Speaker 1: Weird thing happened. Weird, weird, weird. Welcome to Bledsoe said, So,
Speaker 1: we have a very very special, mythical, legendary guest tonight.
Speaker 1: It's something that I can't believe that we are finally
Speaker 1: in the midst of and experiencing tonight. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, I'm going to talk about something coming
Speaker 1: up in May that you guys really need to consider.
Speaker 1: We're going to be my dad, my sister, and my
Speaker 1: wife and I will be at the Contact Modalities Expo
Speaker 1: in Delavan, Wisconsin from May tewond to May fourth. It's
Speaker 1: going to be an extraordinary conscious expo. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: three rooms simultaneously hosting different panels and events. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be guest speakers, all kinds of different things like crystal
Speaker 1: bowl healing and breath work and meditation and all of
Speaker 1: these kinds of extraordinary consciousness related subjects, all happening in
Speaker 1: the same space, so to speak. My Dad's gonna be
Speaker 1: a keynote speaker. There's gonna be a live panel, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a cocktail party on Saturday with a live DJ,
Speaker 1: and everybody's just gonna be having fun, hanging out and
Speaker 1: I will say on Friday, there's gonna be a SkyWatch,
Speaker 1: so definitely don't want to miss that. Just check it
Speaker 1: out at contact modalitiesxpo dot com. You can see your
Speaker 1: ticket information and booking and see all the events that
Speaker 1: we have there. I think there's gonna be like thirty
Speaker 1: to forty different guests at this event, So check it out.
Speaker 1: You definitely don't want to miss it. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: a great time. I'm looking forward to it. I hope
Speaker 1: to see you guys there. So onto tonight's episode, we
Speaker 1: finally have caught the mythical white whale is what I
Speaker 1: keep calling it because.
Speaker 2: Because he's been harpoon.
Speaker 1: He's been hardpooned. We have my my one of my
Speaker 1: favorite people, Alex's dad. I wanted you to introduce them,
Speaker 1: but you wanted me to introduce them, So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna introduce him as one of my favorite people because
Speaker 1: he's your day. He's also one of my favorite people, yeah,
Speaker 1: but also one of mine because we get along, we
Speaker 1: hit it off, and you know, we're we're both g's
Speaker 1: on the same wavelength. So I mean, tell me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: No, I'm b.
Speaker 1: This is not much. We don't carry much in person,
Speaker 1: but I do have a little something for you, just
Speaker 1: a little. I promise you. It's not much. I wish
Speaker 1: it could be more, but it is a little gift
Speaker 1: for being on the show. Most of our stuff is online,
Speaker 1: so maybe we'll have to send you something extra. But
Speaker 1: maybe on some cold nights you can keep your head warm.
Speaker 2: And you've got to save some stuff. I can get
Speaker 2: them for Christmas. Yeah, something went all out on the sweatshirt.
Speaker 2: I could have used some slippers, but that's okay. It'll
Speaker 2: get warm. I gotta still bogging at summertime, and I'm
Speaker 2: ready to go. I feel for Nick's Thank you, Ryan
Speaker 2: and you guys are too nice.
Speaker 3: You're the best. Dave with Sean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we've switched the situation here. We got Nick
Speaker 1: on the on the equipment.
Speaker 4: I'm feeling very strange. Actually, we have two guests in
Speaker 4: the student feel very weird.
Speaker 1: On this side of the room.
Speaker 4: We had to let you, like, I know, I'm happy
Speaker 4: about it, be able to talk to your dad.
Speaker 1: I'm happy about it.
Speaker 3: I thought it'd be cool.
Speaker 1: This is Alex.
Speaker 2: We have his years. I thought it was an intervention
Speaker 2: it first showed up. But I's glad to know. It's
Speaker 2: it's not that our child support.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's start with the show. We've been doing
Speaker 4: this three three going four years now, what is it like?
Speaker 4: This is your first time in here, is your first
Speaker 4: time in the studio. We talk a lot about it.
Speaker 4: What are your thoughts on the show, on me doing
Speaker 4: the show?
Speaker 1: You have any thoughts there or anything which is off
Speaker 1: a cliff Well.
Speaker 2: I've always thought that was pretty cool. And uh, you know,
Speaker 2: back in my day, we just got together and talked.
Speaker 2: We didn't have the podcast, and the hell we didn't
Speaker 2: have a radio. We sold it, you know, I sell Hey,
Speaker 2: you're in it. But uh, nice, it's nice, and I'm
Speaker 2: glad you found a good group of people. And I
Speaker 2: think you know, and in the world we're living in
Speaker 2: that certain people have a touch and you meet certain
Speaker 2: people and they go out of your lives, and then
Speaker 2: you meet people that seems to took around and it's
Speaker 2: all you seem to all have the same and I'll
Speaker 2: call it an orb. You all have the same light.
Speaker 2: And and that's what I think. The group of people
Speaker 2: that y'all attract to is people that are believers, want
Speaker 2: in the Good Lord and are always an attraction for
Speaker 2: people to need help. We all need help, and you
Speaker 2: got to find the people that surround yourself with the
Speaker 2: people that have different strengths that make you stronger. And
Speaker 2: if you're going down, look who you're around. If you're
Speaker 2: going up, stand up. And that's one thing I like
Speaker 2: about it. And y'all's camaraderie and your closeness and your
Speaker 2: friendship and your beliefs, and that's what I feel the
Speaker 2: world needs more of. And I think we all have
Speaker 2: a light. It's just how it shines and how it attracts.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Beautifully said, Well, you know, I've been blessed.
Speaker 2: I've never wanted a lot, but I've always got what
Speaker 2: I needed. And I think people tend to want more
Speaker 2: of what they want than what they need. Just pay
Speaker 2: attention to what you need, you'll get what you want.
Speaker 2: I've always lived like that. I've had months in my
Speaker 2: business that I didn't know where it was coming from,
Speaker 2: and I just fed five hundred people free. Because I've
Speaker 2: done it. Even though bad times are here, I continue
Speaker 2: to do it. And people said why, I said, because
Speaker 2: it seemed like a few weeks later my phone will
Speaker 2: ring and I just got a thousand people to feed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, you blessure yourself by blessing others. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's what life is about. In my opinion, that's always
Speaker 2: always lived. And I've lived a crazy life. I mean,
Speaker 2: I lived it. You know, I'm sixty eight most in
Speaker 2: a one hundred and ten year old body.
Speaker 4: I want to touch on that real quick. So I
Speaker 4: want to talk about parties. But that reminds me. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not a joke. I remember, we'd never leave for
Speaker 4: a hurricane. We know hurricanes coming, we know we're going
Speaker 4: to lose power at the restaurant. There's no generators at
Speaker 4: the restaurant. So before every storm, we would be giving
Speaker 4: everything away. You would be giving everything away, you know,
Speaker 4: me and Nick would help or whatever whatever needed to
Speaker 4: be done, but you'd.
Speaker 1: Give it all away.
Speaker 4: The storm would come, you lose power, Everything that would
Speaker 4: have gone bad is now somewhere feeding people who have
Speaker 4: been misplaced from the storm. And you seem to just
Speaker 4: turn around and bounce back, I mean, and get more
Speaker 4: from that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, life's too short to worry about what's happening.
Speaker 2: You just got to take care of those that need it.
Speaker 2: And I had a great relationship with First Baptists, and
Speaker 2: every Tuesday night they feed the homeless, no matter what
Speaker 2: their situation is. Also, and you know, I've had times
Speaker 2: where I emptied my freezer and the power w'd come
Speaker 2: on as I'm doing it, and my meat will still
Speaker 2: seemi frozen, but I'd already promised it and they had
Speaker 2: counted on it. And I've never followed an insurance claim
Speaker 2: because they do just for those people. You know, you
Speaker 2: got to fill out thirty six pages and submit and hug.
Speaker 2: So I just you know, I never gave to get
Speaker 2: a reward back, either financially or I always got mine
Speaker 2: back spiritually if I know I'm helping the right things
Speaker 2: and the right people. And I had great causes that
Speaker 2: I did for for years, twenty thirty years, and I
Speaker 2: would do them today if I was still in business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know that's amazing. I resonate with what you said,
Speaker 1: particularly the other night, Alex and I. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know this or how much you'll talk about this,
Speaker 1: but we actually have three shows now, and so on Tuesdays,
Speaker 1: Nick comes over, we record our third show and then
Speaker 1: he leaves, and then we go and record our second show.
Speaker 1: I know the timing is weird there, but and Alex
Speaker 1: and I do one show without Nick, not for any
Speaker 1: reason other things. It's just the way it works.
Speaker 2: You know. I mean, if Nick don't show up after
Speaker 2: the night, I might be in that chair and put
Speaker 2: my son back behind the camera.
Speaker 1: So there's a show that we do this like a
Speaker 1: And I know why we did it with that, because
Speaker 1: you didn't.
Speaker 2: Learn it here.
Speaker 5: It's a departing gift. If you're honored. I'm honored, and
Speaker 5: I'd be honored to be replaced by you, sir.
Speaker 2: I don't work anymore and be a heck of a show.
Speaker 2: I'm retired when I.
Speaker 1: Start our own thing, don't worry. Yeah, that's good to
Speaker 1: take off, absolutely. But I say that to say that, like,
Speaker 1: there was a conversation we had the other night that
Speaker 1: both of you guys weren't present for, and one thing
Speaker 1: that Alex and I were talking about was about the
Speaker 1: company you keep. You had just said that I can't
Speaker 1: remember the exact words that you used, but you said,
Speaker 1: when you're going down, look around, when you're coming up,
Speaker 1: stand up, And we were just talking about that the
Speaker 1: other night, and I think that's like one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful things you can that you can live by.
Speaker 1: It's like surrounding yourself with people who uplift you spiritually.
Speaker 2: You uplift each other. Yeah, and that's how you grow.
Speaker 2: I mean too many people. Especially if you start becoming
Speaker 2: successful or something, there's people there that want to bring
Speaker 2: you down instead of lift you up and celebrates. And
Speaker 2: especially if you got the right heart and mind, the
Speaker 2: higher you get up, the higher you can give. You know,
Speaker 2: I always measured my success each year is how much
Speaker 2: I gave away, not how much I made. That didn't
Speaker 2: care of what I made. It took care of itself.
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of rough times. But you know,
Speaker 2: I feel is the problem with our world. Everybody's just
Speaker 2: stepping on top of each other to get where they
Speaker 2: want to go and don't realize they're really going to hell.
Speaker 1: I mean, shockingly, put I do agree.
Speaker 2: And everything it really is. You're on your way to
Speaker 2: hell and you're quick to get there. But just treat
Speaker 2: everybody with kindness. And if you see somebody in need,
Speaker 2: you're hard to tell you if it's true, because everybody
Speaker 2: gets asked for everything. Nowadays, you can't drive past the
Speaker 2: corner without a sign. And I've never been blessed by
Speaker 2: so much, by God, by these cardboard signs, and they're
Speaker 2: making more money than are people that are working forty
Speaker 2: hours a week in a few hours. So but there's
Speaker 2: some that need it. But your heart to guide you.
Speaker 2: If your heart guide, you give it. And if it's
Speaker 2: not true, but your heart's satisfied. You know. I walked
Speaker 2: out of a convenience mart about three weeks ago. It
Speaker 2: was a cold evening, rainy, and uh homeless guy was
Speaker 2: sitting by the trash cans smoking some you know, end
Speaker 2: of cigarette butts out of the cigarette supposal. And when
Speaker 2: I walk out, didn't that's where any money? Some He said, Man,
Speaker 2: I'll pay you to take me to a hotel near
Speaker 2: the bus station. This guy's gonna pay me to take
Speaker 2: him to a hotel because he's leaving town homeless people.
Speaker 2: I don't think like Wilmington because they all seen. This
Speaker 2: is the third time at the same convenient mart I've
Speaker 2: taken people. And I said, man, I'll give you a ride.
Speaker 2: What the heck? I got nothing going on? And the
Speaker 2: guy that spends the whole time thanking me because he
Speaker 2: can't believe and he wants to pay keep your money.
Speaker 2: Get on the bus get back to Asheville. They all
Speaker 2: seem to come from Wilmington and spend time. I don't
Speaker 2: think we treat him as well as other places because
Speaker 2: they all seem to get on the bus and go
Speaker 2: to Asheville. I took this one guy to the bus station.
Speaker 2: He slept in the you know, it's like midnight when
Speaker 2: I took him there. But it's amazing all the people
Speaker 2: that's walked through there, and no one probably said yes,
Speaker 2: or they might not even ask people. But that's I feel.
Speaker 2: My orb is I track people and my heart tell
Speaker 2: and I've had a bunch asked me and I said no.
Speaker 2: But I think you shine a light if you truly
Speaker 2: believe in what you do it and yourself. I think
Speaker 2: you shine a light and people see that light. You know.
Speaker 2: Lady in the Convenient Mark when Alex was a baby,
Speaker 2: we pull up and I'm pumping my gas and this
Speaker 2: little old lady comes up to me and I'm at
Speaker 2: the time six seven, still close to that shrunk a
Speaker 2: little bit, but I was four hundred pounds and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people, and it wasn't I was
Speaker 2: the only one out in the parking lot. You know,
Speaker 2: there was cars filling up and people, small people, regular people.
Speaker 2: But the lady came straight to me. She's been driving
Speaker 2: around for eight hours trying to find her house. That
Speaker 2: happened twice and at the same gas station, within months
Speaker 2: of each other. All my stuff comes in twos or three's,
Speaker 2: and it's always been thirty to sixty days apart.
Speaker 1: What do you mean she's trying to find her house.
Speaker 2: She had Alzheimer's in it. She's been driving around Wilmington
Speaker 2: for eight hours, and she lived in Forest Hills, and
Speaker 2: she was on College Road and where the publics is
Speaker 2: now at that gas station right beside it.
Speaker 1: Okay, quite a ways away then.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, been driving around the whole time trying to
Speaker 2: find home. She left at noon. Wow, this was eight
Speaker 2: at night.
Speaker 1: Jeez. I've heard quite a few stories from both of
Speaker 1: you about things like this that have happened to you,
Speaker 1: like probably as long as you can remember. I'd imagine
Speaker 1: it's it's been with me all my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I moved out of the house at seventeen.
Speaker 2: I was still in high school. You know, I lived
Speaker 2: with a bunch of great people. But you know, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, they didn't have the same morals
Speaker 2: that I grew up with. You know, I didn't have
Speaker 2: a lot, but I had discipline and how told how
Speaker 2: to treat people and respect people and stealing is not good.
Speaker 2: And my friends had different philosophies on a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff. But they were fun and they were great hearts,
Speaker 2: but they were just thieves, you know. And I got
Speaker 2: dragged in. Only one out of eate ever got arrested.
Speaker 2: Go to the police station. They interrogate me, and I
Speaker 2: told them, I, you know, we think we're going to
Speaker 2: go do something. I'd get out of the car and
Speaker 2: hitchhike home. I didn't stick around. I knew they were
Speaker 2: coming back home. I'd come back. Back. In those days,
Speaker 2: there was little gas stations that had that little silk
Speaker 2: dogs playing cards and all. I'd have one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty of them in my house. You know. They'd break
Speaker 2: in the little storeage area and steal them and bring
Speaker 2: them home and sell them. And what I had a job,
Speaker 2: you know, I was working, and that just amazed me.
Speaker 2: But we ended up. The fun ended when the cops
Speaker 2: came to the house during Happy Days at eight o'clock
Speaker 2: on a Monday. Back in those days and knocked on
Speaker 2: the door and walked in and took us all downtown,
Speaker 2: and I'm defending myself, and you know, we're all in
Speaker 2: different rooms, and after about an hour and a half,
Speaker 2: the guy comes in and said, well, we're not We're
Speaker 2: convinced you didn't have anything. We're convinced you didn't have
Speaker 2: anything to do with the break in, but we were
Speaker 2: not convinced that you're not. That you're guilty, not guilty,
Speaker 2: So we're gonna let you go. But you got to
Speaker 2: call your daddy. Yeah, that's what I said. Well, how
Speaker 2: much time am I looking at if I don't call
Speaker 2: my daddy? And they knew my family. We've been in
Speaker 2: the parks recreation concessions business. We knew my family was
Speaker 2: very well known. He said, David, call your daddy. That
Speaker 2: was the hardest conversation I've ever made. Yeah, and still
Speaker 2: has calling him to come get me. And you know,
Speaker 2: he was cool as hell, a lot cooler than I
Speaker 2: thought he would be. But the thing I remember most
Speaker 2: is when the last thing the police offers. I wish
Speaker 2: I remember his name, but I don't. And he said, David,
Speaker 2: I know you love your friends and they love you obviously,
Speaker 2: because no one said you had anything to do with this,
Speaker 2: And I said, because I didn't. And he said, I
Speaker 2: don't care how cool you think they are, but if
Speaker 2: you hang around dogs, you're going to catch fleas. And
Speaker 2: from that day forward, I moved in a different direction,
Speaker 2: started following people that had something going for They had
Speaker 2: family and business. They were headed that way. So I
Speaker 2: jumped on the train, got in the basketball legs, started,
Speaker 2: you know, changing my priorities of how I was having
Speaker 2: fun to you know, get in direction. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I started my restaurant with five dollars in a bicycle
Speaker 2: and the help of my parents. How old were you
Speaker 2: I was twenty seven heading over?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And how old were you when you said you
Speaker 3: kind of started to change and like turn things around
Speaker 3: when the cops came and you had to talk to
Speaker 3: your daddy.
Speaker 2: I was nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Been out of the house for two years, went home,
Speaker 2: regrouped for sixty days and never went back after that.
Speaker 4: And the job home, the job before you have them parties?
Speaker 4: Didn't he drag you outside, make you look at the sign.
Speaker 2: Well, every restaurant I worked at would eventually pulled me
Speaker 2: out front basically say you know, what does that science say?
Speaker 2: And I'd say, and that's say when it's got your
Speaker 2: name on it, we'll do it like that, okay. And
Speaker 2: that wasn't you know. Long after that, I was gone
Speaker 2: to another restaurant to run their show. Because I always
Speaker 2: could figure out the easiest and the and the best
Speaker 2: way and the cheapest way to give a quality product
Speaker 2: at a fair price. You know, when I closed, I
Speaker 2: was two three dollars cheaper on the same thing anybody
Speaker 2: wanting to and use top quality. I just had a
Speaker 2: small chest freezer. I didn't use much frozen food. We
Speaker 2: used fresh butts, fresh chicken, you know, cut our old steak.
Speaker 2: Did it all old school, but I bought cheap.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: We didn't pay a lot for the building because nobody
Speaker 2: can make it there. They said, no one can make
Speaker 2: it there. And that's all I need to hear. Especially
Speaker 2: the ones I worked for, said, you know that that
Speaker 2: did is it's not going to make it. They'll never
Speaker 2: make it. And I think that's what drove me to
Speaker 2: make it, because I probably because I was very odd.
Speaker 2: I get into something and get out get into something,
Speaker 2: and I go full speed when I'm in it, but
Speaker 2: eventually burn out.
Speaker 3: And move on.
Speaker 2: But that was all I needed to hear and whispers
Speaker 2: of he ain't on me. Yeah, because I made one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five bucks for three years and I
Speaker 2: was probably giving away more than that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: working for different groups like child affacacy and clubs for kids.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But even after a while, you realize what people that
Speaker 2: raise money, They raised money, but they spent so much
Speaker 2: raising it. Yeah, but then I understand that the publicity
Speaker 2: is what gets some more money. You want your name
Speaker 2: to be. I never put my advertisement on because they
Speaker 2: all say we're gonna put you on our T shirts,
Speaker 2: and I said, put it on somebody that'll pay you.
Speaker 2: I said, people will find me. I never advertised, never
Speaker 2: ran a website. Then I asked you to take a
Speaker 2: credit card for twenty two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the time of selling, when in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, it was like a legendary staple in
Speaker 1: the community.
Speaker 2: You don't really realize how but you are appreciated until
Speaker 2: the end. Yeah. I mean I couldn't even tell the
Speaker 2: meeting because we couldn't handle the business we already had
Speaker 2: just because of the COVID and the relief checks and
Speaker 2: the money my pricing because people started going back to
Speaker 2: the best value for their money. You know, they quit
Speaker 2: doing the forty dollars lunches they were looking because the
Speaker 2: money just stopped flowing there for a while. But our
Speaker 2: business never busier during the COVID times. I mean, we
Speaker 2: never closed a day for COVID. It took me twenty
Speaker 2: four hours to realize COVID wasn't as bad as they're saying.
Speaker 2: Because once they said, you know, everything's closing except Walmart
Speaker 2: and the liquor stores, I figured life still good. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, it made no sense. Yeah, I guess they
Speaker 2: just wanted to keep people drunk to go along with it.
Speaker 2: I thought people were going to be dying. Ride down
Speaker 2: the street, you'd see people falling out. The way they
Speaker 2: made it, you're shutting countries down.
Speaker 4: So what you were saying, though, is y'all knew you
Speaker 4: were going to close for months, but for maybe a month,
Speaker 4: but we didn't tell anybody until So when Parties closed,
Speaker 4: we knew it was happening long long before, but we couldn't.
Speaker 4: Parties wasn't built to handle the volume that was going
Speaker 4: to come.
Speaker 1: When we announced that it was going to be no more.
Speaker 4: And I think what two weeks prior we announced, they
Speaker 4: ran a little article in the newspaper and it was slammed.
Speaker 4: I mean we'd what closed the doors? You and Nick
Speaker 4: and Joyce would close the doors at noon because you
Speaker 4: ran out of food.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was uh yeah, And it's hard to prepare
Speaker 2: for because once I realized I was going to sell,
Speaker 2: I knew it was already busy. I was going to
Speaker 2: hire someone else. Probably didn't want to hire someone and
Speaker 2: then lay them off. I didn't want to do it
Speaker 2: to them, and so we kept working with the same
Speaker 2: small crew we had, and God bless them. Uh, they
Speaker 2: hung in there. We got it done. And uh but
Speaker 2: I never did the interview they wanted to do two
Speaker 2: weeks before because I just didn't want. We couldn't take
Speaker 2: care of what we had. Yeah, and I never advertised
Speaker 2: because we always stayed busy. And how am I going
Speaker 2: to try to lure you were into stand in line
Speaker 2: and wait? You know, I didn't feel that was fair,
Speaker 2: you know, to my customers, are to my staff, because
Speaker 2: we always operated, we got a lot done. You know,
Speaker 2: I walk in the restaurants see all these people running around,
Speaker 2: and we probably did more day than they did and
Speaker 2: only had two three people, but we worked. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the difference. We took care of people, people were patient.
Speaker 2: I had customers that clean their tables. I mean, I
Speaker 2: had customers that would put an apron on, wash their
Speaker 2: hands and come and help us at times when we
Speaker 2: got busy. And this and and and those guys are
Speaker 2: still some of my greatest friends and will always be. Wow.
Speaker 2: You know, you just don't see that.
Speaker 1: And these are lawyers and uh, guys that could go
Speaker 1: anywhere for lunch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, real estate, I mean guys that own most everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's an apron and get behind the counter.
Speaker 2: But that's who you attract and and what you look for.
Speaker 2: People find each other, you know. And and it's all
Speaker 2: different spectrums, especially my friendship group. With amount of success,
Speaker 2: A lot of my friends have had and and degrees
Speaker 2: and but yet I'm just one of the guys with
Speaker 2: them as they are with me. And money doesn't impress me.
Speaker 2: Hearts impressed me. And I and my son and Nick.
Speaker 2: That's one that's one thing they got from me is
Speaker 2: my heart. And that's the best thing I ever could
Speaker 2: leave anyone. Yeah, is a part of my heart because
Speaker 2: I've always I've had that, I've had. I got my
Speaker 2: mother's heart. We had eight children, and it'd be two
Speaker 2: or three other kids eat at the house.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: So you mean when you were growing up. He's one
Speaker 1: of eight, right, yep. And friends would always be coming
Speaker 1: and going so well, not my friends.
Speaker 2: They were scared of my daddy, my sister friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there'd be like ten to twelve kids eating
Speaker 1: regularly at your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all girls. Like hell, I'd give up a
Speaker 2: little bit for that.
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, I mean, you know my wife was
Speaker 1: my sister's friend. I mean, you know, I get it.
Speaker 4: So I want to, uh, this reminds me just to
Speaker 4: paint a little bit of a better picture of your
Speaker 4: home life growing up.
Speaker 1: I want you to tell the guys the.
Speaker 4: The Christmas basketball gold story.
Speaker 2: Well, we kind of rotated around for nice gifts, and
Speaker 2: nice gifts were you know, good gifts. You know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have what you know, I had a friend of
Speaker 2: mine always got g I Joe's. I was at his
Speaker 2: house at Christmas waking up. You know that was exciting
Speaker 2: for me. You know, I got hard candy in a
Speaker 2: stocking with lint on it, you know, and you know,
Speaker 2: and my one pair of jeans for the year, my
Speaker 2: one pair of tennis shoes, and then never so often
Speaker 2: you'd get a good gift. And I in my rotation
Speaker 2: before I had siblings leaving, because there was a big
Speaker 2: gap from the eighth to the first. My parents were
Speaker 2: to have six children. The seventh was accident and the
Speaker 2: eighth was keep the seventh company. So my mother didn't
Speaker 2: My mother didn't want anybody to grow up alone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she did it. She had seven brothers and sisters. My
Speaker 2: daddy was an only child. Imagine that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's gonna be like me and Jenny, but reversed.
Speaker 1: She's an only child.
Speaker 2: And my daddy never saw a paycheck. He got, you know,
Speaker 2: for me a card and cigarettes a week and the
Speaker 2: fifth of Jack Daniels and that was his pay for
Speaker 2: every paycheck.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And he showed back home. Man, I'd gone out for
Speaker 2: a pack of Luckys, and I had to keep that
Speaker 2: sucker running in the opposite direction with these hoodlums, I mean,
Speaker 2: we were wild. The only time you never heard of
Speaker 2: sound was dinner time because if you won't eating, you
Speaker 2: were losing weight. Yeah, and Mama could cook on a
Speaker 2: two or three burner stove because nothing of the burners
Speaker 2: always worked, but she could put a feast on. You know,
Speaker 2: the first time I spend the night away from home,
Speaker 2: it's I'm going for dinner too. You know, this guy's
Speaker 2: an only child. I walk in there, I look on
Speaker 2: the the stove and there's a pot that looks like
Speaker 2: what we put butter in. I said, man, did you
Speaker 2: tell your mama I'm coming for dinner? He said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I told her you're staying over the night and eating dinner.
Speaker 2: But this, I said, but I don't think she prepared
Speaker 2: well enough. I gotta go. I went home to catch
Speaker 2: by six o'clock dinner in the house. I didn't stay tonight.
Speaker 1: That's funny.
Speaker 2: But back to what you asked me, Well, so I
Speaker 2: get My first best gift was I was twelve years
Speaker 2: old and I used to fly model aeroplanes and I
Speaker 2: had a Cox trainer and it flew on strings, had
Speaker 2: a motor, and you went out and you circled and
Speaker 2: you flew, and man, I could make that thing do
Speaker 2: what it wasn't supposed to do. And I wanted a
Speaker 2: remote control aeroplane forever, but just didn't have the means
Speaker 2: to be able to get it. And I woke up
Speaker 2: one morning and it was cold at Christmas in Wilmington,
Speaker 2: and I opened up my box. It was a B
Speaker 2: fifty two bomber oh cool remote control aeroplane, Cox motor
Speaker 2: on that sucker came from the number one. What the
Speaker 2: name was, I can't remember the name of the store,
Speaker 2: but anyway, nice place. I mean, this was top of
Speaker 2: the line and I got it.
Speaker 1: Oat.
Speaker 2: Come on today, let's get out of the park and fly.
Speaker 2: He said, son, it's too cold. He said. This ain't
Speaker 2: like your little Cox trainer airplane where it's held together
Speaker 2: by rubber bands. When you crash it, you just put
Speaker 2: it back together. He said, it's too cold. If you,
Speaker 2: you know, go one way or the other. You crack
Speaker 2: this plane up, plastic and cold. I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: twenty five degrees. Tomorrow's gonna be forty. We'll go out
Speaker 2: and fly it, okay, daddy, you know. So I put
Speaker 2: it back under the tree and go upstairs. And I
Speaker 2: knew that my daddy was but he gets up early
Speaker 2: at Christmas with these youngins, and I knew he'd be
Speaker 2: napping here soon. And he falls asleep and tiptoe down there,
Speaker 2: go by the tree. I get my plane. I'm out
Speaker 2: in the back door and I'm headed to the park.
Speaker 2: I fired that thing up. Man, it sounds so sweet.
Speaker 2: I take all perfect and I'm flying around doing loop
Speaker 2: the loops, figure eights, and I'm top of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: can't wait for some of my friends and wake up
Speaker 2: and come down here look at this thing and start
Speaker 2: sputtering a little bit. So I got to bring it
Speaker 2: in for a landing. And I'm down to Hippie Park,
Speaker 2: I mean human cray No. I met h Wallace Park
Speaker 2: and it's not a level field. And I pulled that
Speaker 2: thing down of that wing tip, and that thing broke
Speaker 2: in half, the wing broken half. And cried and sniffle
Speaker 2: it up. I get my plane. I put it back
Speaker 2: in the box. I get it back package, get home.
Speaker 2: I put it under the tree. I go to my room.
Speaker 2: I've been crying. Next morning, my Daddy wakes up. First thing,
Speaker 2: he says, all right, boy, get your plane, let's go flying.
Speaker 2: I said, Daddy, I'm okay. He says, son, you've been
Speaker 2: bugging me. Let's get the plane and go for now.
Speaker 2: I'm okay, Daddy. That's the first thing he said.
Speaker 1: What'd you do?
Speaker 2: Boy? Daddy went downstairs, pulled it out, opened it up
Speaker 2: the broke wing. He said, damn son, least you won't
Speaker 2: by yourself. I said, what do you mean, Daddy?
Speaker 5: I was?
Speaker 2: He said, no, you didn't. You had your dumb ass,
Speaker 2: would you. I said, think you did it first and only?
Speaker 1: Flight first and flight.
Speaker 2: Sixteen years old?
Speaker 1: That's fun.
Speaker 2: Christmas, wake up. My daddy put a six by six
Speaker 2: posts in the backyard backboard, rim net or basketball my gift.
Speaker 2: Wow backyard. The alley had a surface, so me and
Speaker 2: my brothers will all go start playing basketball. Then the
Speaker 2: fight start. I grab my ball, run in and Daddy said,
Speaker 2: you know, so I got to learn how to play
Speaker 2: and get along. I said, Daddy, it ain't you know
Speaker 2: how it goes. So then we started another game and
Speaker 2: the fight was starting. And after about the fifth fight,
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there arguing that my brother's got my ball
Speaker 2: running away, and I hear when I turn around, look,
Speaker 2: my daddy pulls the chainsaw out and cuts my damn
Speaker 2: gold on Christmas Day, said dad. End and dad, and
Speaker 2: it never went back. Oh no, Christmas is not one
Speaker 2: of my favorite times of the year with gifts.
Speaker 1: And that it makes sense now and that and that
Speaker 1: was your rotation. Yeah, four years.
Speaker 2: Between rotation I was done.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: My first one, I got a bike, but it was
Speaker 2: used and I tore it up in about three weeks.
Speaker 2: So wow. Christmas was never a I loved Christmas for
Speaker 2: the meaning, but I never took the gifts. I love
Speaker 2: giving gifts anyway. You know, my kids asked me what
Speaker 2: do you want? I don't know. I mean that's how
Speaker 2: you end up with a sweatshirt when you say that
Speaker 2: word that nothing for nothing for a drill cover. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But my brother was a very wealthy feller and uh
Speaker 2: poet year. I think this was back in the whenever
Speaker 2: the Atlantic Olympics. He lived in Atlanta. Hell of a
Speaker 2: businessman back then. He was making hundreds of thousand dollars year.
Speaker 2: Bought my mama Olympic pen. I said, man, you really
Speaker 2: broke the bank. And I always spend every time I
Speaker 2: had on my mom at Christmas because my daddy couldn't
Speaker 2: afford to buy our jewelry at the time, and I'd
Speaker 2: buy her whatever I could afford.
Speaker 1: So Alex got you that hoodie for Christmas? Yes, and
Speaker 1: I'm sensing that it was not a great gift.
Speaker 2: No, I love thee I'm just messing with it. I
Speaker 2: asked me all the time, what do you want? I said,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to get? So if I I made
Speaker 2: a point of my life, if I wanted, I already
Speaker 2: got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm hard to shop for.
Speaker 2: I got, you know, a tall.
Speaker 1: Guy's sixteen shoe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, it's not like you're gonna go get
Speaker 2: me a pack of slippers. You know, you get me
Speaker 2: a box that you got your shoes in for some
Speaker 2: laces on them, to say happy birthday, daddy.
Speaker 6: But I just don't.
Speaker 2: I never felt comfortable gidding.
Speaker 1: I'm the same way.
Speaker 2: I'd rather leave it, or I would rather be the giver. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love giving. I don't like I feel uncomfortable. I
Speaker 2: feel like, you know, do I owe you something for that?
Speaker 2: And actually they're trying to pay me back for what
Speaker 2: I've given. But yeah, I don't do it for that.
Speaker 2: I've never done anything to.
Speaker 1: Get I'm kind of the same way, like i'd rather
Speaker 1: It's not that I don't want gifts or on a
Speaker 1: like gifts. It's just it's because of similar things, having
Speaker 1: three siblings and being in times of poverty, and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes gifts are shared between kids.
Speaker 2: It's just disappointing, and you don't want to feel the disappointment.
Speaker 2: You rather feel Wow, man, almost got that. I'd rather
Speaker 2: almost get it then get it, especially certain.
Speaker 1: Things, right, I completely understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and that's but Lord, people out there
Speaker 2: won't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, around Christmas, Alex is always like dunking on Christmas
Speaker 1: and he's always like, we're Thanksgiving, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: wish on Thanksgiving is amazing. It's a city recognized holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, it was nineteen eighty six. We were proclamated
Speaker 2: the wish on they old Thanksgiving. Whatever you say, No,
Speaker 2: that's funny acclamation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. It's real.
Speaker 2: Mayor Ben Halterman one of my daddy's best friends. But
Speaker 2: we had a community Thanksgiving. We'd put the tin up
Speaker 2: and have the pig cooking and do oysters in the
Speaker 2: morning hang town fry what they call it. First we
Speaker 2: started with a pig in the ground fish fry.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was a celebration. We'd have seventy five hundred people
Speaker 2: every Thanksgiving for what six to eight to ten hours.
Speaker 1: We started at eight in the morning, seventy five hundred.
Speaker 2: Seventy five to one hundred and fifty probably.
Speaker 1: Oh there's still a lot though.
Speaker 2: Well, hell, we filled up, you know, quite a few ourselves,
Speaker 2: especially when the grandchildren all started coming along. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: a Thanksgiving now, you know, there's average of fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty three.
Speaker 1: Can confirm I did go this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was one of our lightest year.
Speaker 1: Is probab.
Speaker 2: We had some people that weren't able to make it
Speaker 2: through illness or distance. But uh, and I've never my
Speaker 2: oldest sister. I'm not gonna say, oh she is, she'll
Speaker 2: beat my ass. We call her the serge. God God
Speaker 2: gave my mother a daughter, then four boys, you know,
Speaker 2: oh gosh, and my sister raised most of the boys.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a year basically a year and four
Speaker 2: months separated my brother. The first five were at the
Speaker 2: first five were within uh seven years, so you know,
Speaker 2: it's a half years. It was pretty quick, you know.
Speaker 2: And lived in a two bedroom house, so it was interesting.
Speaker 2: But we never went without. We didn't know we were
Speaker 2: poor unless you know, we all we thought we were rich, right,
Speaker 2: But man, we had some good times. Never a dull moment,
Speaker 2: never a dull moment. But we all learned how to
Speaker 2: treat people. My father was an unbelievable man. His ethics
Speaker 2: is his uh morals. If he told you was gonna
Speaker 2: do something, it was done. And that's how it was.
Speaker 2: I never had a contract in thirty six years of business,
Speaker 2: uh for catering. Wow, two thousand people, thousand people. If
Speaker 2: I told you I'm gonna be there, I'll be there.
Speaker 2: I catered on my daddy's funeral. That after his funeral,
Speaker 2: I had to go to work. Wow. People said, man,
Speaker 2: I think these people would understand. I said, no, my
Speaker 2: daddy would. Right. He said, there's nothing you can do
Speaker 2: for me now. So the best thing you can do
Speaker 2: for me is live on and show them what a
Speaker 2: wishon's all about. That's the best way I could honor
Speaker 2: my daddy is by being morally right. That's true.
Speaker 1: You guys are definitely a very unique family. First of all,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of you. Yeah, I guess, being that
Speaker 1: you know you were with eight, not that you didn't
Speaker 1: figure there was eight of you, or you had eight siblings.
Speaker 2: I had seven brothers. Yeah, so you and a couple
Speaker 2: of stragglers and dad a couple of stragglers.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 2: Like, my sister would take people in all the time.
Speaker 2: Mother would become their mother.
Speaker 1: Also, like me, growing up, we always had I mean,
Speaker 1: we've had somebody on the show that lived with this
Speaker 1: grown up, and there's been lots of others. So you
Speaker 1: guys had eight in your family, and then all eight
Speaker 1: of you throughout time have had your own kids. So
Speaker 1: there's what like twenty five first cousins yep, twenty five
Speaker 1: of my first cousins. Yeah, yeah, not to mention all
Speaker 1: their kids if they have kids now they have kids.
Speaker 4: Yeah, most of my cousins have kids because of the
Speaker 4: age difference in my uncle's Plus.
Speaker 1: Your parents probably had siblings, so your aunts and uncles
Speaker 1: that also have all their own kids. So, I mean
Speaker 1: your family's massive.
Speaker 2: Used to be real close with my mother's family until
Speaker 2: the eighth was born and they disowned her. Basically, they
Speaker 2: said her mother when I was born, kind of left
Speaker 2: contact with the family because my mother, my grandmother, would
Speaker 2: tell my mama that she's running her life. She'll never
Speaker 2: be able to get anything done because she's got all
Speaker 2: these children. You're straddled at home. My mother never drove
Speaker 2: a day in her life. What my mother never drove,
Speaker 2: my imagine can't get away from it now. When the
Speaker 2: eighth was born. There's such a big gap. My sister
Speaker 2: was already getting married and was having a baby the
Speaker 2: same age, basically as my youngest sister. Of course, the
Speaker 2: seventh and eighth. There was a big gap between the
Speaker 2: sixth and seventh because the only one in six children,
Speaker 2: and obviously Diddy didn't know what causes it, and they
Speaker 2: had another one, and the eighth one was born to
Speaker 2: keep the seventh company.
Speaker 1: Wow, where are you in the in the.
Speaker 2: I got the crab. I was number five man.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I got from both ends, towards the bottom,
Speaker 1: but also towards the middle.
Speaker 2: You know, back when I could be in control. I
Speaker 2: was basically rated out on everything. Yeah yeah, and then
Speaker 2: if you hit my you ain't hit you younger, you know,
Speaker 2: come on, man, he just messed with me. So that's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons my daddy said, you know, if
Speaker 2: you don't want to live under my rules, go make
Speaker 2: your own. That's when I packed up my MP bag
Speaker 2: and moved out at seventeen.
Speaker 1: Wow, back then when it was just like a lot
Speaker 1: more normal.
Speaker 2: Not really, it was not. When you're in high school.
Speaker 2: Most people waited at least till they got kicked out.
Speaker 2: When he quit school or I still I had a job,
Speaker 2: went to school. But uh I had a blast though.
Speaker 2: You grow up, but sometimes you don't make sure until
Speaker 2: later on. Yeah, you know, I wasn't gonna have children.
Speaker 2: I were going to get married after I turned I
Speaker 2: was thirty eight when I got married. I was forty
Speaker 2: two when I had Alex. Okay, life has a plan
Speaker 2: for everyone.
Speaker 1: Was that four years buried and then having a kid.
Speaker 2: But if I had got married and had a kid
Speaker 2: earlier I had ever been around, if my life would
Speaker 2: have took the same path because I worked a lot,
Speaker 2: and if I went't mark and I played golf.
Speaker 1: Did you already have So you already had parties when
Speaker 1: he was born because you started in twenty seven. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you were born into it. Interesting, it's all I knew.
Speaker 1: What was that like growing up around parties? It was awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's become It's like one of my goals,
Speaker 4: you know. Uh, like with fatherhood on the horizon, one
Speaker 4: of my goals is to provide a way for my
Speaker 4: children to work. Because I think that that's something that
Speaker 4: has really kind of set me apart. Uh So I
Speaker 4: didn't I didn't think it was weird at the time
Speaker 4: were different, right, I just knew it was what it was.
Speaker 4: The interesting thing was is because of the hours, I
Speaker 4: could only work in the summertime. So we'd do our
Speaker 4: summertime thing and go to work and I'd we know,
Speaker 4: we'd go pick up bread for the day, and then
Speaker 4: we'd stop by mister Fisher's office and talk to him,
Speaker 4: and then we'd go into work and I'd work for
Speaker 4: you know, a couple hours. But my life was, Hey, Dad,
Speaker 4: I want this. He said, okay, how much is it?
Speaker 4: I said, you know, I can remember my first surfboard
Speaker 4: was two hundred dollars. I said, I want this surfboard.
Speaker 4: He said, all right, go to work. So and I
Speaker 4: don't think I was getting paid. I think it was
Speaker 4: just all tip money. I was wiping down That's all
Speaker 4: I could do. I mean, liven, I'm seven years old,
Speaker 4: wiping down tables. And then people, would, you know, give
Speaker 4: me a couple bucks.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely great.
Speaker 4: And I worked all summer and I spent two hundred
Speaker 4: dollars on my first surfboard.
Speaker 2: But he was in the restaurant at four and five
Speaker 2: in the summertime with me cleaning tables. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: he went into management. When his younger brother was able
Speaker 2: to reach the table, Alex would instruct him how to
Speaker 2: clean the table, and then they would because my people
Speaker 2: tipped the kids well, yeah, they knew I wasn't paying them,
Speaker 2: and they tipped them well. And then Nick was told
Speaker 2: that Alex would take care of all the tips and
Speaker 2: he would get his percentage yet the end of the day.
Speaker 2: So he went in to manage it, and he was
Speaker 2: the next day with me a long time. And Alex,
Speaker 2: when he got driver's license, he got the hell out
Speaker 2: of there.
Speaker 1: He knew that job was not and he was at
Speaker 1: Ashley by the time he was you know, seventy.
Speaker 2: He left Meshley right right, Yeah, he left you and
Speaker 2: went there. Yeah. Yeah, I'll never forgive you.
Speaker 1: By the way, if it's not clear, Alex's younger brother's
Speaker 1: name is Nick. I don't know if you ever said
Speaker 1: that on the show. It's just kind of a thing.
Speaker 2: My favorite son.
Speaker 1: Wait, which which one?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask, is it Nixon's favorite? No way, dude,
Speaker 1: Nick carried that restaurant man, That's true.
Speaker 6: He did.
Speaker 1: He helped a lot, didn't he.
Speaker 2: Alex was always busy. Nick was always there.
Speaker 3: What was Alex busy doing uh.
Speaker 2: I guess running Ashley Furniture. You know, Courton Olivia. He was.
Speaker 1: I was about to say Court and to live Court
Speaker 1: and missus Ashley.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time I saw those group of
Speaker 2: kids together, and there's all great friends, which is great
Speaker 2: to see. But uh, Alex hung around a lot of
Speaker 2: people that had a little different uh upbringing. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know, hell help everybody's granddad. You know, most people
Speaker 2: always thought I was their granddad. Yeah, you know, because
Speaker 2: the age is different. You know, by the time they
Speaker 2: got to school, I'm fifty and everybody in there, all
Speaker 2: the other parents are in their thirties.
Speaker 1: Same with my parents. You're you're only a few years
Speaker 1: older than my mom.
Speaker 2: And I said, one day you'll thank me because I
Speaker 2: was the meanest dad in his classes.
Speaker 1: Well my kid, Yeah, my friends are scared of him.
Speaker 2: But I was then end up all their being their favorites.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're all hanging around, yeah, you know, and
Speaker 4: and my friends still have a great relationship. Like my
Speaker 4: friends from middle school and high school. I now go
Speaker 4: hang out with my dad. I know they don't even
Speaker 4: they you know, I'm busy and they're going to hang
Speaker 4: out with my dad.
Speaker 1: It's cool. I'm glad, you know, I know one of
Speaker 1: your buddies is still going over there all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Wow, It's got a good group of friends
Speaker 2: and I all got the same type of hearts.
Speaker 1: You know, I've I've never really thought about this, but
Speaker 1: I've never met. Does Nick have any like other group
Speaker 1: of friends? No, he kind of I mean stuck with
Speaker 1: your crowd.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Nick was just I mean, growing up, Nick was my
Speaker 4: shadow and for a long time I didn't like that,
Speaker 4: Like it was like, go be your own person. And
Speaker 4: then somewhere in high school it kind of flipped and
Speaker 4: it was like, you know, if he's with me, I
Speaker 4: know where he is. And so then we like and
Speaker 4: and my friends were kind of pushed me. They're like, hey, man,
Speaker 4: you're being a jerk, and I'm like, and so they
Speaker 4: they talked me into it and they all adopted him,
Speaker 4: and yeah, now he's great friends with all my friend group.
Speaker 4: It's all very meshed together now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Nicky, we love Nick. Nick. We were calling
Speaker 1: party at the bachelor party, did you know that party, Junior?
Speaker 1: And he was cooking for us. Nick was running the shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he came serious. He does he does very serious.
Speaker 1: We were all calling him Party Junior or just party,
Speaker 1: and you know he's he's really coming.
Speaker 2: To his own Yeah, and that was my fault that
Speaker 2: run him away. It was just he didn't have enough help.
Speaker 2: And and he's like his daddy. He's a worker, not
Speaker 2: a instructor. He took me twenty some years to become
Speaker 2: a delegator.
Speaker 1: Yeah I was, and now he's really good at it.
Speaker 2: I got I've got a professor delegator. But I worked
Speaker 2: myself to the boat. I mean it was the first
Speaker 2: twenty some years. I did everything I've witnessed anybody on
Speaker 2: the grill. I had to line out the door when
Speaker 2: I was cooking. People just wanted to come in. One
Speaker 2: food was great, but just to hear what I was
Speaker 2: going to say, because I'd get pissed off until I
Speaker 2: got too big. I'd holler at people, close the door,
Speaker 2: pick up your food. People would just come in to
Speaker 2: hear what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: That that's amazing.
Speaker 2: I tried to communicate with my mom. I was under
Speaker 2: the hood and it sounded like I was yelling, but
Speaker 2: I wasn't.
Speaker 3: You know, where'd the name parties come from?
Speaker 2: It became a nickname on my daddy's They used to
Speaker 2: call him Archie like Archie Bunker and my mama Edith.
Speaker 2: This was in the family. My sister in law and
Speaker 2: my brother in law started calling Edith and Archie, and
Speaker 2: so Archie became my daddy's name, uh pet name. And
Speaker 2: my oldest brother's wife was an artist, and she drew
Speaker 2: the logo with the pigs ass as the p P
Speaker 2: A R C H I is. So the reason she
Speaker 2: did that. Her youngest son couldn't say Archie, he said Parchie,
Speaker 2: and being a contrariy like Archie Bunker, was that she
Speaker 2: drew the pigs ass as the pea. And that's how
Speaker 2: Parchies became. Because when we first started, we were IPI
Speaker 2: parkin session. Yeah, and I work, and I had to
Speaker 2: help my daddy on the weekends and all we always
Speaker 2: because I was out of the house, so I'd go
Speaker 2: make a you know, I'd work all day. I'm talking
Speaker 2: with sixteen. We'd have tournaments and would sell hundreds of
Speaker 2: dozen a hot dog barbecue sandwiches at fifty cents a piece,
Speaker 2: and he'd give me twenty bucks. He thought he was
Speaker 2: ever paying me from what he used to make in
Speaker 2: this day doing the same thing right in the thirties,
Speaker 2: you know, in the forties.
Speaker 1: So I'll never forget it. Man, going to the parties.
Speaker 1: It was just like a legendary experience because you know,
Speaker 1: we were working together and we would ride and it
Speaker 1: would be like our special lunch. There was a while
Speaker 1: there we were doing it once a week and Nick
Speaker 1: never got to see it. But I'll just paint the
Speaker 1: picture like little things like this, like these little guys
Speaker 1: and these little guys, imagine that. But there's like probably
Speaker 1: one hundred of them, and it's just pigs. And that
Speaker 1: was he never big ones, small ones, And I never
Speaker 1: bought him. He never bought it. They just brought them
Speaker 1: to you guests or customers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but bus customers, most of them are freewheks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I had I saw three generations grow up
Speaker 2: in that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You think there's not enough time, but it is. In
Speaker 2: that neighborhood. It was children and uh grandchildren, great grandchildren
Speaker 2: and the mother hadn't hit forty yet. Wow, yeah it was.
Speaker 2: But you know, we had a great time. I met
Speaker 2: a lot of great people, met a lot of probably
Speaker 2: only probably had five bad instances the whole time I
Speaker 2: was there. That's amazing, And people are always scared of
Speaker 2: that area. They said, where's your restaurant? Whole all good
Speaker 2: to that side of town. I said, well, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: at twelve o'clock going to buy some drugs or something,
Speaker 2: but you know, between eight and two it's very safe.
Speaker 2: And I go down at two in the morning, three
Speaker 2: in the morning, four in the morning. Because I'd cook barbecue,
Speaker 2: I had to put my pigs on the grill. I
Speaker 2: didn't even when I first opened. I parked on the
Speaker 2: side of this city street and had a special cooker
Speaker 2: built with a handle that was better than a lock.
Speaker 2: You couldn't figure how I'd be gone my cooker sitting
Speaker 2: on the street, barbecue smoke coming out of it, smelling great,
Speaker 2: and people walking by they could have they could have
Speaker 2: backed up and hooked onto my grill and drove it away.
Speaker 2: I didn't even have a lock on it.
Speaker 1: I think some of that so, like, obviously the joint's
Speaker 1: never been robbed or anything like that. It is it
Speaker 1: isn't in a kind of part of town that, at
Speaker 1: least for me moving into town, it's like, whoa, this
Speaker 1: this is a sketchy area. But like, I am willing
Speaker 1: to bet my life on it that because of the
Speaker 1: reputation you made for yourself in service to the community
Speaker 1: and being so good to people, you were like you
Speaker 1: were respectable.
Speaker 3: Disrespect it's respect for sure.
Speaker 2: It all is. I mean, I eventually get quite a
Speaker 2: few buildings around the other commercial buildings, and they'd messed
Speaker 2: with other buildings, but they never messed with mine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a word on the street that you don't message.
Speaker 2: He's one of us. Played football with their daddy's over
Speaker 2: at the Eighth Street Center. You know, one of the
Speaker 2: few only white guys, the only white guys ever went
Speaker 2: in MVP Trophy for defensive Player. He is talent, you
Speaker 2: know everything. Giving three thousand people out there and uh,
Speaker 2: two teams going at it for the Turkey Bowl. We
Speaker 2: had a year long, you know, a football season during
Speaker 2: the fall and it at Thanksgiving Day, wow, and uh,
Speaker 2: I'd be partying on Castle Street after the bank went
Speaker 2: down there at the ah Street Center. And Pat Murphy
Speaker 2: was the guy's last thing. Great guy really cared about
Speaker 2: the youth. He kept a lot of people safe just
Speaker 2: through his organizations. He's in the Greater Wilmington Hall of
Speaker 2: Fame was inducted a few years ago. Cool, but you know,
Speaker 2: we our pro was always to get semi pro football
Speaker 2: because we had some athletes, and especially in those days
Speaker 2: in the eighties early eighties, I played with three Wilming
Speaker 2: to ten guys.
Speaker 4: You know, I want to tell a story about the
Speaker 4: neighborhood with parties. It was nineteen or twenty and Florence
Speaker 4: ripped through, Oh, Hurricane Florence, because eighteen was wasn't it
Speaker 4: might have been eighteen Yeah, yeah, So twenty eighteen Florence
Speaker 4: rips through devastating, devastating storm because it sat for so
Speaker 4: long and the wind was blowing the opposite direction that
Speaker 4: it normally does. And so I remember the story. It
Speaker 4: was moving so slow, and I came right over us,
Speaker 4: and you said, hop in the car. So me and
Speaker 4: Nick and Dad hopping the car. And we're driving down
Speaker 4: to the restaurant, and I mean the busiest four lane
Speaker 4: roads in Wilmington and where it's completely empty, and we're
Speaker 4: weaving through fallen trees and power lines and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: And we get to the restaurant and one of the
Speaker 4: original glass windows that's been there since the fifties, the
Speaker 4: fifties blown out right, water glass, wind blown, everything in
Speaker 4: the restaurant.
Speaker 1: There's it's it's flooded.
Speaker 4: We're like, oh my god, right, we pulled up just
Speaker 4: in your truck.
Speaker 1: Nothing, we're not.
Speaker 4: So he said, all right, let's figure this out. I'm
Speaker 4: sure it was a little more colorful than that. And
Speaker 4: so me and Nick start walking up the street and
Speaker 4: here's Henry, one of our best customers in there every day.
Speaker 4: He said, Hey, what are y'all doing? We said, Henry,
Speaker 4: the wind is blown out. He said, I got some
Speaker 4: wood in the backyard. So we walked to Henry's backyard.
Speaker 4: Perfect sheet of plywood, perfect size. Me and Nick drag
Speaker 4: it back up the street, prop it up. Henry comes
Speaker 4: with us. We got the right amount of hammers in
Speaker 4: the back of Dad's truck and the right amount of screws,
Speaker 4: and we hammered the board up in the eye of
Speaker 4: the hurricane that we didn't should like it, just everything
Speaker 4: was provided to us in the moment. That's one of
Speaker 4: my favorite stories, just with you know, Pargy's placed in
Speaker 4: the community, but also I think there's an element of
Speaker 4: just kind of giving it up and letting things figure
Speaker 4: themselves out.
Speaker 2: It's the only hurricane I closed for a period of time.
Speaker 4: For because every hurricane before that, you were on the
Speaker 4: hurricane response crew, right.
Speaker 2: For Rice Will Beach to see the fire in the
Speaker 2: city of Wilmington, until they just didn't. I quit the
Speaker 2: city of Wilmington, and they brought me in during a hurricane,
Speaker 2: during the storm, and there was only ten people that
Speaker 2: showed up. The need to eat, and I risked my
Speaker 2: life to fulfill my obligation. And it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be and the contract was written for two hundred people,
Speaker 2: and they wanted the same price for twenty or thirty people.
Speaker 2: And I actually even opened up the restaurant, turned had
Speaker 2: fans blowing stuff out and generators on my refrigerators, and
Speaker 2: I cooked for three days and fed fifty people. I
Speaker 2: think I made three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Wow, speaking of your refrigerator. I seem to remember you
Speaker 1: guys both. Yes, yes, I have always told going back,
Speaker 1: because I mean I've known you guys for I guess
Speaker 1: like seven years now something like that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, don't don't uh I want to tea that
Speaker 4: he knew you know what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to spoil the
Speaker 1: story by teeing it up.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, said the.
Speaker 4: On the side of the road with the baby choking.
Speaker 2: Oh that was not long after, you know, one of
Speaker 2: my employees I found.
Speaker 1: But we can talk about that first if you want to.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it goes in a in order, Okay,
Speaker 2: to go with that, I had a kid working for
Speaker 2: me and he was supposed to going back to night
Speaker 2: school at k NO. That little mount, the one that
Speaker 2: used to be up on the corner up there, up
Speaker 2: towards Market, straight up towards the college. Actually across straight
Speaker 2: from the college. Uh, I forget the but anyway.
Speaker 1: Miller Mott, Miller Mott, that could have been it. There
Speaker 1: is a Miller Mott out on Market.
Speaker 2: I think I think this was actually on College Road
Speaker 2: behind the Greek Church. There was a I'm not sure
Speaker 2: that community. But anyway, his wife he went to UNC,
Speaker 2: couldn't make it there, and he was a great with people,
Speaker 2: great cook, loved what he did. His wife work at
Speaker 2: PPD and she and we fed PPD and she was
Speaker 2: she was embarrassed. She didn't like him being a grill
Speaker 2: boy basically, and so he started back school to finish
Speaker 2: his degree to go, in her opinion, to become a
Speaker 2: real man, I guess and uh, christ was about to
Speaker 2: comment is towards the middle of the end of November
Speaker 2: and December. Man, it's wacky. We're just non stop for
Speaker 2: because we closed for two weeks after Christmas. Wtch I
Speaker 2: pay my guys bonus him out and uh what it
Speaker 2: was close to that and he was graduation. His family
Speaker 2: was coming to town. They were having a big party.
Speaker 2: I was going to the party. We're all going to
Speaker 2: celebrate getting his degree. And uh, instead of getting a degree,
Speaker 2: he closed up, took the money bag and disappeared.
Speaker 4: M I'm going So I closed the restaurant, took the
Speaker 4: money bag from the restaurant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then next day I hear about eleven o'clock
Speaker 2: at night, his wife's calling me, have you seen him? Said,
Speaker 2: I saw him when he left work, but that's the
Speaker 2: last time I saw him. Well, I can't find him. Well,
Speaker 2: look around. I'm sure there's nothing wrong. He's probably having
Speaker 2: a beer or something somewhere. And time got away. Next morning,
Speaker 2: there were to be no one seen, no one's heard
Speaker 2: from him. Talked to his wife and she's very distrolled,
Speaker 2: as she should be. His mother and father getting ready
Speaker 2: to arrive for the graduation party. And uh, so I
Speaker 2: asked her. I said, well, look at the credit cards.
Speaker 2: She said, well, they're still in his parents' name, his
Speaker 2: credit card. Let's to call them see if they can
Speaker 2: track any gas purchases or anything like that. And so
Speaker 2: for three days there was nothing, no purchases. So he
Speaker 2: can't be traveling. You got to put gas in his car.
Speaker 2: He had a jeep, older green jeep. And he lived
Speaker 2: right down from actually in the same area where you
Speaker 2: used to live, in those apartments that they built there
Speaker 2: off seventh sixteenth Street and right down the road across
Speaker 2: from back then it was a temple Baptist church activity center.
Speaker 2: Across was a cut through where you could take before
Speaker 2: we go drive and go into those woods where you lived.
Speaker 2: And he lived in that set apartments up towards Conneby Trot.
Speaker 2: And after the third day, you know, I'm calling the
Speaker 2: phone company because he had one of my phones through
Speaker 2: the company, and I would see if there's any pings
Speaker 2: coming off, any transmitters, no communication. Wow. And it was
Speaker 2: the last night it was cold as heck, and h
Speaker 2: I started getting a feeling, you know that something's wrong,
Speaker 2: something's really wrong here. Is he try to, you know,
Speaker 2: commit suicide or something. That's what's going through my head
Speaker 2: and h The next morning I get up, I called
Speaker 2: for riseon first thing I did at five point thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning. It was all tell them and I
Speaker 2: called him and I said, has there been any communication
Speaker 2: with this number? She looks, She said there was at
Speaker 2: twelve thirty. That's about what I was thinking about this thing.
Speaker 2: There was a ping off of that line. I said,
Speaker 2: what location? What tower picked it up? And she said
Speaker 2: the hospital tower. He lives here, all these woods here.
Speaker 2: He's got a four wheel drive jeep. I had just
Speaker 2: bought a four wheel drive truck a week before, never
Speaker 2: owned one in my life. I give the truck. I
Speaker 2: go to work. I tell my key guy, but she
Speaker 2: was my key guy. So I told the guy I'm
Speaker 2: working for us, and I said, uh, Floyd, I got
Speaker 2: I think I know where our guy is. So I
Speaker 2: drive down seventeenth sixteenth Street, take a right, take a
Speaker 2: right of the trail, and I got just basketball goosebumps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, goosebumps.
Speaker 2: Because every time I went around a corner or something,
Speaker 2: I do what I'm a fine and so that I
Speaker 2: don't know where I'm at in the woods. It's along
Speaker 2: It was three blocks long at one time, that block
Speaker 2: where the where the movie theater now is and all that.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I know, yeah, the area.
Speaker 2: So I get to about the middle where the movie
Speaker 2: theaters park in the middle of the woods there, and
Speaker 2: you go about fifteen to twenty yards you go straight
Speaker 2: and left. Now, Maggie, if you're going straight, you're going
Speaker 2: to run right into Independence at the end of the
Speaker 2: road there, because that whole block runs into where Independence
Speaker 2: comes down all the way through to Calenda Beech Road,
Speaker 2: right so, and the food line is back in that
Speaker 2: back corner on Calenda Beech Road, on that whole thing.
Speaker 2: But I don't know where I'm at in those woods.
Speaker 2: I've never been in there. So I get to a
Speaker 2: point where I got to go left or straight, and
Speaker 2: something says take a left, So I take a left.
Speaker 2: Backed up in the woods, is g this is the
Speaker 2: fourth day when he's been gone, Yeah, and I'm dying
Speaker 2: one one I found him, Well, I found the truck
Speaker 2: lives in it. I'm a quarter mile now, maybe a
Speaker 2: half mile away from that truck. I don't want to
Speaker 2: get near that truck. Yeah, I don't want to find
Speaker 2: my little buddy after four days. But I knew he
Speaker 2: was live at midnight, but I just didn't know what
Speaker 2: to expect. I said, well, that's y'all's job. You need
Speaker 2: to come down here and you come. No, You've got
Speaker 2: to go see if he's in the car. And I'm crying.
Speaker 1: What would anyone do?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just basically hysterical, trying to keep it together.
Speaker 2: And I'm okay, okay, and I go in and I
Speaker 2: get up close enough to where I see him in
Speaker 2: the back seat, slumped over. He's here. Hurry up, come on.
Speaker 2: We don't even know where you're at. I said, I'm
Speaker 2: in the woods here off of sixteenth and seventeenth. And
Speaker 2: the name of that street.
Speaker 6: Uh no, the.
Speaker 2: The street that runs beside the church you're in front of.
Speaker 1: The now I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah Anderson, Oh yeah, yeah, George Andrews, Yeah, I said,
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 4: Literally like where they built the apartments that you just
Speaker 4: used to live.
Speaker 1: This is all woods. This is where I picked up
Speaker 1: on that, and which is crazy because that's a big
Speaker 1: lot of woods. I mean, it very well could be
Speaker 1: the exact spot that your apartment was.
Speaker 2: Now the Little Father back to the left, where the
Speaker 2: retention point is now based because once I after it's
Speaker 2: all over. So anyway, I go up there and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in the car. Then she says, is he alive?
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know. You need to comment. And
Speaker 2: I could start hearing the ambulances coming and the police
Speaker 2: and all this because he's been under you know, a
Speaker 2: missing person right, And uh, he said, where are you?
Speaker 2: I said, I'm in the middle. I said, you see
Speaker 2: my tire tracks come in and they said, well, we
Speaker 2: can't get the ambulance in there because it's not fold
Speaker 2: will drive.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: People they're on foot and they're bringing the gurney. But
Speaker 2: is he alive? I don't know. He don't look good.
Speaker 2: Check him, see if he's breathing, And are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: I'm finding one of my best friends, my manager gone.
Speaker 2: And I got to see if he's breathing, and I
Speaker 2: don't know how to even do that, you know. I
Speaker 2: open up the door and there he is, and he's
Speaker 2: been bleeding. There's a pile of blood in the floorboard.
Speaker 2: He's not conscious. His keys are laying in the pile
Speaker 2: of blood. My bank bag which is right beside him,
Speaker 2: and I put my hand on his you know, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to see what I saw on the TV about
Speaker 2: checking a pulse. And but finally I put my hand
Speaker 2: up on front of his face and I feel a
Speaker 2: faint breath, breath, And luckily that night it was cold,
Speaker 2: because at the end, you'll realize he wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: there if it wouldn't cold. Blood bled out.
Speaker 1: Did he cut himself?
Speaker 2: Yes? So the police finally get they made their way down.
Speaker 2: Come to find out I was thirty feet away from
Speaker 2: the food line parking lot. So they all circled around,
Speaker 2: and they all brought the cop cards and the ambulances
Speaker 2: in the backway. I was from here, not even a
Speaker 2: block away from that food line, but you couldn't see
Speaker 2: it because of the trees, and I didn't know where.
Speaker 2: I'd never been in those woods. I was so distraught
Speaker 2: and confused. I didn't know where I was.
Speaker 1: You definitely weren't thinking straight. Anybody wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: So the police show up, the amblet show up to
Speaker 2: get him on a gurney. They take him off. I'm
Speaker 2: going to follow the ambulance to the hospital. His wife's there,
Speaker 2: his family's there, his mom and dad and brother, and
Speaker 2: they're all there, and the police asked me to slow
Speaker 2: down a little bit and then need ask me a
Speaker 2: few questions. They could not understand how I figured and
Speaker 2: found him. They've been looking for him and now they
Speaker 2: think I got the sense done. Dumb, I will suspect
Speaker 2: number one, Oh gosh. And I finally have to tell him.
Speaker 2: I called Clay and I told him. I said, this lawyer,
Speaker 2: you know, I said, My lawyer works for chicken. You
Speaker 2: know my best. That man can eat a lot of chit.
Speaker 1: Very true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody, you didn't have to defend me free. That's
Speaker 2: how much chicken this sucker's eating. Little Feller took.
Speaker 1: Right, great guy. So I'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I said, and if you want to arrest me,
Speaker 2: you need to rest me now. But I'll get in
Speaker 2: my car and go find out how my little buddy's doing.
Speaker 2: All right, but we're gonna need to talk to you again,
Speaker 2: I said, come on, brod, go to the hospital. So
Speaker 2: go there, and uh, they got him back. They got
Speaker 2: him stable. He was could have died anytime it was
Speaker 2: warming up. If it had started bleeding again, he had
Speaker 2: been dead. And his daddy comes out he hugs me
Speaker 2: and thanks me, and he said, man, I don't know
Speaker 2: what would even make someone do that. And I said,
Speaker 2: your daughter in law, she just had so much pressure
Speaker 2: on and he felt like such a failure. Had everybody
Speaker 2: believe in he's graduate. He's been going to school for
Speaker 2: two years and never went because when he disappeared, they
Speaker 2: called him school. They had a record of him in
Speaker 2: school since he started.
Speaker 1: Ten years old. He was supposed to have the party
Speaker 1: in right.
Speaker 2: And U he would just he would rather kill himself
Speaker 2: than disappoint her, right, And I told him that's terrible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and uh, I said, well, how did he try to
Speaker 2: kill himself? And it used his key. His wrist was
Speaker 2: cut with a jagged key, tried to saw his arm off,
Speaker 2: his wrist off and that was sad. And now he
Speaker 2: has four children divorced from her not long afterwards salt treatment.
Speaker 2: His parents had the means to do anything, and he
Speaker 2: took the advice and now has like I might even
Speaker 2: have chick grandchildren now, wow, which is an unbelievable great kid.
Speaker 2: And his daddy's I don't know, but it's been a
Speaker 2: few years, but the first fifteen years always get a
Speaker 2: Christmas card from his dad. That's amazing and that was
Speaker 2: my favorite gift.
Speaker 1: There's a few takeaways about this story. The first thing
Speaker 1: is like, anybody else in the world would have been like, dude,
Speaker 1: this a hole took my money back, screw you, and
Speaker 1: that's it. But no, you're like, something's wrong here, something's
Speaker 1: really wrong here. You like to were you even phased
Speaker 1: by the fact that he took the money.
Speaker 2: I didn't care about the money. Yeah. I've had other
Speaker 2: people's work for me that had problems with their nose,
Speaker 2: and U I just try to give them help and support.
Speaker 2: You know, money can be replaced, but your life can't,
Speaker 2: and and and your mental you know, money comes and goes.
Speaker 2: I've never money, doesn't I don't live for.
Speaker 1: Money, right, I'm just saying, you realize anybody else in
Speaker 1: the world would.
Speaker 2: They would have had probably took a warrant.
Speaker 1: Out on it, right right for press charges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and U of the money was mincing. I
Speaker 2: didn't care if he would have spent it to live on. Well,
Speaker 2: he was for three days. He never used a card,
Speaker 2: and he was never ate. Yeah. The only thing that
Speaker 2: was in there was some alcohol. I guess it'd take
Speaker 2: that to try to cut your wrist off with car keys.
Speaker 2: But that was just a cry for help. But it
Speaker 2: would have killed him if I wouldn't have found him.
Speaker 2: The police sure weren't gonna find him because they back
Speaker 2: then they you know, they were surprised I could find him.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like, that's kind of some remote viewing
Speaker 1: type stuff he did.
Speaker 4: It's not the I wouldn't say that's the first time
Speaker 4: something like that feeling has happened to you, and it
Speaker 4: certainly wasn't the last.
Speaker 2: No, a lot of situations I've always had. I don't
Speaker 2: know what I've had, but but I call it a gift.
Speaker 2: People with problems seek me out.
Speaker 4: So what I would describe I was singing about this
Speaker 4: a lot today because I knew this would come up, right,
Speaker 4: And I think that you like, there's nothing inherently special, right,
Speaker 4: but the special part is your choice knowledge of what's
Speaker 4: knowledge of it or more like listening to it, right,
Speaker 4: like you have adapted or let me say, you're more
Speaker 4: in tune with that force that's guiding you.
Speaker 2: But I think you're born with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I don't think I do create it or manifesto it.
Speaker 2: I think certain people and that's one thing with your
Speaker 2: group of listeners and all it seems like because when
Speaker 2: y'all get together, there's there's no drama. Everybody's got the
Speaker 2: same heart, everybody's got the same purpose, and that's what
Speaker 2: it's all about, is is to uplift each other, uplift
Speaker 2: the glory of God. And there is signals and signs,
Speaker 2: and there is angels. You know, I've told a lot
Speaker 2: of people, I said, one day you realize I'm your angel,
Speaker 2: and that's what I'm here for. And I attract a
Speaker 2: lot of people with certain problems, it seems, and being
Speaker 2: an idiot, I always seemed to have a way to
Speaker 2: make them feel better or they feel worse, because I'm
Speaker 2: gonna tell you like it is if I feel it.
Speaker 1: That's why I brought this story up and wanted you
Speaker 1: to tell it because I know, like ever since i've
Speaker 1: known you, guys, for I guess it's been what is
Speaker 1: it seven years right to twenty eighteen, so seven or eight.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at math, but seven or eight years now
Speaker 1: we've known each other, and that's something you've always told me.
Speaker 1: And then you've told me as you're like my dad
Speaker 1: has always told me son, I'm an angel, and.
Speaker 2: I love that. I think certain people are. And Devil
Speaker 2: the Devil's guy is workers also, you know it.
Speaker 1: And I know what you mean when you say that.
Speaker 1: You know I get it.
Speaker 4: So that rolls itself into the story that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just the next summer, I'm over at Great
Speaker 2: Friends and feeding the basketball team, which I did a lot.
Speaker 2: And it was like a Tuesday night and it was
Speaker 2: we eight around five o'clock, So around six o'clock I
Speaker 2: was packing up going home to come see my family.
Speaker 2: And I normally go down when the area of town
Speaker 2: I was in, I would normally go back down Market Street,
Speaker 2: straight down to Princess Street in twelfth Street. And some
Speaker 2: said just shoot out of there, go the back way,
Speaker 2: go out on Riceville Avenue and just take Riceville now
Speaker 2: all the way down to seventeenth and then get on
Speaker 2: the Princess. So some I've been to this house. I
Speaker 2: go about every week. Every other week I'm doing something
Speaker 2: for the tea and because we were a family. But
Speaker 2: for that only particular time I've ever left that location,
Speaker 2: I went a back way. So I'm driving down Riceville
Speaker 2: Avenue man just ready to get home. Put a whole
Speaker 2: day in the whole afternoon inf catoring and great time.
Speaker 2: And I get down to the stop light at Uh,
Speaker 2: I'm just terrible with remembering names of the streets, the
Speaker 2: one you cut in to go towards the college. That's true.
Speaker 1: It you live off of that. It depends which where
Speaker 1: you're coming from.
Speaker 2: Well, if you come in from say IMPI park down,
Speaker 2: you take a right on it and you go across
Speaker 2: rights Ful Avenue and you go the back way around
Speaker 2: to the college. McMillan, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Used to live there right again. Yeah, happened right by
Speaker 4: your e.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is kind of crazy, isn't it, because I'm
Speaker 2: just putting that together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. Both of these things are around. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: i mean look at you know, I'm over here.
Speaker 2: So you know where the dentist office or there was
Speaker 2: a doctor's office right on the left. On the other
Speaker 2: if you're I'm heading towards Wilmington downtown and at the light,
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there and on the left there's an accountant
Speaker 2: or there's a little commercial building there. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 2: I'm about the sixth car in line, because it's like
Speaker 2: six thirty seven o'clock, pretty busy. Wish you not to
Speaker 2: take the other route. And all of a sudden I
Speaker 2: hear something. I hear screaming. I don't see anything. I'm
Speaker 2: in my party's van with parties on the side of it,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm looking. I don't see anything. And
Speaker 2: when I get to the light, I see a lady
Speaker 2: holding a baby and blood is everywhere. She's hollering to
Speaker 2: help me, help me. All these cars both sides already
Speaker 2: passed her. I pull up about a half block away,
Speaker 2: and I I said stop because I wasn't gonna stop, man.
Speaker 2: I was ready to get home, see my family. I
Speaker 2: pulled off a run back, got across the street. It's busy,
Speaker 2: people are riding by. I could hear the baby gurgling,
Speaker 2: a little bit blood coming out. I'm going wow, I said,
Speaker 2: what happened? She said, he's eating up uh limon lemon
Speaker 2: he drop or lemon head. And the kid was like
Speaker 2: two three years old. Shouldn't have been eating a lemonhead. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it got trapped, but I knew. I could hear
Speaker 2: some wheezing, so it's not totally blocked. Kate Fair Hospitals
Speaker 2: right down the street. A taxi pulls up. She said,
Speaker 2: I've called my husband. He's on the way. Can you
Speaker 2: sit with mother? Two boys? There was two boys in
Speaker 2: the car that were six and eight, maybe kid was
Speaker 2: three or four. Mama gets into the taxi. I'll get
Speaker 2: her in the taxi, I said, go, I go sit
Speaker 2: in the car waiting on their dad show up. So
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there waiting and talking to the kids and
Speaker 2: finding out what happened. And you know, they're all cried
Speaker 2: because you know, then the dad shows. It wasn't long afterwards.
Speaker 2: She never called nine one one. She just panicked, totally panicked,
Speaker 2: which I would too. I mean, blood, how the blood?
Speaker 2: You know what? You's choking? I don't know how the
Speaker 2: blood got there, But get them off to the hospital.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting with the kids. The dad thanks me. They're
Speaker 2: going to the hospital right there. And I'm sitting there
Speaker 2: scratching my head. Man, this all happened in ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes. And I get in my van and I'm thinking, Wow,
Speaker 2: I'm glad I stopped. Nobody else was going to stop.
Speaker 2: Just hope the kid makes it. They don't know who
Speaker 2: I am. There's a party's on the side of my
Speaker 2: truck with a phone number, but I never got a
Speaker 2: phone call from anybody, and I called to hospital the
Speaker 2: next morning to see if the kid was fine, and
Speaker 2: they wouldn't give me a lot of information because there
Speaker 2: was no kin. But he was released, so I figured, good.
Speaker 2: You know, they got it unclogged and I didn't have
Speaker 2: to read about him being dead, and uh, life goes
Speaker 2: on right. So a few years later, I opened up
Speaker 2: another restaurant on Riceful Avenue. Great opportunity to come in
Speaker 2: and flip it. Only like one place at a time.
Speaker 2: So I opened up and I got I needed some
Speaker 2: more refrigeration. I needed a walk in cooler and uh bud,
Speaker 2: he said, Man, you got to call this guy, Dwayne.
Speaker 2: Great guy. So I called Dwayne and Drayne come over
Speaker 2: and we talked, and great guy. You know, man, I'll
Speaker 2: get you a great deal. I can help you out.
Speaker 2: I'll put it together for you. I said, man, that'd
Speaker 2: be awesome if you could do all that. I mean,
Speaker 2: guy was going out of his way for me to
Speaker 2: pay twenty five to three grand for this cooler. I
Speaker 2: was happy to have Dwayne on board. Dwayne comes in,
Speaker 2: puts the cooler up, sets it up, gets it running free,
Speaker 2: arms it up. I said, Dwayne, bring me the bill,
Speaker 2: and he had a bill and five hundred dollars. I said, Dwayne,
Speaker 2: I thought we said it was going to be like
Speaker 2: thirty five hundred dollars. He said it was. But he said,
Speaker 2: remember a few years ago when you stopped on the
Speaker 2: side of the road to help that lady. That lady
Speaker 2: was my sister, and that that kid was my nephew. Oh,
Speaker 2: and I don't think anyone's ever told you thank you.
Speaker 2: No one had, but I didn't think, you know, she
Speaker 2: couldn't remember to call nine one one, And I said, well,
Speaker 2: the first thing out of my mouth was not wow.
Speaker 2: I said, how's the kid? Oh, he's great. By then,
Speaker 2: you know, he's seven, eight, nine ten years old, doing
Speaker 2: good and excelling in everything. And he said, I'm just
Speaker 2: doing it what I got in it, because I appreciate
Speaker 2: you taking the time. Because my sister in law said,
Speaker 2: my sister said people were just nobody was paying attention.
Speaker 2: She probably said fifty to one hundred cars passed by
Speaker 2: for I stopped. I brought tears to my eyes right then.
Speaker 2: And he says, this is my way of saying thank you. Wow.
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't worried about being thanked or rode
Speaker 2: up about or anything. I didn't want that, But then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden years later.
Speaker 1: You're just always finding yourself in these positions where you
Speaker 1: have the choice to help someone and then it comes
Speaker 1: back to you. It's just like, how how can you
Speaker 1: make that up?
Speaker 2: It's crazy? And it's because I had to ask someone
Speaker 2: who I should call because I've never had a walk.
Speaker 1: In cooler, right, And that's that's even weirder.
Speaker 2: But the crazy thing is after that, me and Dwayne
Speaker 2: stayed friends until the end of his life. Wow, I
Speaker 2: mean he and up. He'd come in to bring his
Speaker 2: family in the restaurant and I, you know, I took
Speaker 2: care of him as he took care of me, of
Speaker 2: any repairs or anything like that, for the for the years.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see the sister again?
Speaker 2: Never have kid again since the I saw him, And
Speaker 2: that's the guy that had I visited him in the
Speaker 2: they had to go into the UH to get straighten
Speaker 2: out in the in the UH record and UH it
Speaker 2: did end well with me, unfortunately, but that's that's a
Speaker 2: different story. But I still love him, just to say,
Speaker 2: because it was my busiest time in the bonus time
Speaker 2: and his bonus wasn't the same, but he missed two
Speaker 2: months and couldn't understand. And uh, but it just makes
Speaker 2: you appreciate what you do for, not what you get,
Speaker 2: you know. But I don't care if I ever get anything.
Speaker 2: If I do anything, I do it because it's the
Speaker 2: right thing to do. And people get putting those positions.
Speaker 2: You see it all the time on the news, you know.
Speaker 2: Check that airplane that flipped upside down. Who was there
Speaker 2: helping not running for their selves? Yeah, and that's all
Speaker 2: I could see is I'd hope somebody be rushing in
Speaker 2: for me, like stopping for that lady. And I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to do it because I was tired, man, and
Speaker 2: it's been a long day. But God wouldn't let me
Speaker 2: get away.
Speaker 1: So why do you think this stuff keeps happening to you?
Speaker 2: I don't know. But the crazy thing is, I asked him.
Speaker 2: I said, Then he said, you'd never guess what my
Speaker 2: sister is. She's a trauma nurse. Wow, And the blood
Speaker 2: came from I asked him. I said, why was there
Speaker 2: so much blood? She was very well had a manicure,
Speaker 2: very well groomed. She was trying to pull the candy
Speaker 2: out of his mouth, which what she don't do cause
Speaker 2: her nails were cutting his tonsils and his throat and
Speaker 2: that's where the blood was coming from. But when it's yours, yeah,
Speaker 2: you panted right, And that's when I went wow, because
Speaker 2: when she just and it probably happened to me, I mean,
Speaker 2: you're all it's different when it's yourself. I guess, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can only imagine.
Speaker 2: I've just always panicked and always flew up right side down,
Speaker 2: and luckily I got out of it because my lifetime
Speaker 2: has been filled with blessings of survival, of times when
Speaker 2: most people wouldn't survive. Ye, just partying and hanging out
Speaker 2: because I mean I'd go to West Virginia a drop
Speaker 2: of a hat to go to a witch hopping festival,
Speaker 2: or o Philadelphia to watch Doctor j play basketball every
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving and didn't have any money, but always got I
Speaker 2: provided good times.
Speaker 1: You're not from West Virginia, are you? I seem to
Speaker 1: remember you telling.
Speaker 2: Me how to roommate from there, okay, which which is uh,
Speaker 2: one of my best friends until he gave his life
Speaker 2: up because of wrong decisions, and uh, he was like
Speaker 2: a brother to me and he had a special shotgun.
Speaker 2: This is a story I'll say right quick before I
Speaker 2: could talk for twenty six years and I get everything
Speaker 2: in in my life. But he had his prize possession
Speaker 2: with his grandfather's and Marty had a rough life from
Speaker 2: West Virginia. The first time I went there, it was
Speaker 2: like the movie. People had their glasses on and they
Speaker 2: take their glasses off and their black face by the coal.
Speaker 2: And this is like six because we always pulled in Rup.
Speaker 2: We drove all night to get there for the wood
Speaker 2: chopping festival and would pull in. It would be early
Speaker 2: in the morning and these guys walking with their pale lunch,
Speaker 2: pale black dirt everywhere. I mean, it was crazy. I
Speaker 2: love the place. And we'd watch wood chopping and actually
Speaker 2: I lost my thought.
Speaker 1: Are you saying wood chopping? Yeah? Yeah, a festival saying witchhopping.
Speaker 1: I thought he was saying shopping shopping Martin.
Speaker 2: Uh. My buddy's uncle was a six time world champion.
Speaker 1: Of chopping wood art and Colgert Wowa.
Speaker 2: He was a mountain of a man. John Henry cut
Speaker 2: up cut the logs in between this, you know, stand
Speaker 2: up on the log and they'd shave in the mornings
Speaker 2: with it all and uh he would what you shaved
Speaker 2: with their axes before the competition. That's how sharp they are.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: And then if you're watching they're standing on the log
Speaker 2: chopping in between their feet. There's a centimeter a quarter
Speaker 2: of a meter of losing a toe or your foot
Speaker 2: because it's going to cut it. Yeah, I mean, it
Speaker 2: was just a great time. You know, people asked me
Speaker 2: if I competed it in the twelve ounce curls of
Speaker 2: Old Milwaukee, you know why. It didn't get any better
Speaker 2: than this. But we had just how we arrived. Sometime
Speaker 2: lucky we'd be an old Volkswagen with no brakes and
Speaker 2: we'd have some of the some of the steepest uh
Speaker 2: drops in America in the United States. In West Virginia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean they had them tractor trailer ramps there for
Speaker 2: a reason to where they went down if they lost
Speaker 2: their breaks. You know the shot on the right. We
Speaker 2: hit that before. Oh yeah, oh in a Volkswagen. But
Speaker 2: it wasn't It wasn't smooth on the Volkswagen suspension and
Speaker 2: no back seat. There was a being back back there.
Speaker 2: It would stop once for gas and we had milk
Speaker 2: jugs for restrooms. Oh wow, man, we'd have two three
Speaker 2: cases of beer in the truck and the Volkswagen or
Speaker 2: it wasn't and then party all weekend and uh, chump
Speaker 2: would carry on. But that that was one of my
Speaker 2: uh you know, almost died a couple of times in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia watching Doctor J play basketball. Uh the guy driving
Speaker 2: truck was so drunk we'd run off the road. Wake up,
Speaker 2: weren't you mugged? Never mugged? The police officer said, if
Speaker 2: you want to live until to see the morning, we
Speaker 2: suggest you get off this location that was in DC.
Speaker 1: Someone hit you over the head with something that was
Speaker 1: a my.
Speaker 2: Whole birthday party's when I jumped on the bench and
Speaker 2: the crack the it wasn't about four over my head
Speaker 2: because I jumped on the end and it sprung up
Speaker 2: and you and the board was face planning me and
Speaker 2: the top of the board flew off and I was hit.
Speaker 2: Some people. Oh no, nobody got close to me after
Speaker 2: that because I was still moving around, never didn't face.
Speaker 2: People thought I was waiting for me to die. That
Speaker 2: sucker hit me, and I just kept on moving. One
Speaker 2: thing we got is hardheaded. Alex got that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know he definitely does. I could tell some story, malady,
Speaker 1: something you would probably know the best out of all
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: But but it saw myur thing up and what, Lord
Speaker 2: has been too long? My wife's think I've left her
Speaker 2: and she's probably already packed my bags and give it
Speaker 2: to charity. Because as long as I've been away from
Speaker 2: home in a while.
Speaker 1: Than probably the wedding night, which I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about that, were you happy with the ceremony? I
Speaker 1: haven't seen you since.
Speaker 2: I thought the ceremony was beautiful considering how bad the
Speaker 2: weather was. The weather was beautiful.
Speaker 1: The poor sound guy got electrocuted, did.
Speaker 2: You know that?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's how to scream it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he lived.
Speaker 1: And there were no chairs, yeah, oh there was on
Speaker 1: the front road for them for the VIP.
Speaker 2: It was. It was gusty and a beautiful, beautiful ceremony.
Speaker 2: I was glad to have all you guys there and
Speaker 2: it was a magical moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was for sure. That really got me that
Speaker 1: night at the end when everybody was taken off and
Speaker 1: we had all been uh in the cart and a
Speaker 1: little bit, and you said something to me. You just
Speaker 1: said something like, I'm glad that you guys go together,
Speaker 1: and you know y'all are good for each other, and
Speaker 1: y'all just y'all's friendship and thank you for guiding them
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And I was just like, wow, man,
Speaker 1: this is just really surreal. You have the same heart,
Speaker 1: I said, I feel like we goide each other. You
Speaker 1: remember that? Ye? Do you remember that? The week that
Speaker 1: I proposed to my wife, I came to parties and
Speaker 1: we showed you the ring? Oh yeah, you do remember that.
Speaker 2: I don't drink, so I do. I remember everything except
Speaker 2: what by Alzheimer's is making me forget? Oh no, but
Speaker 2: it comes and goes. I mean I lay down and
Speaker 2: most times what I don't sleep is I remember. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's always certain situations where I'm stressing about, I'll
Speaker 2: always get reminded of what. And that's a special thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, if I died tomorrow, I lived. I lived
Speaker 2: a life of I mean, I really didn't grow up
Speaker 2: till I was twenty nine years old. Yeah, I had children.
Speaker 2: I told my wife I couldn't have children. Then we
Speaker 2: get pregnant not long after, and I asked, you know,
Speaker 2: whose is it? That's not a good quick Boys out
Speaker 2: there listening, do not funning around. Don't ever say that
Speaker 2: when your girl tells you she's pregnant, just go with
Speaker 2: it and go holler somewhere else. But God knows when
Speaker 2: you're ready for certain things. People stress of not having children.
Speaker 2: I have friends that have spent thousands of thousands of
Speaker 2: dollars to have children to then end up adopting and
Speaker 2: then having children. Wow, under no artificial means distress. If
Speaker 2: it's meant to be, it's meant to be for sure.
Speaker 2: And if you even if it's meant to be, to
Speaker 2: an adopt and take someone out of their misery of
Speaker 2: where they're at and guided, God give them guidance. Man,
Speaker 2: you got to give you can't. I told my boys
Speaker 2: early on, I said, listen, we'll be friends after you're eighteen.
Speaker 2: But right now I'm here, not here to be your friend. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm here to guide you and lead you, and We're
Speaker 2: going to become friends, I hope, because a lot of
Speaker 2: times people don't become friends the whole grudges they keep,
Speaker 2: no matter how horllered bad. My son hollered at me
Speaker 2: or I hollered at him, we all love each other.
Speaker 1: That's true. He absolutely said that too, And.
Speaker 2: Then Alex when he got nineteen twenty thanked me, said, Dad,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought you were the meanness, but I
Speaker 2: really appreciate what you taught me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hit that point too, not necessarily with my dad,
Speaker 1: but with my grandfather.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's reflecting back. I'm like, man, he really was
Speaker 1: just trying to show me some tough love.
Speaker 2: And I gave my daddy hell, but it turns out
Speaker 2: I'm just liking. And that's always the one you butt
Speaker 2: heads with the most. Yep, and always never felt I
Speaker 2: was good enough and good enough for my daddy. Year
Speaker 2: older brother than I am was my dad's favorite, you know,
Speaker 2: because he could do the woodworking and take the time,
Speaker 2: and my patience was about as short as a firecracker.
Speaker 1: Man, sounds like somebody I know.
Speaker 2: You'd light it. I'm ready to go, and I want
Speaker 2: to get it done and get it fit.
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about one of these guys are here.
Speaker 2: I mean one year, when I was seventeen, I got
Speaker 2: a summer job with the with his parks and recreation apartment.
Speaker 2: And I showed up to work and uh, the guy
Speaker 2: looked at me and said, uh, can you drive? I said,
Speaker 2: I can drive anything. Sir, he said, okay, gave me
Speaker 2: two black guys and a tandem truck, a dump truck.
Speaker 2: How didn't even have driver's license. My daddy wouldn't give
Speaker 2: me my license. The only thing I passed in the
Speaker 2: ninth grade. And if you do the math, I was
Speaker 2: a little old for the ninth grade. I was past sixteen,
Speaker 2: and I passed driver's head back then you took it
Speaker 2: as a class. And I told my daddy I passed it,
Speaker 2: I said. He said, it's about the time you pass something.
Speaker 2: I said, well, you know, I don't have to get
Speaker 2: a permit. I'm go get my license. He said, do
Speaker 2: you got a car? I said no, Daddy. He said,
Speaker 2: well you sure as hell I ain't driving mine. And
Speaker 2: that was the end of the conversation. So I had
Speaker 2: to wait till I was eighteen to go get my license.
Speaker 2: And I was nineteen when I got him. Because it
Speaker 2: seemed not to bother anybody with me driving around. I
Speaker 2: had a motorcycle, a car, oh beat up crap with
Speaker 2: dirt or something stuck over where the tag's supposed to
Speaker 2: have the year on it. And uh so I get
Speaker 2: a truck and to give us a list of things
Speaker 2: to do in eight hours. I can do in about
Speaker 2: thirty minutes with help and my guys, you know, they
Speaker 2: were used to working all day at a slow pace.
Speaker 2: I said, guys, here's what we're going to do. We're
Speaker 2: going to work three hours, go to lunch, y'all, get
Speaker 2: your wine. I can blow me up joint or something. Listen,
Speaker 2: listen to my leads applet or somebody, and then we'll
Speaker 2: go clock out at five. Man, you crazy. After the
Speaker 2: first day, we worked the whole summer for three hours,
Speaker 2: got paid for eight. We'd drive back at five o'clock.
Speaker 2: And they never did ask me if they asked me
Speaker 2: if I had license. I'd just said no, he didn't
Speaker 2: ask me that question. But luckily I never just think
Speaker 2: about I gotten a wreck. But back then things were
Speaker 2: a little different with yeah. But still people assume you
Speaker 2: can do something. They'll let you do anything. Hey, can
Speaker 2: you fly a plane yet? Well, here you go, man,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna check credentials now, yeah, show it to me.
Speaker 2: But boys, that's been fun, it's been real. I probably
Speaker 2: confused a lot of people. I get the rambling, and uh.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna give us one embarrassing story of Alex
Speaker 3: not one it's not a single one.
Speaker 2: Oh lord man, it'd be hard just to find one.
Speaker 1: I'm scared.
Speaker 2: But there's something your children don't need to know.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: The most scariest thing in my life with Alex was
Speaker 2: when I set him down and I jumped into swimming
Speaker 2: pool to swim, and he was going to come to
Speaker 2: me and jump in the pool with me, but he
Speaker 2: was pouting or some shit. And I set him down
Speaker 2: on the little wall and I'm swimming, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, he jumps up and he's got magical feet
Speaker 2: moving and he sat on a fire d hill and
Speaker 2: that ship was in his diapers, tearing him a new one.
Speaker 2: And I get up to the deep end. There's pull
Speaker 2: myself out of order like Superman. I grab him ump
Speaker 2: in the water in the deep end and we start
Speaker 2: going down, and I started lifting him up like that
Speaker 2: little kid in uh what's that movie?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 6: Linking Yeah, lin king Man, high Line Kingdon's ass, because
Speaker 6: I was and I'm sucking in water by the gallon.
Speaker 6: I'm swallowing it, dude, and I'm trying to climb up
Speaker 6: the side and it's slippery and it's a you know,
Speaker 6: it's a nine foot pool. I'm trying to get him
Speaker 6: the side of it, hold him out of the water,
Speaker 6: sucking water down. I get him on the side of
Speaker 6: the pool, get the water out of my lungs, and man,
Speaker 6: that was the last time I did that. But that
Speaker 6: was embarrassing.
Speaker 1: I love how I knew the movie.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you knew the movie because I
Speaker 3: was not going to get there.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just a thing, a connection.
Speaker 2: And that movie came out after I did it. First,
Speaker 2: sall me some money, right, because I was underwater. My
Speaker 2: wife would have killed my ass.
Speaker 1: She knows about it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Hey, hey, I got one. How about you enlighten the
Speaker 1: audience and you share when you spoke your first words
Speaker 1: to your newborn son. What were the first words that
Speaker 1: you said to Alex when he came into this world?
Speaker 2: Daddy can buy you some hat, son, and his head
Speaker 2: was his. Mama's first words were, that's not my son.
Speaker 2: And he's still attached at the chord that she wants
Speaker 2: me to cut. After a five hour delivery two hours early,
Speaker 2: two months early, two months early.
Speaker 1: She and you asked her if it was yours, and
Speaker 1: then she said, that's not my son.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I did I didn't say, asked her
Speaker 2: at the end if it was mine.
Speaker 1: Didn't you before when she was pregnant.
Speaker 2: When she first told me she was pregnant, I was
Speaker 2: just messing her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I told her.
Speaker 2: I couldn't have children. She was fine with that. She
Speaker 2: really wasn't looking forward to that. We were both older,
Speaker 2: and hell, I was an old man. Believe me, have
Speaker 2: them youngs all. I can tell you you wear out.
Speaker 1: Right, but uh, and then you're sixty something on a podcast.
Speaker 2: And we go to the hospital to get some medicine.
Speaker 2: She was fully dilated for six hours before we got there.
Speaker 2: And I'm completing about my neck, and hell, she won't
Speaker 2: be quiet so I can go to sleep. I gotta
Speaker 2: go to work in the morning. Woman, and she's in
Speaker 2: the hot tub vacuum inn. She's fully dilated. She's two
Speaker 2: months early. A week before. I'm talking to my nephew.
Speaker 2: This is He said, Man, it'd be cool if it
Speaker 2: was born on my birthday. I said, justin your birthday's
Speaker 2: two months before Alex's do date, but it.
Speaker 3: Would be cool.
Speaker 2: You're right. He was born on his birthday. Wow, two
Speaker 2: months premature, amazingly strong, had some issues, but they didn't
Speaker 2: think it would have to go the nick you unit,
Speaker 2: and I go back to check on my wife that
Speaker 2: had no medicines. During this four and a half hour
Speaker 2: nivory that they used every tool to try to manually
Speaker 2: bring someone out of the woo. They're getting ready to
Speaker 2: do surgery because my wife was wearing out or just
Speaker 2: worn out. I was worn out and I wasn't doing
Speaker 2: nothing but holding her hand and count and getting hollered at.
Speaker 2: And they took the little safety net at the end
Speaker 2: of the table. They had it up against the winter,
Speaker 2: and after the contractions, everybody would get up. We didn't
Speaker 2: make no birthing classes. We went to the hospital and
Speaker 2: geinst some medicines so she'd quit nagging me. We had
Speaker 2: a baby that day and it took so long, and
Speaker 2: we're sitting there and the nurses come in. When we
Speaker 2: go to the hospital and get some maid they said, well,
Speaker 2: we'll just check her out before the doctor gets here,
Speaker 2: and they go, oh my god, she's fully dilated. They
Speaker 2: all go run out of the room and leave me
Speaker 2: there by myself and say, what the hell am I
Speaker 2: supposed to do? You know, the doctor finally gets there,
Speaker 2: when they take us over to get her ready. They said,
Speaker 2: this thing't gonna take long. Four and a half hours
Speaker 2: later he was born, and they first thing I didn't
Speaker 2: know what they were going to be doing during the birth.
Speaker 2: They take the little sledg that's out to where her
Speaker 2: feet are stirruped, and there's a landing trade for your
Speaker 2: baby if the doctor misses or something. I don't know
Speaker 2: what it's even there for, because the first thing she
Speaker 2: did was take it off the anybody that's had children
Speaker 2: and been in the room with know so they took
Speaker 2: that out of the way. Oh so then after an contraction,
Speaker 2: they would all get up and leave the room and
Speaker 2: leave me in there. I've always been pretty quick, so
Speaker 2: I started to figuring out how long would it take
Speaker 2: me to catch him if he popped out? Because he
Speaker 2: came out. Now he's going to the floor. He's already
Speaker 2: gonna have problems two months early. So I'm getting stressed.
Speaker 2: When I get stressed, I get loud. So I started
Speaker 2: hollering for the nurses. I said, listen, either put this
Speaker 2: damn thing back on, or somebody sits at the catcher's
Speaker 2: position when y'all go on break. Because after every ten
Speaker 2: or fifty minute they're leave the room and leave me either,
Speaker 2: And she's crying, wanting to go home. She's hurting. I mean,
Speaker 2: this woman, it's like a superhero. She ain't got no medicine.
Speaker 2: And the boy's head stuck at the end. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to look at it. It was hideous. Jerry. So
Speaker 2: after temps with Tom and plungers, my god, man, be
Speaker 2: easy on that head, I said, Doc. She said, we're
Speaker 2: gonna have to go do surge. We're gonna give one
Speaker 2: more time. And I'm sitting in my chair with my
Speaker 2: wife's hand and I'm looking at the doctor's face. I
Speaker 2: can't look. I'm just watching the doctor's face. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you hear Alex shoots out and lands on
Speaker 2: her shoulder and chest, and I'm going, that's the craziest
Speaker 2: shit I've ever seen. She told me you ain't gonna
Speaker 2: just pop out that little fella, just pop the hell out.
Speaker 2: And I'm going. And then she grabs the scissors and says,
Speaker 2: cut the cord. I said, lady, I work with knives
Speaker 2: every day. I mean, no no situation to be cutting
Speaker 2: a cord. That little woman put my big hand and
Speaker 2: threw them damn scissors in my hand and said, you're
Speaker 2: cutting a cord. And I cut the cord. Thank god
Speaker 2: I did, because I don't know if I could live
Speaker 2: without it, but I could have done without it. There's
Speaker 2: the craziest thing I've ever seen. They take Alex away.
Speaker 2: My wife's laying there now they can give her a shot.
Speaker 2: So I followed then with Alex, and they they're cleaning
Speaker 2: him up. I'm the proud of stad in there. You know, man,
Speaker 2: my little boy is little undersized, but he's breathing. He's
Speaker 2: doing good.
Speaker 1: That's two months early, three pounds and that tig for too.
Speaker 2: Much premature wow, because I found out later he was
Speaker 2: a horse. So I'm sitting there and watching him clean
Speaker 2: him up. They're telling me how beautifully he is. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks like it's daddy, don't it. And Uh, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, sir, you gotta leave. He starts redlining.
Speaker 2: I said, well, I'll get check on my wife. And
Speaker 2: my wife's in there like she's on the planet Mercury
Speaker 2: and the doctor's putting the glove on all the way
Speaker 2: up to her shoulder. And I thought to myself, this
Speaker 2: can't be fun. I said, is everything okay? Yes? But
Speaker 2: We've got some problems. Your wife's placina didn't come out.
Speaker 2: I've got to go get it. Would you like to stay? Oh?
Speaker 2: Hell no. So I walked back towards where Alex is
Speaker 2: and I can hear a lot of movement, a lot
Speaker 2: of panic. I dropped to my knees, and this in
Speaker 2: between the the delivery rooms and to where they take
Speaker 2: the babies into their little hall. And I go unconscious,
Speaker 2: praying for four or five minutes, and all I can
Speaker 2: hear is my wife hollering in my son's red line.
Speaker 2: I think I'm gonna lose both my children, my wife
Speaker 2: and my child at the same time. I don't know
Speaker 2: how long I was out, and I came to I
Speaker 2: looked around the corner. Alex was gone. I went across
Speaker 2: the hall. My wife was gone. I turned into wrecket
Speaker 2: Ralph in the hospital, No lie man. They were getting
Speaker 2: security up from me because I was insistent on whearing.
Speaker 2: The hell's my family in my mind they were in
Speaker 2: the morgue. They finally got me to calm down. They
Speaker 2: had Alex up in the neo natal clinic where the
Speaker 2: where they put the prevy chair Nick you. My wife
Speaker 2: was on the same floor but in a different room
Speaker 2: and obviously not good shape because of her trauma and
Speaker 2: the drug she was on. And uh, I went and
Speaker 2: saw Alex. But after Alex was born, after that great
Speaker 2: escape out of the uh of the vice, he looked
Speaker 2: just like the conehead some Saturday Night Live, like an alien.
Speaker 2: I mean it was a cone head.
Speaker 1: I ain't lying to you.
Speaker 2: He was maybe thirteen inches long.
Speaker 1: And nine of it was head.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it. That sucking, I'm saying. The first
Speaker 2: thing I said is, don't worry about you. Daddy can
Speaker 2: afford to buy you some hat. And his mama looked
Speaker 2: at him and said, oh my god, that's not mine.
Speaker 2: He was an alien. He is, That's why it. And
Speaker 2: there you go. There you have it. Buy his alien daddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his daddy's an angel.
Speaker 2: But uh, I changed his first little Primo diaper because
Speaker 2: mama didn't seem for a day because she was just
Speaker 2: not in good shape after that. Wow, and uh, but
Speaker 2: you know you're sitting in this, you know, only going
Speaker 2: certain times. He's hooked up to all these machines. And
Speaker 2: I take him his little first toys and the people
Speaker 2: had got him and we had got him, and I
Speaker 2: mean I had eight inch toys that were bigger than him,
Speaker 2: my little dolls sitting in the little chamber with him.
Speaker 1: There's a picture of me in his hand. Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his feet didn't go out of my hand.
Speaker 2: I got big hands. But but anyway, being the curious
Speaker 2: guy I am, there's other kids in there, and I
Speaker 2: was already amazed that the one beside Alex was less
Speaker 2: than a pound, looked like a squirrel. I said, oh
Speaker 2: my god. And I went around the corner and it
Speaker 2: was a pound and a half and two pounds. Alex
Speaker 2: was a stud in there at two point nine by
Speaker 2: the time he got cleaned up, and I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of walking around and I shouldn't have, but
Speaker 2: I was kind of boasting my bull. We're gonna take
Speaker 2: you own over here, but I started looking and boy,
Speaker 2: they set me down and said, sir, you cannot leave
Speaker 2: your area for private and confidential. And I understood that.
Speaker 2: I respected. I didn't think of it. I should have,
Speaker 2: but you know, some people don't want.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it does make sense. I wouldn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that was the thing either, But.
Speaker 2: All right, so if it ever happens to you, just
Speaker 2: stay in your lane. Yeah, I learned the hard way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but man, but what they did and the care they gave.
Speaker 2: There are special people that do that nick You work,
Speaker 2: and Alex probably wouldn't have survived if luckily we were
Speaker 2: the number two nick You on the East coast here.
Speaker 2: Oh really, people go to Chapel Hill and if it's serious,
Speaker 2: it's Chapel Hill. Can't take you that this was back
Speaker 2: in those days. And what is he twenty twenty six now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be twenty seven this year?
Speaker 2: Wow? Wow? Wow the story and he started out with
Speaker 2: a life from fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure he got that dog in him too.
Speaker 1: Yep he still does.
Speaker 2: Are he stilled out? Wow?
Speaker 1: What this has been amazing? Man, We for for fort
Speaker 1: this June will have been doing this show for four
Speaker 1: years and from the jump we have talked about having
Speaker 1: you on the show. And I think that we've talked
Speaker 1: about it so much that I began to believe that
Speaker 1: it would never happen. And then what was it two
Speaker 1: days ago? Alex is like, guys, this is it. Got
Speaker 1: him on the shot, got him, We got him.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of stipulations and I hope I
Speaker 2: don't bore anybody or no, no, this is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know, I can only speak when I get comfortable.
Speaker 2: And he called me, and I know that you guys
Speaker 2: been wanting. I've been saying this, that and the other,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, finally I said, I'd hate
Speaker 2: to die tomorrow and not it gave my son. And
Speaker 2: people might hate it or people might like it, but
Speaker 2: this is just a gift I gave for him and
Speaker 2: to you and to Nick that if you call it
Speaker 2: that I just called. We talk like this all the
Speaker 2: time on my.
Speaker 1: Front porch, for sure, but this is a gift to us.
Speaker 2: But well, I appreciate that, and I hope someone can
Speaker 2: feel something out of it, and hope you wake up.
Speaker 2: It's amazing to help someone. The next day.
Speaker 1: We have now had all three of our fathers on
Speaker 1: the show as of tonight, and that's really cool.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe one day we need to get the jam
Speaker 2: bree together and have all three things.
Speaker 1: I've been saying that for Yeah, we've really been talking
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, both of you have all three
Speaker 2: of you parents are a little older than their norm
Speaker 2: for a child of your age.
Speaker 5: How old are you My dad is about to be
Speaker 5: He's I think he's like fifty eight. So honestly he
Speaker 5: had me when he was around around twenty ish.
Speaker 1: So mine is a little older though.
Speaker 2: I'm just talking about what they've lived through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and.
Speaker 2: Being anywhere towards sixty. Yeah, it was a different time.
Speaker 2: These kids today have no idea of the luxuries. They
Speaker 2: don't know what it is to not have a TV,
Speaker 2: to not have a telephone, to not build to pick
Speaker 2: and call anywhere you want to be in the world.
Speaker 2: The communication, and but what has it all led to.
Speaker 2: No one talks to each other. I have people that
Speaker 2: text me, I'll just say, man, that's too many word responds,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call you. They don't answer me, and they
Speaker 2: text me I'll call you later. And that's the problem
Speaker 2: with the world. Man. You don't know how someone's feeling
Speaker 2: unless you ask them. Don't text them. Everybody's gonna say
Speaker 2: I'm good, and most people are gonna tell you they're
Speaker 2: good if you ask them. But you're here, your ear
Speaker 2: will hear the cry and the fear.
Speaker 1: I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming
Speaker 1: coming up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you think I didn't watch Batman? The Riddler
Speaker 2: was by.
Speaker 1: Hero Did you see him as the Riddler got the
Speaker 1: later I'll show you later. Alex actually came one time
Speaker 1: to the show dressed as the Riddler, and none of
Speaker 1: us had any idea about it. It was a guest
Speaker 1: it was on a different It was on a guest show,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, and it was a podcast that talks
Speaker 1: about Batman. But anyway, show, shut up, shut out bat
Speaker 1: Force time. Yeah, shout out back for it. Tom another
Speaker 1: great father. I think, Yes, Yes, this has been amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you you're the man. Any thoughts, any last No,
Speaker 1: I'm good, Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2: But for people to listen to the show, tell your friends.
Speaker 2: This is a show about good guidance and belief. Without belief,
Speaker 2: there's no reason to carry on tomorrow. And that's what's
Speaker 2: wrong with our society today, is because people are losing
Speaker 2: losing their beliefs and they're without a belief. Man, you
Speaker 2: gotta believe in something, and there is a higher power.
Speaker 2: We're all being guided by the same light. But some
Speaker 2: people's lights are dark, some people's lights are bright. You
Speaker 2: always find your way out when there's a light, you
Speaker 2: always find your way in when there's not. It's like
Speaker 2: being outside and inside, you know, and you gotta look
Speaker 2: for the light. It's not always what it looks like
Speaker 2: or seems. And people are putting your life for a
Speaker 2: reason to help or be helped. It's always been my philosophy.
Speaker 2: And people that always seem to attract need help, but
Speaker 2: have the heart to help right, and they help me
Speaker 2: in a way. We all have needs from each other,
Speaker 2: we all have strengths. Like I said earlier, but you know,
Speaker 2: I love your group. I love what you're doing. I
Speaker 2: love your message. You're not commercializing the hell out of it.
Speaker 2: You're just saying what your daddy believed in and sees.
Speaker 2: And the world needs to wake up. You know, there
Speaker 2: is people that has the power of foresight and the
Speaker 2: message and how to translate the message. Everybody gets a message,
Speaker 2: not everybody can tell the message, or say the message,
Speaker 2: or learn from the lists a message, you know. So
Speaker 2: I thank you guys for taking the time out having
Speaker 2: a man on and rambling. We'll do it again. Yes,
Speaker 2: we'll get three old goats on and go from there.
Speaker 1: You want to plug your socials, well.
Speaker 2: I am on ao L. I'm the last member, so
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be hard to find. So just look it
Speaker 2: up AOL. There's not a lot of us left. I
Speaker 2: don't like change, man. I never changed it. Decord in
Speaker 2: my wrist. I just added. But I never took anything
Speaker 2: off to replace with something new. I never changed working equipment.
Speaker 2: I changed it when it broke.
Speaker 3: Who does that sound like a lot of people I know?
Speaker 3: But yeah, somebody we have over the chair over there.
Speaker 1: You didn't pull off from there. It's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad thing. It's just funny to see,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: So they're gonna keep your prices cheaper for your customer.
Speaker 2: I mean, first time I went to the dentist, you know,
Speaker 2: it was like forty bucks. That was how fault. Now
Speaker 2: it's to forty. They got all these machines. I can
Speaker 2: look in and I don't want to. I don't have
Speaker 2: to look at you work. I trust you're working in there.
Speaker 2: I don't need to watch TV and see your hands
Speaker 2: in my mouth cutting it open or whatever. Hell. I
Speaker 2: went to them denist's office and the guy said, well,
Speaker 2: you got two cavities, one on each side. I can
Speaker 2: do one today, You're going to have to come back
Speaker 2: for the other. I said, what do you mean, I'm here,
Speaker 2: do them both. I ain't paying for another visit. I'll
Speaker 2: pay for the extra, but not another office visit and
Speaker 2: a cavity. He said, well, I can only numb one
Speaker 2: side of your mouth at a time. I said, that
Speaker 2: sounds like a plan to me. Numb the worst side,
Speaker 2: freestyle the other side. He said, Man, you're like John Wayne,
Speaker 2: let's get it all. And I'm sitting over there and
Speaker 2: it took everything I had and I slapped that man
Speaker 2: when he started drilling on my unnovacine side of my mouth.
Speaker 2: But I spit it out and I'll walk on with
Speaker 2: it and didn't go back. But you know, I'm different.
Speaker 2: I live with a lot of pain because that's all
Speaker 2: I've dealt with. So get on with it all, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, say bye guys.
Speaker 2: Hey we're out, Bye guys. What up?
Speaker 3: Bmies.
Speaker 1: If you like the show and want more, check out
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash bledso said so.
Speaker 5: This will get you exclusive weekly bonus shows and access
Speaker 5: to our discord community with hundreds of open minded people
Speaker 5: just like you.
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Speaker 1: and more.
Speaker 5: For all future updates, follow us on Instagram at Bledsoe
Speaker 5: said so, same time next week.