A one, the one you trust. And today we're gonna take a little
bit of an adventure because I have a fellow broadcaster with me who's also an
author, and Mary Leonard. How are you today. I'm very well,
Tom, and I'm awfully happy to be here with you. She speaks real
English. I speak okay English. But you're actually from England originally. Yes,
I was born and raised in England and I left at a very young
age and I went over to New Zealand where I joined broadcasting, and from
there I got to New York. In New York, I found a young
German gentleman, and we are married. And he's sitting out that's that handsome
fella out there. It has been quite a long time. Well goodness that
he's still smiling, so everything must be going great, not bad, not
bad. B Yeah, well, you know, welcome to our radio station.
You actually worked in a radio station just down the road in Owatsaw a
few years back. I was. It was a classical music station started by
John Major. And it was not that John Major, folks, the other
John, not the Prime Minister, not just the name. But that was
a real thrill because we were living in in Bartlesville. My husband was working
for the big company here, which is of course used to be Bartlesville,
and Bartlesville was Phillips Petroleum, and I wanted something to do. I found
this radio station really wonderful. People were running it. I started there and
I did some more announcing in a warsaw. But in the in the book,
I've called it bug Tussle, bug Tussele. Yes, I saw that,
I'm going to come on. You know that there really is. Yeah,
it's a little reason. In fact, one of the former members of
our used to be the speaker of the house, Carl Albert. He was
from Bug. So I thought the name is just too good not to use
God, so I superimposed bug Tussle over a while. Now the name of
your book is Split Second Decisions, Random or Predestined. Now, this is
a book, folks, it's a novel, but it's pretty much based on
the lady you're Yarine right now, and you did this in kind of a
different way. It's almost like a letter to yourself. Well, I really
wanted to write an autobiography, but in most of the books that I've read
are rather boring, and I feel the self aggrandizing and you really want to
say, oh, come on, tell us about the time when you couldn't
pay the rent, tell us about the time you got fired. But it's
never really quite the truth. So I thought, what I'll do is I'll
write a novel memoir, and I'll write it through the eyes of my young
grand son sixteen years of age, because I wanted a fresh, irreverent kind
of voice. You got to play and have fun, didn't you. I
read this, and I'm sitting there going, oh my, I really had.
I got a kick out of this, I really did. Where are
you coming from here? Well, the thing is, the main character is
an irishman, sure, Sean Francis Murphy. Now, anybody who's got even
a snitching of Irish knows that we're really not the full shilling, any of
us. No, not at all. So I wanted it to be amusing,
and I hope, I hope I got it was. It was God,
and you took us through many different places, many different adventures, but
all of these were very much based on your adventures. And but through this
character. Now we were talking in the green room, and folks, we
really don't have a green room. We just pretend because we got a little
tea thing going on here. But I asked Mary, I said, well,
what kind of broadcasting did you do? You interviewed a big name rock
and roll act when you were younger? Yes, I did. I interviewed
George Harrison up the Beatles. Say did you shriek like the young ladies did
back then? You know? The thing was we were all about the same
agent. It was long before they became really really famous, and they had
made all these contractual obligations before they became famous, and then they had to
course carry through. This is why they were in Dunedin, New Zealand,
which is really a very small town for the Beatless. Yeah, they just
cleaned house there in Dunedin, so you know, they had a poor house,
I imagine, But I can only imagine how you process these things through
the eyes of mister Sean and through that character. It's really a lot of
fun. And the book is available on uh well, on Amazon Amazon here,
and you can get that. It's a good read. It's a fun
read, and it's not going to take you, you know, a whole
week to get through it. But it is so enjoyable. I mean,
I was I was laughing at a little bit. Well, the title alone
is the German pronunciation of fat f a h rt. Now as when we
pronounce it in English, it sounds a little different. Oh yeah, but
it's the German fat and Wise, which is the name of two characters.
Yes, and during the book the character changes his name quite a few times,
which is because he had to, which is part of the fun of
the book. Yes, it is, yes, And the thing is,
I knew that when I saw it because I took German when I was younger.
Because there are kids in the neighborhood you kind of had to learn how
to talk to them. But anyway, it was a This book is just
really if you like smiling folks, buy it. You will smile, you'll
get a kick out of the adventures, and you'll get a kick out how
he and it lives up to its spirit right there a split second decisions random
or predestined, and you're left to figure that out. Well, I think
most of us have that feeling. Occasionally will make a rash decision. We
hope it's not rash, but you're never quite sure how it will turn out.
But we just seem to leap in and make a decision at random and
very often it turns out to be quite successful. And this was what happened
to my character. Oh, we're going to read here for a little bits
on the tablet left to read you just a little bit. Please tell This
character is as a young boy of fourteen, he gets onto a ship going
to the United States. The way he gets on the ship is it's really
a fluke. It's a Jewish doctor who is escaping from Kiev from the pogroms
with his family, and he sees this young boy there with almost tears in
his eyes. He can't get a job as a cabin boy, and he
needs to get to the New World because of the potato famine, which has
been a terrible blight in his own country. There literally is no hope for
him in Ireland. And he gets on this ship with the family and they
point him down to the where the stowways go. And this is a little
bit of what happens when he gets there to Ellis Island. From the barge
to Lower Manhattan just a moment, let me get this right. From the
barge to Lower Manhattan. Okay, now here he is on the barge to
Manhattan, he remembered shouting of names, somebody answering with a raised hand,
a quick signing of papers, then either deliverance or rejection through a blue painted
door. That door, the one marked immigration, was the gateway to the
world he craved, but he lacked the necessary papers. The ID tag he
had he was certain would not be sufficient to get him through. What happened
next was either a miracle or the result of officials being overworked or maybe careless.
Schwisvuss Albert. Nobody responded, hesitating for a moment, the name was
repeated, Schwais Voss Albert. Still no one answered, so he raised his
hand. He raised his hand. Sean Francis Murphy entered the United States of
America with a working visa in a stranger's name. He later learned that had
officials recognized as stowaway, he would have received the same treatment like regular passengers,
respect and politeness. But his fixation with split second decisions started at that
moment and it affected his entire life. And you can feel the adrenaline in
that moment, looking around, looking around, Should I should I not?
Should I should have? Then split second? Whoop, here goes the hand,
yes, and you know you could You can really feel that when you're
reading it. He took a chance. He took a chance, He rolled
the bones, and Homie came at that age, at such a young age,
it did affect his life from then on. Later on, as he
matured, he realized that sometimes these random decisions are not always successful. At
first they can be rather disappointing. But later on I think he realized that
maybe certain people come into our life for some reason, maybe shows we're going
on a different path. It should be we should get on a different path
with our lives, and other times they're there forever. But sometimes, as
it has often been observed, it takes a brilliant mind. We need to
know the difference. And therefore I think we're in the hands of the divine
when it comes to it, I would agree. Folks, I'd like for
you to go to your computer and order this on Amazon, and it's a
fact and wi are split second decisions random or predestined. In paperback, you
can get that. You can also get it on Kendall for only four ninety
nine and less than sixteen dollars on hardcover and paperback, it's about fifteen dollars.
What's up? Just oh, one more time? Yeah, the name
fact and why each RT and wiss colon are split second decisions, random or
predestined. You get that paper back, hard back or kindled, because I
know people do that. They do that kindle thing all the time. I
like the feel of a book myself, Yes, me too, Nothing like
that field of a book is it? And it's an author. When you've
written it, it becomes part of you. I look at it sometimes and
and I lovingly touch it because all my life I have wanted to do it,
and suddenly in my ages, oh heavens, I did it. Oh
I did it. Yes, that's one of those aha moments. Look here,
we've done it. Success. Mary. It has been a pleasure having
you on the radio today and talking about the book. And I hope folks
have a great time reading it as much as I did about a month ago.
And somehow I got a little amnesia, but I did read it about
a month ago when you said it, and my golly, it is.
It is fun and you will kind of live the character a little bit.
You'll you also raise a couple of times, and you will chuckle a bit
too. So it's really got its ups and downs, and it's got it's
a. It's moments of oh my, and you kind of look for the
oh mai in this book. Mary, thank you, Thank you so much.
Tom. It's late the pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, you've been listening
to and watching our Community Connection program on K one The One you Trust