The Daytripper’s Chet Garner at the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting 2023

Episode Notes

Transcript

Intro: Welcome to State Bar of Texas Podcast, your monthly source for conversations and curated content to improve your law practice, with your host, Rocky Dhir.

Rocky Dhir: Hello and welcome to another episode of the State Bar of Texas podcast. We are recording live from the State Bar Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. This is your host, Rocky Dhir. Joining me now, I’ve Chet Garner. You’re not —

Chet Garner: Hey, hey.

Rocky Dhir: Yeah. Hey Chet, welcome, welcome.   

Chet Garner: What’s up, Rocky.

Rocky Dhir: Oh man, guys this is a fun one. You guys need to — I hope you’re sitting down, and if you’re driving, please continue driving carefully. This is going to be fun. So we’re going to talk about a TV Show, ‘The Daytripper’.

Chet Garner: TV show? I thought this was all about lawyer, policies and procedures, substantive versus all, you know, all the, all the touches of law.

Rocky Dhir: Okay. If you want to do that, we’ll talk about speed traps, we will talk about speed traps in Texas. How about that?

Chet Garner: I know a few things about that.

Rocky Dhir: Okay, so tell us what The Daytripper is about.

Chet Garner: Oh man. Okay, so yeah, for those who haven’t seen it, we’re a Texas Travel Show. We’re on PBS across the country even though we only feature Texas towns.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: We are here to celebrate small towns, big cities. We take day trips to places and show people all you can eat, see and do if you were there. So it’s a fictitious, day trip like hey, I’m here for a day, sunrise to sunset.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: If I were, if you were in my shoes what could you do?

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: Swimming holes, barbecue, little museums, historical, reenactments and places. It’s all kind of crammed into a 30-minute show.

Rocky Dhir: One of the things you said in your talk and if you’re — if you’re wondering what I’m referring to, you were the keynote speaker for Day two on Friday?

Chet Garner: I was, yeah.

Rocky Dhir: At the annual meeting?

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: So you said, you can take any town —

Chet Garner: Any town.

Rocky Dhir: — and make it into something where you can say, hey, here is something to do. So what was the most surprising one that you covered so far?

Chet Garner: Oh man. So we talked about it in my speech but there’s a place called the Cave of the White Shaman.

Rocky Dhir: Yes, I remember that.

Chet Garner: Which is a world-renowned rock art destination. Now, the town itself is this busted railroad town, like totally like, you would drive through it, there’s not even a stoplight thinking I got to get out of here, but get off the road and if you did your research you realize like no, this is literally people come from all over the world to study the rock art of the Trans-Pecos people that are in this region.

So it’s just an example. Like, there’s so many towns that you’re like, turn it up, you know like let’s just get through here and we’ll go find a Whataburger somewhere but if you slow down, start looking around, flip enough rocks, you’ll always find stuff to do.

Rocky Dhir: So how do you figure out what’s to do that? I mean, it’s because some of this may not be on Google, do you just ask locals?

Chet Garner: Local, I mean anywhere and everywhere, I’m asking people. So like — and then of course, reading Texas Highways, Texas Monthly, you know, just everything I can get my hands on and just compiling it. I’ve got a master spreadsheet. I’ve someone like today after lunch, you know, I got rushed by people, they all had stories to tell me. Some stuff I’ve never heard before and go, oh cool. I’m going to add that to the spreadsheet if I’m ever in that town, boom, I’m going to do it.

Rocky Dhir: Is there ever been a place where you’ve gone there and said, oh yeah, there really is nothing to do at this place, like this is a godforsaken hellhole.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Like I need to get out. I wish, I’m glad there’s no traffic signs here, because I need to drive —

Chet Garner: Right, as fast as I can. No, I mean, so there’s plenty of places like that, that are abandoned ghost towns, but like we don’t make episodes about those spots, so we just keep cruising. So I go out and ask out as much as I can, because I like to say this job is perfect for me is you know I created this job just to kind of —

Rocky Dhir: You are a job creator?

Chet Garner: Make a dream job, yeah. Job for one. Yeah. Big contribution to the economy, right?

Rocky Dhir: Hey, it’s one step at a time.

Chet Garner: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.

Rocky Dhir: Rome wasn’t built in a day. You should take a day trip to Rome and then you can figure that out.

Chet Garner: Now, you know what, that’s a good idea. Yeah, you funny, you mentioned that like, I guess the impetus for this. I was watching National Media and like, hey, they go to Rome all the time. I’m like, if I’m lucky and I’m a blessed human in the top half percent of the society, I’ll take one trip to Rome in my lifetime.

Rocky Dhir: Or unless you’re Italian.

Chet Garner: Or Italian, oh yeah.

Rocky Dhir: I mean yeah —

Chet Garner: Okay, so minus the Italians. But you know like, so those places are mostly unreachable for people.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: And what is it become, you watch a travel show about it, it’s just Couch Potato Fodder. Like all right, it was good, change channel, keep moving.

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: I thought man, I want to make a TV Show, jokingly I say this but it’s true. I make a television show that inspires people to watch less TV. So I want to, I was like look, I’m not going to show you Rome and Chicago and all these other places Miami Vice Beach, I’m going to show you —

Rocky Dhir: Rome and Chicago, you picked Chicago, there is a lot to do.

Chet Garner: Well there is not much content been on Deep-Dish Pizza, the world doesn’t need more people eating Deep-Dish Pizza. You need people eating the chicken-fried steaks that are hour from their back door, so they can go and patronize those restaurants, keep those Mom and Pops in business.

Rocky Dhir: So I’m vegetarian.

Chet Garner: Oh.

(00:05:00)

Rocky Dhir: And so, one of the things I thought of when you talk about, I was like, some of these small towns aren’t going to know what to do with me. I’m going to have to, like, I’m going to take power bars with me and just load up if I’m going to go to these places.

Chet Garner: Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe.

Rocky Dhir: Is my hunch correct?

Chet Garner: I had, so we had a guy on crew, who wasn’t total vegetarian, but he tried to eat vegetarian when he could.

Rocky Dhir: Yeah.

Chet Garner: We went into this small-town diner and he ordered a vegetable omelet minus the eggs, so —

Rocky Dhir: They have no idea what to do with him.

Chet Garner: No, the chef came outside, sir, we see here that you ordered a vegetable omelet without eggs. He was like, yep, that’s it. So you want vegetables. They were like, huh. They brought out the most greasy little platter of you know peppers and onions that I had ever seen in my life.

Rocky Dhir: There’s probably some kind of pork fat that’s drizzled on top of the peppers and onions.

Chet Garner: I guarantee that, I guarantee.

Rocky Dhir: There’s no question.

Chet Garner: But you know what, like say like you can’t stereotype small towns because you can find anything and everything now. With the way Texans are moving about constantly.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: Oh man, never, never ride off a small town, you’ll find something.

Rocky Dhir: Well, in this day and age it wouldn’t shock me if I was to go to that small town and say, I am vegetarian, it’s like well I’m vegan, so what do you want.

Chet Garner: Well, what do you want.

Rocky Dhir: Come on back.

Chet Garner: Come on back, yeah, exactly.

Rocky Dhir: I will show you back here, we’ve got some Beyond Burgers.

Chet Garner: Burgers, yeah. We have seen them.

Rocky Dhir: I bet.

Chet Garner: We’ve done and seen them.

Rocky Dhir: I bet, I bet. It would be interesting if there’s some small town where they actually create their own veggie burger and they’re like this is come from —

Chet Garner: Yeah, that’s right.

Rocky Dhir: Low town Texas.

Chet Garner: Yeah, it’s the manure that our cows poop out at the dairy, we put it in a burger form.

Rocky Dhir: All our cows are plant-based; they only eat grass.

Chet Garner: Plant-based, that’s it.

Rocky Dhir: That’s it.

Chet Garner: For the burger it’s plant-based.

Rocky Dhir: That’s how it is. Do you have — I don’t know if you’re allowed to say this, but do you have a favorite day trip you’ve taken?

Chet Garner: No, no. People ask me, where should I go? I was like, well, I don’t know what do you like to do? So I think I’m kind of a guy, I travel Texas and I literally fall in love with every region of Texas, like I just went to Houston this week, I’m like, man, Houston is so cool, I love Houston, and then like the next week I’m —

Rocky Dhir: Crickets.

Chet Garner: Yeah, dude, Houston’s the sleeper.

Rocky Dhir: Houston is —

Chet Garner: Is cool.

Rocky Dhir: There’s a lot of cool stuff there.

Chet Garner: Ah.

Rocky Dhir: But I’m from Dallas so I can’t say this on the record even though I just did. So —

Chet Garner: Every Texas town like the big cities, they all have such a different identity. I love Houston. I love San Antonio, but for different reasons. And like I’ll go to the coast and be like man, I want to move to the coast.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: I’m going to do it. And then I’ll go to the Piney Woods like, nope, that’s my favorite region right here. So I kind of like, I’m the guy I bounce around, every region of Texas has got different things that I’m really fascinated with that you don’t find elsewhere. So I don’t have a favorite.

Rocky Dhir: At some point conceivably you’ll run out of places in Texas.

Chet Garner: You would think, not, not even close. So the guy ahead of me, shout out to Bob Phillips, he’s been doing Texas Country Reporter.

Rocky Dhir: Okay.

Chet Garner: He just celebrated 50 years doing —

Rocky Dhir: And he is just going all around.

Chet Garner: Yeah, doing I mean different show for sure, but same idea, it’s a Texas Travel Show. So by the time I circle around everything will have changed, because Texas is changing so fast.

Rocky Dhir: So you could revisit a place and say, oh.

Chet Garner: We’ve revisited a couple, but like the very first show we ever made was Waco, because I went to Baylor Law and I knew Waco was cool but everyone else hated Waco, until the Chip and Joanna came along and did their thing.

Rocky Dhir: Yeah.

Chet Garner: Right, and so, but I was like, Waco is so cool and it’s a total sleeper. It’s got this great zoo, mountain biking’s phenomenal, burgers, pizza, it’s like, it’s got it all. And so I decided to make a show about Waco, anyway for our tenth anniversary of making that show I thought we’re going to revisit a town and do only thing —

Rocky Dhir: That’s changed entirely.

Chet Garner: — in the past 10 years. So and that all kind of made me realize like we did Austin Show, South Austin Show in 2009. You were talking about change?

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: I made a historic documentary about South Austin because pretty much the stuff we featured is either been torn down or it’s totally different.

Rocky Dhir: Austin is not weird anymore. It’s —

Chet Garner: It’s yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Okay, there is a Starbucks and —

Chet Garner: That’s a whole another discussion, but you’re right. Austin lost its flavor just a little bit.

Rocky Dhir: Yeah, it’s now Starbucks next to Chipotle.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Just like every place else.

Chet Garner: Just like every place else. And we got to try really hard to hold on to the weirdness of Austin, and the problem is, the weirdness is countercultural. So when you got all these people coming that are bringing, what is the mainstream culture, they don’t want countercultural stuff but, because that’s it, they’re the driving force of culture. So yeah, you know it’s got to be weird, the weirdness had been pushed out.

Rocky Dhir: But then, do you think other big cities in Texas are embracing the weird more than they used to. So say, say like Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, are they now becoming more countercultural because they’ve been so mainstream for so long?

Chet Garner: Yeah, yeah I think so. I mean counterculture thrives under the radar and once the radar goes on it, it goes in the spotlight.

Rocky Dhir: It’s no longer countercultural anymore.

Chet Garner: Yeah, yeah. So Dallas certainly places like Deep Ellum we’re doing it, but now Deep Ellum is so popular in touristy, they’re going to have to fight hard to keep the culture. So —

(00:10:01)

Rocky Dhir: Yeah.

Chet Garner: You know, but like it’s the only thing that doesn’t — change is so predictable, it’s going to happen, it happened, you know Marfa, Lockhart, you could write the script for these things so you can’t word it, it’s going to change, just roll with it.

Rocky Dhir: What about some of these suburban small towns, the ones that have the historic downtown, there’s historic downtown McKinney or Historic downtown Georgetown.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: There’s places in Texas that are kind of adjacent to big cities, they just look like suburbs, but they got these really cool little historic downtowns, have you done shows on that?

Chet Garner: Oh totally. So there is no better time in the history of Texas to be a big city adjacent small town with a square. No time better. Because what’s happened is we’re able to work further from our business center so you got these hubs, and honestly I live in Georgetown, I don’t want to come into Austin for culture and music and food. It’s terrible. So like that but there’s now the critical mass that that all came to us. So Georgetown —

Rocky Dhir: Pflugerville.

Chet Garner: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Pflugerville, Pflugerville don’t have the historic assets, but if you got like a main street, oh, it’s and you’re within 30-45 minutes of a big city, it’s golden age right now.

Rocky Dhir: What happens to one of these small towns when, when they get hit by, you know what I’m going to say, Costco, once that comes in, does that change everything?

Chet Garner: So I’ll give you just all I know is the example of Georgetown and I — we are downtown. We have our Production Studio in an 1890s Horse Livery, so that’s where we work.

Rocky Dhir: Okay, there you go.

Chet Garner: It’s pretty cool. And we have to try very hard to like not let our downtown turn into de-corporatized(ph) or to turn into like a 6th Street Bar District.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: So it’s a balance, like downtowns you really have to, the property owners have to just set the tone for the sort of culture they want, and there are people who say like, man, this used to be so quiet and there were eight antique stores on this square. And I knew everybody’s like, yeah, but it was dead.

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: The sidewalks rolled up at 5 p.m. and no one was out here, now it’s thriving, you got families and you know, historically that’s why our court houses and our squares were built for.

Rocky Dhir: Sure.

Chet Garner: They’re built for community, right. And then we lost it when the strip malls came in, in the 60s and 70s, and they dried up, 80s were horrible, 90s were horrible. Now they’re starting to — people are flooding back into these historic districts, because there are things that you can’t recreate. I don’t care how much, how many billions of dollars you have, you can’t build a hundred-year-old building.

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: You can maybe restore it, you can’t re-build it.

Chet Garner: Yeah. You can’t like people starting from scratch like we’re going to build the community center out here, is like good luck, but it’s never going to have the flavor of a historic downtown.

Rocky Dhir: We learned upstairs that you’re married and you have five children.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: When you go on these Daytripper adventures you’re by yourself for the most part, so is this just an excuse to get out of the house because I mean, I’m simply going, all right, that was pretty smart. Like I got to work without y’all.

Chet Garner: If my wife listens to this podcast, let me see, well, doing it.

Rocky Dhir: Well, if it’s a spouse, probably not, they heard all your stuff before.

Chet Garner: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rocky Dhir: I mean they don’t care.

Chet Garner: So I mean five kids, home is, is beautiful chaos. Yeah, there’s days where I’m like, all right, yeah, darn, I got to go on the road.

Rocky Dhir: I better go to work today.

Chet Garner: Yeah, but like, I don’t know how people work from home in this day and age with young kids. I got to go somewhere to work. So we’ve got our offices that even during COVID I was leaving to go. I might be the only person in the office, but I needed the boundary.

Rocky Dhir: And you were still shooting and going places during COVID or do you have to shut down?

Chet Garner: We did, we had to dial it back.

Rocky Dhir: Yeah.

Chet Garner: But we did go shoot. COVID didn’t exist in small town Texas.

Rocky Dhir: That’s true.

Chet Garner: Even though it actually existed, mentally, it didn’t exist.

Rocky Dhir: Right.

Chet Garner: So the restaurants were all open, everybody was crew — it was business as usual. So, it was two different worlds and I got to experience in both firsthand, like the mentality in Austin was not the mentality in Lampasas.

Rocky Dhir: Right. Sure.

Chet Garner: I mean different worlds. So, it was very interesting.

Rocky Dhir: So, one final question before we wrap up. Now that — you’ve got the five kids and for people that are watching your show, they’re thinking, oh, this would be great if I was young and single, but where do I take my family?

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: How do I take kids on these day trips? What’s your answer to them?

Chet Garner: You know, it’s funny Rocky, like when I started the show, I had this idea. Now I was in my late 20s, but I had this idea that like I was making this show for these young road trippers who were looking for swimming holes and that turned out to not be my audience at all, because they’re not watching PBS. It was young families who were looking for stuff to do and retired empty nesters. Now what’s weird is now when you get a college kid who comes up and goes, I grew up watching your show, I’m like, dang it. I’m that old dude. You are in your 20s, like, oh, I was watching it since I was a baby, like oh no, yeah.

But young families, we are a huge tool for young families, because swimming holes, museums, barbecue joints, and I’m not going to show you any place that like that is inaccessible. One thing that I think separates us from other shows is like —

Rocky Dhir: Here’s a nice house of ill repute, you can take the family to.

(00:15:06)

Chet Garner: Yeah, right. Well we have gone to a few of those museums. So like there’s some weird stuff in small-town Texas.

Rocky Dhir: The best little warehouse in Texas. Yes, I get you.

Chet Garner: Truly. But like I think this show we’ve got this weird broad audience that hits every demographic because whether you are young, single, no kids, we got you. Families, man, they’re loving it. College kids, all the way up to empty nesters and even retired RVers. You know, everybody loves a good adventure.

Rocky Dhir: That’s true, that’s true. Well now, Chet, it looks like we’ve reached the end of our program. I do want to thank you for joining us.

Chet Garner: Oh yeah, it has been fun.

Rocky Dhir: It has been fascinating. Now, if our listeners, and of course, you want to tell them where they can tune in to watch the show.

Chet Garner: Sure.

Rocky Dhir: And if somebody wants to send an idea for a place to go, how do they connect with you?

Chet Garner: Yes, so Shameless Plug coming, thedaytripper.com is our website, we’ve got all our travel guides and everything on there. And there’s even a place to watch episodes on our website.

Rocky Dhir: Oh, nice.

Chet Garner: We have started to put our full episodes on our YouTube, which you just search for the Daytripper TV, you can absolutely find that. And of course, thedaytripper.com is kind of the gateway for all that, it’s got links and or you know, if you’re old-school, PBS baby, we’re still there, yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Just look up your local PBS and see, open up the TV Guide.

Chet Garner: Open up the TV, yes, right, right.

Rocky Dhir: Yes.

Chet Garner: Now PBS has done a good job, all their — like YouTube TV, whatever, wherever you’re watching PBS, we’re there.

Rocky Dhir: Very well.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Well guys, again, that is all the time we have for this installment of the State Bar of Texas Podcast. I want to thank Chet for joining us today.

Chet Garner: Yeah.

Rocky Dhir: Thank you, and of course, I want to thank you for tuning in. If you like what you’ve heard, please rate and review us in Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music or best yet, your favorite podcasting app. I’m Rocky Dhir, until next time, thanks for joining.

Outro: If you would like more information about today’s show, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Go to texasbar.com/podcast. Subscribe via Apple podcast and RSS. Find both the State Bar of Texas and Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google Play and iTunes. The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by The State Bar of Texas, Legal Talk Network, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders or subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

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