#1918 - John Reeves, from The Boneyard Alaska

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Welcome aboard, John. Very nice to meet you, man. I've been admiring your Instagram page and all the social media stuff forever, and it's crazy and perplexing, and so I couldn't wait to get you in here and see how the hell did you acquire this magical spot that you have in Alaska?

John Reeves (0:28)

I'd have to give you some context.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

Okay.

John Reeves (0:31)

And I grew up on an Indian mound in North Florida, to give you an idea of-

Joe Rogan (0:37)

An Indian mound.

John Reeves (0:38)

Yeah, my parents moved this family down from Ohio about nine acres on the St. Johns River in 1962 This is where I grew up, and it was on top of an Indian mound. We didn't know it at the time, so I was always out digging in the mound looking for pottery, and I was always captivated by looking for treasure. And I did that as a kid, and then did a lot of surfing and stuff like that, as you might think, in Florida, and got to be pretty good at swimming. Ended up in high school, setting the American record in a 50-yard freestyle.

And there was a fellow, an assistant coach at the University of Florida named Eddie Reese. You might recognize his name. He's the head coach at the University of Texas right here. Three-time Olympic coach, widely regarded now as the greatest swim coach of all time. I gave him a call before we came over here, just to say hello. We're in and out quick. But he recruited me to Florida, and I got recruited at a couple other colleges because I was a pretty quick swimmer. University of Alabama, I met Bear Bryant, the swim coach, took me by the practice field and introduced me to him. And he said, can you catch a football? You should be a football player. You're too big to be a swimmer.

And that was a couple hundred pounds ago, by the way, I should mention.

And he says, can you catch a football? I said, yeah, I think so. He said, hey, Joe, Joe, come over here. Throw this guy a pass. There's Joe and Ameth. Wow. He says, go long. I start running down the field, threw me a ball, and I said, you got to catch this. You got to catch this. And I caught it. He says, throw it back. And I did. And then went to the swimming pool, met all the swimmers and all that kind of stuff. And then I got recruited by Florida at Coach Eddie Reese and decided I want to go to Florida. That seemed like a lot more fun. I went to Florida, and the first year I was there, I was an all-American swimmer. And I got seventh place at West Point in the NCAAs.

The next year, my coach, the NCAAs were in Knoxville, Tennessee. He says, coach says, you don't win this year. I'm going to send you to Alaska.

Alaska? What's that? Never even thought about Alaska. I got second place.

So, okay, I'm going to Alaska.

I didn't win it. Now here I am, full scholarship, great family. I had five sisters growing up and doing real good. I said, fuck it, I only got second place. I'm going to Alaska. So I dropped out of college.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

So just because he said that. Yeah, yeah, I was obviously he's probably fucking around, right?

John Reeves (3:46)

Yeah, he was fucking around. But the thing is, I was such a shitty student, if I didn't drop out, I was going to flunk out. And I talked to the registrar there by the name of Wendy Smallwood, who took care of all the athletes coming in. He said, man, if you don't get out of here, you're going to flunk out. So I said, well, if I drop out, can I come back my junior year? And she goes, oh yeah, you can do that. But if you flunk out, no. I said, okay, I think I will. And then I saw a movie called Jeremiah Johnson.

I said, you know what? I won't be a mountain man.

And then after that, I went down to the registrar's office, took the dropout sheet, wrote Gone Fishing on it as my excuse, hung it on my college door. I had played two card gut poker game the night before. I had, you know, 50 bucks. I got enough.

Put that in the next morning, 6 o'clock in the morning, taped that to my door and out the door I went with a backpack and a shotgun. And that's about all I had. Hitchhiked, got done I-75 and started hitchhiking.