Boys will be boys, I guess.
With the release of the Prime Video Earnhardt documentary, race fans have gotten an incredibly interesting, and nuanced, look at Dale Earnhardt the race car driver, the man, the friend and the father, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his sister Kelley played a huge part in the production of the series, in addition to being heavily featured in it, telling stories about their dad and memories that were both good and bad.
But in addition to the more serious side of things, they told tons of great stories, and Dale Jr. has had some of the people from the doc on his podcast the Dale Jr. Download, including his long-time best friend Josh Snider, who made an appearance in Earnhardt. Josh is one of the original “Dirty Mo Posse” members and has a brand on his arm to prove it.
The guys originally met at a mutual friend’s party in the late 90’s in Mooresville, North Carolina and soon after became inseparable. The two shared a double-wide trailer where they raised all kinds of hell. From there, “Camp Chaos” was born, and the two would live out their 20s having house parties and enjoying Dale’s budding success as he progressed in his NASCAR career.
And the story of how the branding went down is wild… Jr., Josh and their other friends were all from Mooresville, North Carolina, and they called themselves the Dirty Mo posse. It just so happened that someone had given Jr. a steak brander that said “DMP,” and after a night of drinking, they decided to use it on themselves:
“So Josh is part of the original Dirty Mo posse, and we had a steak brander that somebody gave me. Now everybody that’s listening to this interview, listen, times are different today. Take yourself back to 2004-ish. Things were a little crazier back then, and we were like we were younger and dumber. And somebody gave us a steak brander to the brand steaks with the DMP logo on it. It’s just letters, ‘DMP,’ that’s all it said, not a real designed logo.
But we were drunk one night and thought, let’s brand our arms, DMP. We are proud of being part of the Dirty Mo posse, this group of friends. And so we’ll brand ourselves, and Josh, you were the first person to get branded. You were the one who said, ‘I’ll go first.’ We were gonna heat this thing up with a torch… we heated it up cherry red. You were like, ‘Go for it.'”
Josh recalled them practicing on a wooden chair first, and after that seemed to go well, was ready for them to do it to him. Jr. said they heated up the brand with a torch until it was “cherry red,” and the first one didn’t look quite right, so they ended up doing it to him twice. Eventually, it got infected, and I’ll leave the details to Josh to explain:
“Well, remember, we practiced on the wooden chair first. This was probably three or four in the morning. You know, nothing good ever happens after 2 AM, but branding does. So I’m like, ‘Let’s try it on the chair.’ and it didn’t seem to really bother the chair that bad… what’s so bad is, I still have it, but the first one was a blob.
It’s a blob because Sonny was like, ‘I don’t know if we got the ‘D’ right.’ So we did it again, and it scabbed up so bad that I had to go to the doctor. Well I was at the doctor for a physical, because it was December, so January, you need to go to your doctor for annual physical. And puss was leaking through my shirt. And he’s like, ‘What’s up with your arm?’ And didn’t want to tell him. And then at the physical, you know, they have you raise your arm and stuff, well I couldn’t raise my arm up past like, this.
So he’s like, ‘What did you do?’ He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, this could be infected,’ blah blah blah, flipped out. I’m like, ‘Man, I thought it would be better getting a tattoo.’ Then we went back and I had to get it done again, because I wanted it to be done right.”
Josh said the second one didn’t hurt as bad, and Jr. agreed that shockingly, it wasn’t the initial branding that actually hurts the worts… it’s the weeks following when it scabs up and you can’t move your arm and ever little tap hurts:
“I remember that we did it, and it stung bad, it hurt like you would imagine initially, but then like after about a minute, it was fine. It didn’t hurt at all. And then, like days later when it scabbed up, you couldn’t move it like. It hurt, even the thought of moving it hurt. and that was when it was most painful, like a week, two weeks, three weeks later.
Because you had no idea how many people smack you on the arm, ‘Hey, buddy, what’s happening man. and you’re like, ‘Jesus Christ.’ And they’re like ‘Why were you reacting so wild? I just patted you on the arm.’ You were almost embarrassed to be like, ‘Yeah, I got this brand on my arm.’ I was kinda like, people are gonna think we’re nuts. I’m not gonna tell anybody I did this. But God Almighty, it hurt.”
Josh laughed as he explained that his boss actually respected him for it:
“It hurt. I got slapped on the arm by like, my boss man. I just got right back to work, And I went ‘Ow.’ He’s like, ‘What did you do?’ And I showed him, and I think I like, got a sign of respect from him. He’s like, ‘Did you do that? Wow, how tough are you? I’m like, ‘Pretty damn tough, man.'”
And Ask Jr. segment of his podcast this week, Jr. explained that the idea really started from the fact that Josh had previously branded himself with a bottle cap during the Olympics one year, and it grew from there:
“Josh, listen, now. Let me tell y’all about Josh. We didn’t tell this part. Before the brand, the reason why the brand came about is because Josh, at some point in his life, had taken a bottle cap, and did the Olympic rings with a bottle cap. He was feeling very patriotic during the Olympics one year, and heated up a damn bottle cap and did the Olympics rings.
We’d be somewhere, and we’re like, Josh, show them your Olympic rings. and it looked hideous, so that’s what really got the gears turning in our head. I was like, ‘Man, I got a brander for a steak.’ It’s DMP, we are boys here, let’s do this, man. Let’s get branded.”
Don’t ever go around these boys with a blow torch or any kind of iron or steel…
I just don’t think this is something any woman will ever understand, and like Jr. mentions, this was around 2004, so they were much younger and dumber, and they obviously have the scars to prove it.
That’s only scratching the surface of all the wild stories they have from their younger years, though, and it’s a great, hilarious podcast episode you can check out below.
