Michael Kennedy

I used to be an anthropologist. Now I run companies in South Carolina. I write essays about both of those things.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

https://t.co/2MspSRIiNp

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

I've spent 7 years building and operating a student housing portfolio.

Here's the difference between sorority and fraternity tenants:

Sororities: unit is immaculate. Looks like Chip and Joanna Gaines staged it.
A maintenance request a week. Light bulbs, smoke detector batteries, a roach sighting.
Early on I gave tenants my personal number for emergencies. I once got a 4:00am text from a tenant who found 'A' roach in her room. She wanted an exterminator on site that morning.

Fraternities: unit has never been cleaned. Decorated with stolen road signs and beer case cardboard hot glued to the walls.
They move out and leave a wasteland of broken grills, beer pong tables, 3-legged camping chairs.
Zero maintenance requests in 3 years. They will live with an active roof leak for 3 months and never mention it.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@ChestnutTrill83 You want to come rummage through it?

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

Lease expired yesterday.

Tenants: “yea, were all moved out”

Me: “what about all your stuff?”

Tenants: crickets

In over 1,000 tenants, nobody’s ever done that.

Looks like I’m getting a new set of golf clubs and a Don’t Tread on Ye flag.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@oyyyyveyyyy It’s going in my office for sure

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@Bendo86494224 You can have a set if you come get the couch.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@MillerExtraLite I've had folks leave stuff. Nothing like this.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@2_Redacted_3 @pinpulleddrmf It’s the ghost of their security deposit

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@KellenPDL Two drivers, no putter. Aggressive golfer.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@BricksnBullets It’s going in the next unit. Circle of life.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@BPD1776 @pinpulleddrmf That’s the one thing they were supposed to leave, haha

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

For the last two weeks I’ve been raw dogging all my runs.

(My nephew informs me this is what you call doing an activity with no phone, no screens, no music.)

It’s boring as hell for the first mile or two. Then it isn’t.

Don’t think I’m going back.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

I spend about a month a year in wild places — hunting, paddling, climbing mountains. And every mile of it, I've been a passenger to a blue dot on a screen. My own sense of direction is poor. For years I've carried a quiet dread of the day the GPS dies and I'm standing in the timber, no idea which way camp is.
So Saturday I did a full day of land navigation with @EstelaWildEd. Kevin is a remarkable teacher. Map, compass, terrain — the old tools for moving through remote places without relying on a battery. We all left more confident, and with a new set of skills.
Long way to go. But now I know which way north is.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@TylerPurcell24 Yea man, super quick. If they've been riding a balance bike already it feels the same to them. You can throttle the speed down so they get the hang of it, and increase as they feel more confident.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

@TylerPurcell24 We bought 7 acres. Mine are 2 and 4. They LOVE the gocart. And got the 4 year old a Stacyc bike. They're legit little electric dirk bikes. Can't get him off it.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

https://t.co/JjBYzNHVoz

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

This is my dad's dad, Dick Kennedy, on Guam in 1944.
He was a farm boy. He served in Marine infantry and fought in some of the worst engagements in the Pacific.
He came home with demons. He worked a factory job and drank himself into an early grave, like so many he served with.
My mom's dad, Albert Blanton, served in the Army. Also a farm boy from the South. Before the war he worked as a janitor in a factory.
He was shipping out to the Pacific when the war ended. He was sent to radar school and learned to type.
When he came back he was a clerk at that factory. Over several decades he became its CEO.
If Blanton had shipped out six months earlier, he would have been on those beaches.
If Kennedy had gone a year later, he might have learned to type.
These are both very American stories.
I think about them both every 4th of July.

[Michael Kennedy @smallrites]

Had my 13 year old nephew for 24 hours yesterday.
Our families are close, but this is first time I've had him solo.
His folks are some of the best people I know, but aren't outdoor people.
He's been wanting to get into outdoor stuff.
So we spent a day shooting, eating @pinpulleddrmf's elk, bowfished until midnight and camped on the river.
He'd never slept in a tent.
He was so stoked he couldn't fall asleep, and passed out in the car on the way home this morning.
I sent him home with a bow, arrows and target.
(he thought I was the man until he saw me back a trailer).