Breaker Whiskey

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I realize I said “on my way back” yesterday. That I’d hit New York on ‘my way back’. I—

[click, static]

I don’t know why I said that. I would chalk it up to force of habit but…this is the first time I’ve left Pennsylvania in the whole time we lived there. 

It’s possible that it just hasn’t hit me yet, that I’m really…done. 

[click, static]

I keep…

[click, static]

..it’s not that I’m turning and expecting Harry to be there. The last few months before I left we were barely in the same room for more than fifteen minutes at a time. But, it’s like…

[click, static]

My hair is starting to get past my shoulders. And the fact that it had already gotten past my chin by the time I got out of there—well, I like to keep it short and Harry would always cut it for me, but because we weren’t really on speaking terms…well.

I’m perfectly capable of cutting my own hair—hell, I could just shave all of it off. I barely look in the mirror anyway. But that was a habit I formed—Harry cuts my hair so I don’t have to think about it. Especially since she somehow always seemed to know when it was starting to bug me and would sit me down at the kitchen table, scissors in hand. I wouldn’t even have to say anything, she would just—

[click, static]

It’s odd to think about. That I didn’t think twice about letting Harry stand behind me with a sharp implement.

[click, static]

I guess our relationship was a bit like nuclear destruction in that sense—when everyone has an H-bomb, you can’t press the button without spelling your own destruction. When you’re with the only other person who is fighting to survive in a world that’s gone topsy-turvy, hurting them could resign you to a terrible fate. 

[click, static]

Then again, I left. And I don’t—I don't feel like I’ve doomed us both to ruin. I guess that’s the difference between those first few chaotic, frightening years and where we are now, after spending half a decade figuring out how to muddle through. 

We’ve done it. We’ve muddled. And maybe I’ve doomed us both to a life lived without any meaningful contact with another person but, well, that actually, you know, assumes the contact between us was meaningful in the first place. 

Proximity does not equal closeness. 

[click, static]

I hope the opposite is equally true. You and I may not have physical proximity—though for all I know, you’re just around the corner—but I hope we can have some kind of meaningful interaction. 

C’mon Birdie, talk to me. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is WAR1974 calling out for Birdie. 

I’m making my way South now, for real this time—first stop, Memphis. I wonder if I could sneak into Graceland. I just—I can’t imagine living in a house like that. And I’m assuming….well, if Elvis and his family were still living there, surely they would have figure out how to get some kind of word out to…someone. They have, you know, private jet planes and everything. 

[click, static]

It’s weird to think about someone like Elvis just…vanishing, or whatever it is that happened to everybody. It feels like something that wouldn’t happen to famous people somehow. Like the privileged few would be privileged enough to skirt doomsday. 

[click, static] 

I can’t say that I’m too sorry that Dick Nixon seems to be out of the White House. It’s not that I don’t want anyone in charge, but I sure as hell didn’t want him in charge. 

[click, static]

Oh man, I just realized that there’s a good chance you’re someone in the government—it would explain why you’re transmitting a signal strong enough to be caught on my shitty CB. Unless I really am just damn lucky and picking you up on skip. 

[click, static]

If you have been listening to each of my transmissions, then you can probably guess that I’m…pretty much the opposite of a government worker. Though, that wasn’t always true—when I was eighteen, I worked in the post office for a few years. I’d hoped to pay my way through college, but I never did get around to going. Spent the money getting to New York City where I fell into what became my real profession. 

Maybe I’ll drive into the city on my way back—I can’t imagine what the city is like right now. All…empty. Sometimes I’d get overwhelmed by the crush, but I’d do anything to stand in the middle of the Village again and let thousands of people pass me by. 

I said New York was the closest to a home base I ever got and that’s true. I didn’t really have, you know, an apartment or anything, but I knew enough people to have a place to crash and sometimes I could find a sublet for a few months. 

I guess that’s why I didn’t think twice about packing my shit into this car and getting on the road. I’ve lived out of one duffel since I was fifteen. 

I could have my pick of New York City apartments now though. Live in the Plaza, get a penthouse on Park Avenue. 

I don’t know, the fun of New York is the people. It wouldn’t be the same. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static] 

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, calling out for Birdie. Birdie, do you read me?

[click, static]

Hello?

[click, static]

Worth a try. I know it’s early, and I don’t even know what time zone you’re in but I could barely sleep last night I was so excited. I fell asleep wishing that I’d wake up to the code changing and you did not disappoint me. 

“I’m Birdie”. That’s what you said.

So, hello, Birdie. It’s very good to meet you. 

[click, static]

It’s odd, I feel like I don’t know what to say now. I don’t know exactly how long you’ve been listening, but I’ve been rambling absolute nonsense into this thing for the last month. 

A month. It doesn’t feel like a month. It feels like I left yesterday and like I’ve been driving for years. And I’ve barely wandered five hundred miles from where I started. I’m on the most inefficient road trip ever. 

[click, static]

Road trip implies a destination, though, which I haven’t had. I’d like to have one now. I’d like wherever you are to be my destination. I know you don’t know very much about me—though you know more than most people I’ve ever met if you have heard all of these transmissions—and for all I know, you could be some kind of serial killer who’s run out of victims, but I figure we have to try. 

[click, static]

I’m not the optimistic sort usually. I don’t know that I believe all humans are fundamentally good or what-have-you. I think most people are pretty selfish and even though I don’t actually have a clue, I’m assuming whatever happened six years ago was caused by our own stupidity or cruelty or an unholy combination of the two. 

So maybe you’re just as bad as eighty percent of the people I’ve come across in my life. Maybe you’re the kindest soul left in the world. Maybe you’re somewhere in between. 

But you’re alive. You’re not a relic from before, you’re not some kind of automatic radio signal, you’re talking to me. So that’s worth the risk in my book. 

Do you know what happened? Are there other people with you? Have you stayed in the same place this whole time, hoping someone would pick up your signal? What were you doing when everything happened?

[click, static]

Jeez, I probably shouldn’t be bombarding you with questions until you can either speak or we can figure out some kind of realtime communication. So, uh—

[click, static]

I’ll just focus on the important bit: where are you?

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, I’m sorry for rambling the other day, and I really hope I didn’t come across as too weird, I’m regretting a lot of that now, because I think I figured it out and if I’m right, then…you are really talking to me. 

[click, static]

God bless the public library system. In all my driving around these past few days, I found a little downtown—small, but seems to have all the basics. Bank, grocery, post office and…public library. 

I hadn’t even thought to check out the town but I popped my head into the grocery store and it didn’t look like it was all that well stocked to begin with. The place didn’t seem to be looted, but it didn’t really have much. 

And you know what wasn’t touched at all? The perfect, dust-covered library. I’ve never been much of a reader, so Harry was usually the one to go to our local library and pick up whatever novel she could find that she hadn’t read and then she’d read it in two days and make me listen to her recount the entire plot of the entire thing, whether I asked or not. 

And I never asked. 

But sometimes she’d bring back technical manuals for me on whatever she could find. Even if it was for something we didn’t have and had no way of getting. I guess she thought maybe I needed entertainment, or maybe she was trying to drop hints that she wanted to fix up or build a particular thing. 

[click, static]

Not that subtly was ever her game when she wanted something from me. Demanding was more her style. 

But anyway, as I was driving this morning, scanning frequencies and keeping my eyes peeled for any scrap of a sign of human activity, it occurred to me—the library would have books on morse code. Any library would have books on morse code. 

And lo and behold, I am correct. So, now I’ve got everything I need to understand you. And guess what you’re saying to me?

“Hello, Whiskey”. You’re saying hello to me! 

[click, static] 

I don’t know if you’re listening now, but you’ve clearly been listening enough to know my callsign. I’ve gotta assume that you’re not sitting by your radio every hour of every single day, like, you know, some people so I’m guessing you have set up some kind of automatic transmission system. Which makes me think that maybe you’ve rigged up your radio to record everything it picks up too, so you can hear my messages. 

[click, static]

At least, that’s my hope. It’d be tricky to rely on the joint miracles of skip and being on the radio at the same time. So I’m going to keep talking, on this frequency, every morning, and you keep doing what you’re doing. 

[click, static]

Hello, Whiskey…

Listen, if you can, change your transmission tomorrow. If it’s different, I’ll know that you’ve heard this and I’ll…

[click, static]

I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m gonna do next but you bet your bottom dollar that you’re gonna be hearing all about it. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

It’s occurring to me now that you may not even be actively transmitting. This could be some kind of emergency alert system that’s been going out for years, sent from a station manned by no one. 

[click, static]

If that station is here in Kentucky, I don’t have a clue where. I drove forty miles in each direction and the clarity of the code didn’t change in any way that made any kind of sense. It would get clearer or it’d disappear into static without any rhyme or reason. I don’t know, maybe it’s the hills, messing things up. 

[click, static]

Or…maybe…

[click, static]

Maybe this is all…skip. Picking up signals from far away. It has something to do with solar flares, I think. I don’t know, my dad used to talk about back in the day. He always got so excited when he picked someone up from, say, Alabama or something. Somewhere really different. He mostly drove the northern east-west route—the route I set off on more than a week ago—so anything from the south felt exotic. 

I don’t know if I mentioned that. That my dad was a truck driver. He loved his CB. I wish I’d kept it. But I already had the car he’d fixed up for me, and needed to sell the truck and didn’t know how to get the CB out of the truck, so…yeah. 

I wish I’d paid more attention to him when he talked about how to use it too. 

Anyway. If you are a real person, somewhere, anywhere, and you’re listening, now you know a little more about me. 

I wish I knew something about you. Anything. I was never the most social growing up. I don’t know if its because I was a tomboy or because I was so used to it being just me and my dad, but I had a hard time fitting in with new groups. Other girls thought I was weird and the boys didn’t know what to think of me, so I mostly kept to myself. That’s the reason I fell in love with tinkering with things, I guess. Or part of it anyway. 

And even as an adult, it’s not like I had a bustling social calendar. But I was always surrounded by interesting people. Always meeting new folks. And then when I got into a rhythm with work, I ended up being on crews with the same people over and over and they…sort of become your friends. 

[click, static]

Though that’s not how I would’ve characterized Harry back then. I’m not sure I would call her a friend now. I’m not sure there’s a word for two people who are relying on each other to survive but who hate each other’s guts. A…symbiotic relationship of sorts, I suppose. 

All this to say, it’s been a very long time since I’ve met someone new. And despite never seeking out reams and reams of friends, I didn’t realize just how hard it would be to never meet anyone new. I don’t think people are supposed to only talk to one other person their whole lives. And that’s what it was starting to look like—that we’d be talking to each other and only each other for the rest of our lives. 

[click, static]

Maybe there’s people out there who have some kind of romantic notion that one person is all you need if that person is the one. Obviously, my situation does not apply, but I really think even in a romantic, soulmate style scenario, those two people would drive each other crazy. 

I’m guessing, if you exist, you’re equally in need of some variety. So, please, tell me where you are if you can. And I’ll…try and figure out what the hell you’re saying so that if you do tell me through morse code, I’ll actually be able to understand it. 

Whiskey out. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Good morning, mysterious stranger. So, as it happens, the moment I got my car back onto the highway, your transmission started to come in, loud and clear. I’m not a hundred percent, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same phrase repeated over and over. 

[click, static]

Yeah, I don’t know morse code. Other than SOS. Dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot. So I’m fairly confident that there’s an “o” and an “s” in your transmission, but that’s all I’ve got. So if you can speak, that’d be preferable. 

[click, static]

But don’t worry, not knowing morse is not gonna discourage me. I figure I’ll drive up and down the highway, find the limits of the range, and then do that again in some kind of square, circle I don’t know, I need to look at my atlas and figure out the best way to do this. Zero in on location or something. 

[click, static]

So, if at any point you wanna help me out by giving me a clue, that’d be much appreciated. And in the meantime, I’ll just keep driving and you keep transmitting. 

[click, static] 

[static]

[stray beeps]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[beeps]

[click, static]

Hello? Hello? 

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is WAR1974, currently in Kentucky. I think I’m receiving something. 

[laugh off mic]

Goddamn, I think I’m actually receiving. It sounds like morse code. 

[click, static]

[extremely faint beeps]

[click, static]

Hello? Hello. Shi-

[click, static]

I don’t know if you can hear me, but I think I can hear you. The code was coming in so clear just a moment ago. I…

[click, static]

Crap. It’s these hills. It’s too late and too dark for me to want to go venturing out right now–I’m desperate, but I’m not stupid. So…keep transmitting if you can. And I’ll come out, and I’ll find you in the morning. Wherever you are.

[click, static]

[beeps]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static] 

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey, once again crossing a state line. 

Let’s see, in three weeks, I’ve been to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois—briefly—West Virginia, Virginia, and now back through both those states to Kentucky. 

[click, static]

That’s not actually that many places for three weeks. I guess I’ve been doing a lot of aimless driving. 

Aimless is probably not a bad way to describe my whole life, if I’m honest. I never had any kind of plan. That wasn’t my job. Peter was always the brains of the operation, the planning guy. I worked with other guys leading the charge before, but he was always my favorite. 

[click, static]

Hear that Petey? You were my favorite. 

[click, static]

He probably wouldn’t care. He definitely hated being called Petey. But he otherwise didn’t care all that much what people thought of him as long as they got the job done. 

I don’t know if I should be thinking of him in past tense. But what other information do I have to go on? He wasn’t headed anywhere good the last time I saw him and I doubt he got lucky like Harry and I did…

[click, static]

Jesus, not that we were lucky. It was…horrible, one of the worst—

[click, static]

(clears throat)

In some ways that is just part of life, isn’t it? Losing track of where someone is, if they’re even still alive. The older you get, the more people you have in your past. And I don’t even mean strangers—I’m talking about close friends, long time colleagues, exes. It’s not like you can subscribe to a magazine called “Everyone you’ve ever cared about! Where are they now?”

[click, static]

Like my best friend when I was a kid — Mildred Wilcox. Millie and I were thick as thieves from the time we were seven years old until we were fifteen and I left home. She was everything to me—my confidant, my partner in crime, my…sister. And I haven’t spoken to her in nearly twenty years. 

We kept in touch a little after I first left home—I’d send her letters and postcards from the places I went. But then she went to college and her family moved addresses or something, because all my letters came back to me, with “wrong address” stamps all over them. And I never had a reliable address to receive mail—not until I got my act together and at least got myself a PO Box, so we just…lost each other. I never got the phone number for her dorm and half the time I didn’t even have a phone myself…

So we went from two people who were the closest of friends, to two people who tried to keep in touch as best they could to…never speaking again. 

I don’t even remember the last time I talked to her. It wouldn’t have stood out as remarkable at the time because I’d had no idea it would be the last time. 

[click, static]

Did people know? That they were talking to their loved ones for the last time? Was it sudden or slow? Harry and I…we didn’t see anything, we didn’t hear anything. We didn’t know. We didn’t know there was anything to know until it was too late. What happened had already come to pass and hadn’t left enough evidence behind for us to put the pieces together. 

Six months we laid low, had no contact with anyone. I didn’t know it was the last time then either. If I had, I think I would’ve risked it. Would’ve risked being caught just so I could have a conversation with a stranger one more time. Even if it was just to say goodbye. 

Did anyone get a chance to say goodbye?

[click, static]

[beeps]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

------

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

One week ago I was on top of the Blue Ridge Mountains and now here I am looking out over the Atlantic Ocean. 

It’s…big. 

[click, static] 

That’s a stupid thing to say, of course it’s big, it’s the ocean. And it’s tiny compared to the Pacific. But it’s still, you know…yawning. Is that the right word?

I thought the ocean—which always feels big—would just…fit right in with the rest off the huge emptiness. But it’s somehow even bigger in context. 

I wonder what’s going on over there—out, across the ocean, in other countries. Is it the same as here? Is everyone gone? Is anyone also trying to reach out? Fruitlessly?

[click, static]

There’s a lot of old shit in Virginia. Did you know they made a whole colonial town nearby? Williamsburg. The entire place is trapped in seventeen-whatever. “A Living History Museum” is what they called it on some brochures I found. They had…actors, I guess, dressing up as the founding fathers or whatever, going around and pretending like it was the olden days. 

What an absolute trip. All these old buildings, horse posts, the whole nine—and lemme tell you, it’s even creepier without any people around. Like I’ve been the last person on Earth for two hundred years. 

Which I’m not. No matter what I see—or don’t see—out here, I know I’m not the very last. I’m not the only. 

[click, static]

Harry would probably love it. All the antique crap, the costumes…It’s…theatrical. Like she is. Like Francis was. 

[click, static] 

A widow’s walk. I remembered this morning—that’s what the little thing on top of Francis’ house was called. A widow’s walk. Like a crow’s nest on a ship—a place to look out over the ocean from. They’re all over Cape Cod. 

And I guess they’re called that because the people who’d be looking out from them were the wives of sailors. Men who were more devoted to the sea than the women they confined to their homes. Women who had nothing to do but stand on a perch and pace and worry when their husbands were coming back. 

But they’re not called ‘wives walk’s. They’re called ‘widow’s walk’s. The men rarely came back. And the women were still there, looking out over the endless water, waiting to see a boat that would never come. Is that…

[click, static]

(quietly) Is that what I’ve done to Harry? I told her I was never coming back but now I—

[click, static]

Never mind. It’s not important anymore. There aren’t any more widows to walk and I’d bet most of those houses are standing empty, ready to fall into the ocean, with no one any the wiser. 

I wonder if they’ve got widow’s walks out on the West coast.

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Please visit breakerwhiskey.com for more information or to send a message to Whiskey's radio. Breaker Whiskey is an Atypical Artists production created by Lauren Shippen. If you'd like to support the show, please visit patreon.com/breakerwhiskey.

--------

[TRANSCRIPTS] (for full transcripts, visit breakerwhiskey.tumblr.com

[click, static]

Breaker, breaker, this is Whiskey breathing in ocean air. 

Well. Almost. I’m still about seventy miles from Virginia Beach, but I swear I can smell the salt on the air. 

The last time I was at the ocean was…god, probably a year before the- I don’t know what to call it, The Incident, whatever the hell it was. I’d gotten a lead on another job up in Boston and my contact lived out on the Cape, so I went out there to get the specs of the gig. 

[click, static]

Francis Lennon, that was his name. Sorry, Francis, for shouting your name out on the airwaves but I really don’t think anyone’s listening and also, I’m fairly certain you’re dead.

Not to say I hope he’s dead or anything, not at all, just that the last time I saw Francis, he was already well into his eighties and that was seven years ago. and that’d be plenty of reason to think he might not be kicking anymore even before you add the realities of living on your own at that age in times like these…

He was a real character. Lived in this great old house all the way up in Provincetown, you know, the kind that has one of those little perches up on the top, god, what are they called…

[click, static]

Anyway, he’d always be dressed in these fine shirts and fancy trousers, except he usually covered them up by wearing a dressing gown at all hours of the day, like he was Sherlock Holmes or something. I think he saw himself as a bit of an eccentric. Or he just was a bit of an eccentric. 

[click, static]

You meet a lot of bizarre people in my line of work—my old line of work. Especially once I started doing the…higher class jobs, the ones that are way less expedient but a hell of a lot safer—that kind of stuff, the art, the antiquities, jewelry, whatever—weirdest bunch of people are obsessed with that stuff. And knowing everything about those particulars was never my job, so I never troubled myself with learning much about it. 

But Francis knew it all. The American masters were his specialty, but there wasn’t an art form he couldn’t talk about. And his place was just filled to the brim with it—I’m sure if I were a different person, or if someone like Harry were walking through his house, they’d be able to identify every piece. I wouldn’t doubt that his collection was worth seven figures or more. 

[click, static]

Maybe that’s why he only ever invited me when he had a new lead, instead of Peter or whoever. He knew I couldn’t care less about what he hung on his walls—I’d listen when he told me all about his newest acquisition, but I wouldn’t try to…one up him, or sneak something out under his nose. 

He was a good man. An odd dresser, fast talker, and he’d put a dab of hot sauce in his iced tea, which I always thought was pretty foul, but he was kind. And I don’t know if he really had anyone. He lived in that house all by himself, and I only ever saw him…once a year at most? But I’d always go up with the intention to be out the next day and inevitably it’d turn into a whole weekend. He’d make me eat steamed clams—which I hate—and show me the new hobby he’d picked up. I think last time it was…stained glass? He’d walk along the beach and find bottles or bits of sea glass, break them down or polish them up and fit them together into some kind of pattern that he’d then solder together. 

He had three whole pieces done when I was there, and he’d leaned them against the window so that they’d catch the light, colors speckling his kitchen floor. 

[click, static]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.