow up quite a bit.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Just of course, Postal was nothing like it is now.

Sam Schrager: It was a competition. Pretty, pretty stiff. I don't know if.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: It was you know, they're not they weren't very ambitious. The same people in business. You have freedom and all. You're not broke down from generation and they try to keep everybody else out of here. They don't want anybody in business. Davidson didn't work right. They run the stores this town for years.

Sam Schrager: That would come just pretty hard to bring a new store like.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Well, I don't remember it back. And part of it we never discussed that, but people thought what kind of stores, working people especially like to train their fruit and was nice for children and family. Many stuff like that. It was good. But if you want to move in now, they gave it. And then when we got our sources saying that was prospering, that and you really got a mixture, right?

Bess Beardsley Whitman: Yes. Get the nicest kind of clothes that happens. I guess. Well, I'm to have to find it. I thought you were going to be with the Idaho. You too.

Sam Schrager: Well, we do work with the economy.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: But I left everything in.

Sam Schrager: That was a sissy. How much more information we had. And then.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: The time. I don't. I can't give any more questions here at all. I've done. I thought that's all I needed. That's all I need to put in the paper anyway. But I don't know anything more what I told you.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I forgot all that stuff when you years, many years between now and then that I can't remember. I wasn't here, you know, I couldn't tell you anything about what happened.

Sam Schrager: What, what were your wages when we first started.

Bess Beardsley Whitman: I don't. Don't even.