Speaking Broadly with Laurel Park Mayor Carey O'Cain

Just west of Hendersonville sits the residential community of Laurel Park, a town known for its scenic beauty, tranquility, and rich history. In this episode of the Kudzu Project, Nick sits down with Laurel Park Mayor Carey O'Cain for a wide-ranging conversation about the past, present, and future of one of Western North Carolina's most distinctive communities.

A Henderson County native, retired commercial contractor, longtime owner of Wild Birds Unlimited, and Laurel Park's mayor since 2011, O'Cain brings decades of experience and a genuine love for this region to everything he does.

Beyond serving as mayor, Carey is also the creator and host of Broadly Speaking, the popular WTZQ radio series that explores the people, places, and stories of the French Broad River Valley. That passion for history shines throughout this conversation as he reflects on how the past continues to shape the future of Laurel Park and the greater Henderson County area.

Whether you're interested in local government, Appalachian history, community preservation, or simply the stories that make Western North Carolina such a remarkable place to call home, this episode is one you won't want to miss.

Learn more about the Town of Laurel Park: https://www.laurelpark.org

Listen to "Broadly Speaking" on WTZQ: https://www.wtzq.com/show/broadly-speaking/

Welcome to Rhythm & Brews — held on the 3rd Thursday of each month from June-October, Rhythm & Brews transforms South Main Street in downtown Hendersonville into a community gathering place filled with music, food trucks, local beer, wine, and cider, and thousands of people enjoying a summer evening together. Learn more at https://www.hendersonvillenc.gov/events/rhythm-brews-concert-series.

The Kudzu Project is powered by the Lucey Agency, a full-service marketing firm based in Hendersonville, NC.

The Henderson County Chamber of Commerce is a proud presenting partner of the Apple Festival Races which will be held on Saturday, September 5, 2026. The event is presented by Hunter Subaru, with support from Lassonde Pappas, Cummins, and Mountain Credit Union. This event has something for runners of every level with an 8K, 5K, and Chick-fil-A Mini Moo Mile. To register, visit https://raceroster.com/events/2026/111853/apple-festival-races. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:47

You were born and raised in Hendersonville. I was. I was um I was born here in 1950 and uh spent time in the city of Hendersonville. We lived here until 1963, and then we moved out to Flat Rock. And my dad had built a house uh you know that my mother wanted. And so we we moved out there into a new house, and and uh it was a great place to to grow up. And uh but I will say that growing up there were not that many attractive jobs, you know. GE was in town and it paid well, and if you were um you know, if you had a family business, perhaps that was a good lucrative business, but very few people stayed, and I could not wait to get away from here. And so, you know, after going to Clemson, I uh I I moved to Denver, Colorado, um, and worked out there for 13 years in the construction business, and then uh moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and worked there for 13 years, and then at in 1997, uh the president of the company asked me and one other person to go open an office in Raleigh, uh North Carolina. And so we went up there and opened that office, and it's thriving now, but I retired back in 05. It's hard to believe I can say I retired because you know I'm I'm so busy in other activities. So uh, but it's fun. It it it it uh it keeps me out of trouble, and and I um I love it.

SPEAKER_03 2:47

Yeah. So you were gone for a quarter century. You were away from North Carolina uh working in the construction industry.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

What did you think of Denver? Oh, I love Denver. I I I absolutely loved it. Um we had our house was on 17th Avenue Parkway. We were always involved, or I was always involved with construction projects. I, you know, I built bridges over Vale Pass. We built high rises downtown, we built McNichols Sports Arena, we did additions and additions and additions onto the Mile High Stadium. Uh we built bridges through the Glenwood Canyon. So we were uh we were very active and very involved. Yeah. So I and I loved it out there. I know that you were out there as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yeah, my wife and I moved here uh a little over two and a half years ago from Castle Rock, Colorado. There's cranes everywhere because there's so much construction. You must have seen a lot of growth in the days that you were there, 70s, 80s.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, I I was there from 72 to 85, and there was a lot of growth. Uh there were a bunch of high-rises that were popping up, and I know that they have the convention center now, which is beautiful. I I know that they were always lobbying to get a convention center, and uh, but I loved going to the football games. I learned a trick with uh with when uh I I'd gone down one afternoon to buy some tickets for the Nuggets basketball game. And I got there right, I see it was a it was a Monday. It was a Monday, and I got there at noon. And the ticket agent said, Well, if you'll wait about three more minutes, I release the family tickets. And so I would wait until right at straight up noon, and then she she said, Well, you know, you can sit, you buy tickets to sit with a family of the players. And so I would buy a box of like four tickets for me and friends, and and we we made this, we made this a routine, and I'd sit there right next to some of the players' wives, and they'd be grabbing my arm like one of the players would make a drive on the basket, and she'd be squeezing my arm like because she was scared that he was gonna get hurt. I remember uh David Thompson was there, and David grew David grew up here in uh in Shelby. And so uh we used to, we our high school team used to play his high school team. Oh wow and David was David was a monster, you know, he was only about six foot four, but my God, could he jump? Anyway, so David had David and Monty Monty Tao had played for the Nuggets and so had been on the team, and then he was traded to the Portland Trailblazers. And I remember standing up one day and he was playing for Portland, and he had a wonderful play, and I just stood up and I said, D.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

And he looked at me, he said, he's you know, like, oh yeah, I remember you.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

That's awesome. It was so much fun. Yeah. But I my family has some connections out there now. Uh, our my nephew, who is my wife's brother, is his name is Rutledge Livingston, and his son, Robert Livingston, is a defensive coordinator for the Broncos now. Very cool. And so uh Rutledge was just out there last about a week ago and uh visiting uh visiting the family. But uh we want to make sure that we go out there sometime this year and go see the Broncos play. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

This is a great time of year to go to Colorado. The summers are lovely. Not a big fan of the winters, but the summers are just fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Well, if you're a skier, you love it also. But but yes, you're right. The get up to the uh high mountain meadows and the wildflowers that you will see. I mean, you're just going, oh my Lord. Yeah. You know, just little things that you didn't even know exist. Yeah. And uh uh it's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Yep. And we were spoiled to live in Castle Rock because it's it's a great town. Um, you know, it consistently wins awards for best towns, small towns to live in in America, that sort of thing. And when we were shopping for a place to land when we got married and moved here, Hendersonville kind of checked all the boxes that we were looking for. It had that similar feel. Castle Rock, 85,000 people, but it feels like a small town still. And Hendersonville, it's uh, you know, it's growing, but it still feels manageable in size. So yeah, similar vibe, kind of a mountain vibe here, like Colorado. Right. So yeah, it felt very familiar.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Oh, I love I love this area as well. You know, when the thing that I missed the most when I was out west was the green. And you you have the forest, but you don't have the understory and the and the lush ferns, and uh you really you really miss that. Yeah um and so I was happy to get back here. My wife and I were recently went up to Highlands, and oh my goodness, what a beautiful town that is. That is. Uh with an elevation, I think the the town itself is 4,000 feet and Whiteside Mountain is about 6,000 or close to it. And uh oh, just the lush flowers and undergrowth. It's just wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yep. Now you live in a beautiful town yourself, Laurel Park, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, I've I've been the mayor of Laurel Park for, believe it or not, 16 years.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Wow. Wow. So you you became a council member in 2009, was it? Uh that's right. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

That's right. And I I was a council member for two years, and then our uh our mayor, our current uh mayor at that time, Henry Johnson, told us that he was going to um he he was going to retire. And so I looked around the rest of the council and just figured that I was probably the most likely successor. And so I went home. Well, I spoke to Henry about it. I spoke to our town manager about it to get their opinions. And then I went home and told my wife, well, honey, I'm uh I I've decided I'm going to run for mayor. And she looked at me like, are you out of your mind?

SPEAKER_03 10:01

That's awesome. And now, 16 years later, I'm still at it. You can always count on your wife to provide uh honest and raw feedback, right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

But uh she she's been great at giving me uh input and and uh uh suggestions. So I love her.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Are they four-year terms?

SPEAKER_02 10:23

They are. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

They are four-year terms. Okay, so you've won how many elections now? Is he 2011, 2018?

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Well, there was one period where the state legislature decided, it was about four years ago, and they decided that they wanted to fall into even number years. And so they they gave us a six-year term at one point. And so uh I I yeah, I won't be up for an election again until uh 28.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Wow. So yeah. You plan on sticking with it?

SPEAKER_02 11:03

I I am, I um I um at least for a while, and um we have a good group of people, and we have so much diversity, and we always have. We've had an architect on, we uh uh um a you know business heavy business oriented people, uh we have an agronomist uh on on our council. So and um so we I I think the diversity that we have amongst our council members really helps us to understand what solutions can be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

So to folks who might not be familiar outside our listening area, Laurel Park is a predominantly residential enclave.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

It's very much so. It's uh there are uh the population is about 2,400. Um about 1,800 stay in town 12 months. The other 600 usually go to Florida uh during the winter. Uh so um it's a fairly affluent uh community. We do have a business district that we're trying to nurture, uh is basically where Highway 64 cuts through our town. Okay, and we have the four roundabouts that are going in that are underway now. Um, and we have the Acusta Trail that cuts through the area. There's a lot of history in in uh Laurel Park, and it goes back to the founder of Laurel Park. His name is W.A. Smith, William Alexander Smith. And I think in the in the 1900s, yeah, in the 20th century, he was voted the most important figure in this area for the entire century. Wow. And he was he was fabulous. He was his his wife was uh the um uh Eva Smith. Uh that's Earl Stilwell's wife was Eva Smith. Um but they uh they they had several children they had a couple of children. Uh Hubert uh Smith, he was killed, unfortunately, uh, three days before the armistice in uh in 1918. And his father, his mother and father didn't even know uh that he had that he had died. And so everyone is celebrating the armistice. The war is over, and then it wasn't until uh around Thanksgiving that they got notice that Hubert was dead. A real sad story. So uh W.A. Smith did so many things. He created the dummy line, which was a railroad that ran from uh here at Fifth and Maine all the way out to Laurel Park. And for nickel, you could ride the train and go out to amusement areas uh where there were a couple of entertainment lakes. Uh one was called, as I when I was growing up, we just called it Laurel Park Lake. Its official name is Rhododendron Lake. There was another lake out there called Rainbow Lake. And on the on Rainbow Lake was a pavilion, entertainment pavilion. Um big bands were would perform there. Uh a lot of the well, the big bands were brought in by my wife Luttrell's grandfather, J.K. J.K. Livingston. He and his son, Buster Livingston, were the they were the entertainment promoters of the 1920s and 1930s. There are so many funny stories about that. You know, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, was uh he was living in the Skyland Hotel after he had been evicted from the Grove Park Inn for drunken misbehavior. Imagine that. And so he moved over here to the Skyland Hotel. Well, my Luttrell's grandfather, Buster Livingston, ran the bus station. And buses were, you know, they were they were a great means of transportation at that time. And so every day uh F. Scott Fitzgerald would uh go over to Asheville to visit Zelda, his wife, who is at uh the I think the Highland Hospital or Sanitarium. And so usually when he would come back at night on the bus, he would be inebriated. And so Buster would uh he'd see he'd see Scott getting off the bus, he'd go over and give him a shoulder to lean on, he'd throw his arm over his shoulder, and he'd walk him over to the Skyland hotel. He would take him up in the elevator and put him in his room and and and leave him. Wow. That's amazing. Uh it is, I mean, there's so many stories like that that just, you know, they they stagger you. And that's part of that's part of what uh I'm trying to convey in my uh broadly speaking episodes, which are it's on WTZQ, and it's talking about the history of of this area, and you know, like George Gershwin. George Gersh George Gershwin lived here uh back in the 1930s. Did not know that. And he lived out in Flat Rock, and um he had already produced uh Porgy. And Porgy was on Broadway and it was an immediate success. But um I'm saying I'm sorry, as George Gershwin lived down lived down in Charleston. DeBose Haywood was the one that wrote that lived here. And DeBose was was here and had written uh Porgy, and it's it's it's weird when you read that book, it's difficult, it's very difficult to read it. You have I I found that I had to read it out loud because it's speaking gulla. And you almost have to phonetically pronounce each syllable until you get it. So I read I read the first three or four pages five times, and I found out if I read it out loud, I could I could speak the language. Yeah. And then I got it. I was going, damn. I mean, it was so it was so entertaining to to do that. Well, what happened was that uh DeBose Hayward was up here, and they it it had been a success on Broadway as a play, but George Gershwin said, I'd like to take this and make it an opera. And so he came up here and worked with DeBose Hayward for two years, and they rewrote it into an operatic, operatic uh form, and there's a there's a term for the particular type of opera that they did. But um and then it became another success, you know, on on Broadway as a as an opera.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Yeah. It seems like there's there's so many stories in this area for its size. It it it seems like it it just amazing.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

And yeah, you know, when I grew up here and and and I took North Carolina history, I think we take that in the sixth or seventh grade, they they didn't teach a lot of the stuff that I'm learning and finding out about on and I'm reporting about in uh my broadly speaking. Um for example, we didn't know that uh Hernando de Soto came through this valley didn't either in 1540. Wow. And um and the reason the historians now have kind of mapped out that some people believe he came over the pass up from Old Fort, uh, which would be the Swannanoa Gap, and then other historians believe that he came up through the Hickory Nut Gorge. But no matter what, he ended up at an elevation of between 2100 and 2200 feet, and that's in his in his mapping, and he talks about going across these uh rivers, including the French Broad. And, you know, I didn't know, you know, I didn't know the French Broad is the third oldest river in the world. You know, you're going, what? You know, uh few people know that. You know, this it but the the history goes back so far to because these mountains are so old. Yeah. And I I some of the oldest mountains in the world. Oh, absolutely. They're they're like uh you know 400 million years old. 400 million years old. And I I'm I'm just I'm just staggered. I'm staggered by that. I'm writing an episode now about these um, oh, I'm writing an episode about Highlands, uh North Carolina, and and some of the rock formations that have uh like uh looking glass rock, for example, you'll see these uh mounds of of uh granite and these were pushed up uh out of the earth by pressures. It was molten rock and it pushed pushed up due to the pressures and and uh rose. There are oh gosh, I'm trying to remember, there are over over 20 uh mountains, over 6,000 feet in this state. And I know compared to Colorado, that's not very high, but it compared To the east of the Mississippi, that is very, very high. And, you know, I um Andre Mouchot, who was sent over here in 1788 by Louis, I think it I think it was Louis XVI, and sent him over here. Um Andre Mouchot's father was a botanist at Versailles. And so they they sent Andre, who was young at that time, and he was he was stationed out of Charleston, South Carolina, but he would make ventures up into the Highland Plateau and other areas exploring. Well, all the entire um all of Europe has eighty native trees. Western North Carolina has over one hundred and thirty. Wow. So you know a hundred and fifty percent more trees. So when Andre got Andre Mouchot got here, um he called this place a Garden of Eden. And uh and right rightfully so, because um it's not just it's it's not just the trees, it's the uh plants, the plant species, the fungus, the mosses, the ferns. And you know, a lot of these, they say, the scientists say that there are, I believe, 2,000 fungi in western North Carolina identified. That's just identified. They believe that they're probably ten times that number. And you think, ah, well, what's so important about that? Well, that's where penicillin comes from, that's where uh other uh medicinal drugs uh come from, and you you just wonder what else is out there? So, you know, when when all this was going on and and the tree species and you know, why? You have to ask yourself, why here and why not the Alps, or why not you know, some other parts of the world? And it it really came down to the orientation of the mountains. And our mountains are oriented north and south. So the chains run north and south, whereas the Himalayas and the Alp and the Alps are there oriented more east and west. So when the ice age happened, the ice kept pushing further south, further south, and tree, you know, trees, shrubs, animals migrated further south. Well, eventually they the trees, shrubs, and animals, birds included, were trapped up against the mountains. Whereas here, the as the as the ice pushed further south, they they could survive. They could continue to move further south. And uh they're hidden, a lot of times they're hidden in in little sheltered coves. Like, for example, the uh uh Pearson Falls down in Tryon. Pearson Falls is, oh my gosh, if you haven't been down there, go. And if you have the opportunity, get it. There's a curator down there, one paid person. It's run by the Tryon Garden Club. We went down there a couple of years ago, and fortunately, our guide was that curator. And it it's only a quarter-mile hike up the hill and a quarter mile back. It took us three hours because we were walking so slowly. And the curator would just take his walking stick and lift up some leaves and say, You see that plant down there? And yeah, that's all that's one of only three or four left in the world. And he'd just look around, make sure no one was watching while he lifted the leaves off of it. And I was going, Wow, wow, that's just fascinating stuff. So the history here is pretty phenomenal. Um and it's um, you know, when W.A. Smith helped promote this area, you know, they were they were they were promoting it for a reason. Um, and my family was involved with it because my my uh my grandfather on my mother's side came up here in 1902. He built this building across the street, which was called the Hunter Pharmacy. It's uh uh he built that in 1907, and but he came up here because of the cool air and the and the fresh water and the fresh air. There was a down in the flatlands, um, there were huge losses of people due to yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid. And so he moved up here from Montgomery, Alabama in 1902, and then his wife, uh Georgia Grimet, came up the following year because she had two uh young boys under toe. And so she she came up, she caught a train uh all the way up to to Spartanburg. And I why she didn't catch a train all the way up the mountains, I don't know. But she took a wagon from Spartanburg up through the Hickory Nut Gorge, a horse-drawn wagon, with the two boys. The boys were uh Forrest and um Harry, Uncle Harry and Uncle Fafi was what is what we called him. Anyway, so and then once she once grandmother was up here, she had two more children, my mom, uh Elizabeth, and uh her older brother, Charlie. And they lived at the house um on Sixth Avenue where Bill Penny's office is now. It's a beautiful little two-story uh tabby uh tabby house that my mother was born in that house and and uh I spent uh endless days uh in in that house when I was when I was very young. Unfortunately, I never I never knew my grandmother, well I knew my grandmother, but she died when I was seven years old, so I never was able to ask her um you know some really important questions. And um I I so regret that. And my grandfather, he died, um he died in 1921 from complications with malaria. So um, so neither my mother or my father grew up with a father. Yeah, so uh it has been but it's been fun. At one point, uh Laurel Park was called the town that made Hendersonville famous.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

That's great. I love that. There was a there's a little bit of similarity, isn't there, between Laurel Park and Flat Rock in that it was a place where people went to escape the humid coastal climate. I I kind of look at this area like an island. You know, if you look at a map of of this area of of Western North Carolina, southern Appalachia, we're an island in in many different ways, climate-wise, um geographically, culturally, it's almost like an island.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

It's very different because uh, you know, one thing that a lot of people don't realize is how much rain that we get in in Laurel Park. An average for Laurel Park is somewhere between uh 75 and 90 inches of rain a year. Our may our uh the rainfall for our area is measured at the Asheville Airport. And it typically runs about 45 to 49 inches of rain. So if we're we're almost 50% above that, almost sometimes even more than that. And ironically, the wettest county in the state is Transylvania. And Transylvania will typically have about 90 inches of rain per year. You won't believe what the driest county in the state is. Bunkham. No way. Bunkham County, right next door, is the driest county in the state. And, you know, if you think about it, uh, you know, what happens is that the you know, the storms coming in from the west will will build up, they'll hit the high mountains, and they'll drop their rain. And they get to Asheville, the airport, or Buncombe County, the rain's gone. So, you know, it's uh you're it's kind of uh it's a little confusing.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Yeah. A little bit like Colorado, right? Now the the rains hit the Rockies and then it's country dry.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah, you get out east, uh the prairies out east, and there is uh just dry flatlands. Yeah. Now Laurel Park is at 2,700 feet, I believe, in elevation. No, the base of the mountain is uh same as Hendersonville, 2200. Okay. But the top at uh Fleetwood or you know the top of the mountain at jump off rock is 3,100. Okay. We rise about a thousand feet.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Okay. And now jump off rock is probably the most well-known geographical feature in Laurel Park, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Probably, yes. Um we uh there are a lot of you know, there are some interesting uh areas that you if you just drive up the Laurel Park Highway, you will encounter the CCC walls, which were built in in the well works projects of the 1930s under FDR. And so those are beautiful in themselves. But one of the nice things about uh about that area is it's a forest. It's it's like if you wanted to uh drive up the Pisgo Parkway, you could do it from Hendersonville in 15 minutes. You you can kind of get that feel of uh of a parkway just very close to town. Yeah, it's gorgeous up there. So I this morning I was I was I was driving down to our shop. It was about nine o'clock, and I had to, I had, I pulled up to uh to a stop sign, and I just started looking over, and I saw a bear just walking down the street, and I was going, I mean, where else can you experience that? But you know, that's that's something that has changed as well, because I never saw a bear growing up. Never. I I saw one up on the Pisco Parkway uh or the uh Blue Ridge Parkway, and I saw a mother and a cub one time when I was about 16 years old. But now I'll see a bear at least a couple of times a year.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Right. Yeah, my wife saw her first bear in the wild. We were driving up from Greenville, and um, right as soon as we crossed into Henderson County, we saw a bear on the side of the highway. Her first bear sighting in the wild, and she lived in Colorado for 20 years, so yeah, you have to come to Henderson County to see some wildlife.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Yeah, yeah. Well, uh we're we're lucky. I mean, just don't don't get too close to them.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

Now, speaking of animals, you and your wife also own Wild Birds Unlimited. We do, by Harris Eater.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

We bought that shop back in uh 2019 before COVID. And uh, you know, we've it really is a great franchise. We have learned so much, and our uh uh the head office is up in Carmel, Indiana, which incidentally is the roundabout capital of the United States. Anyway, we uh we we spent time on, we had to go through almost a full year of training before we could take over, uh, before we were approved. And uh at one point towards the end, we had to take a psychological exam. And uh and and I asked the executive that was it was had given us, he told us what to do. I said, have you ever gotten to this point where somebody has been training for a year in the psychological exam kicks them out? And he said, Yep, happens all the time. Really? And I said, Well, what do you do? And and he said, I just tell him, you're going to be miserable in this job if you don't follow the guidelines.

SPEAKER_03 37:24

That that's funny.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

So what are they looking for in that in that evaluation that would you know after I took the exam and said that that I took it for both of us? And they said, no, no, no, no. You you can't do that. You take it, and Luttrell needs to take it also. And so Luttrell took it, and they came back and said, There has been no one that has ever had a more perfect score than Luttrell for this role. And I was and you know, he didn't tell me how badly I had done.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

That is great.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

But basically, they encourage you to participate, to participate locally and to give. The key to success for this business is to be involved, not you know, not just in the business, but be involved in the community and to give back. And you don't have to give back a whole lot to everybody, but uh just you know, someone might come in and say, all right, well, here's a check for $50, but at least you're participating. One of the, you know, one of the biggest promoters, we try to shift it around a little bit right now. Um right now we're trying to really support the flat rock backpack program because it is so it is so useful and for especially the younger children in this community, people that need help. We've been very supportive of the conserving Carolina, uh, the Boys and Girls Club, the Blue Ridge Humane Society. And that is that is more my wife than it is me, because she she believes in doing these things. And and and it it's proven it's proven to uh be helpful.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Yeah. Birding seems to be something that would probably be popular in an area that's full of retirees. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

And you know, the beauty about this is our location. We're on a flyway, we're on a migration route. Uh the birds, a lot of the birds tend to follow the Appalachian chain. And so uh we will we will have an abundance of uh migrators and just birds that stay here year-round. And more so, there are more wild bird unlimited stores in the state of North Carolina than any other state. There are 365 uh franchises in the United States, and uh there's an abundance in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 40:30

I think there was one in Cassarock, as a matter of fact.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

I think there is. I think there is. Yeah. We try to visit, you know, that's part of the training that you go through. We had to visit at least 10 or 15 different stores and write them up and you know, say what's good about it, what you liked about it, what you didn't like about it, and report it back. Report it back to franchise. So we still have people coming into our store that are considering buying a franchise. And we we uh we show them the ropes.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

So you've been retired for 21 years now, but you seem awfully busy.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

I don't feel like I'm retired. Um I'm kind of like Chuck McGrady. Chuck says I've I was a failure at retirement, and I I I guess I'm a failure at retirement also. Um so between you know the Wild Bird store and the town of Laurel Park, and you know, trying to work, you know, uh work at home and uh I and now with broadly speaking, you know, it's uh yeah, it's it's I I'm busy. Yeah. Which what do you enjoy the most? Oh, I enjoy all of it. You know, I I enjoy a little bit of travel, but I don't like being away too long. We you know, I I enjoy seeing our our children and grandchildren and planning trips with them and and planning trips just with the two of us, with Lutrell and me. We try to make a a major trip every other year, just the two of us, and then do a family trip every other year. Nice. And so it's uh it's always fun getting the whole family together. Oh, well, where do you want to go next? It's a lot of fun. Yeah. Is your whole family in this area? No, my uh my my two boys are still down in Raleigh, which is uh where I retired from. And uh they have uh, let's see, I have three grandchildren down there. I have a daughter up in Cincinnati with uh two boys uh up there, and have a son down in Charleston, and he's single.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

So what's it like being the mayor of Laurel Park? Are you is it is it hard to go out and not be spotted by people?

SPEAKER_02 42:55

And oh, it's uh I I don't mind being spotted by people at all. I'll I'll probably go up to them before they'll come up to me. But uh, you know, it's uh sometimes you get some unwanted phone calls, but for the most part, it's a peaceful community. And the and the people we don't have too many curmudgeons. I think I know all of them though. But uh it's uh I'm not gonna say it's an easy job because well, it is easy from the standpoint that we have a town manager that manages and does all of the work. So basically I preside and you know give direction or guidance and or try to, you know, I'm not the only one. It's the our whole council uh helps helps guide our our future. Yeah. I I think that one thing that we're trying to do, in addition to um, you know, what's going on with Highway 64 is we're trying, you know, much like a lay uh an interior designer would come up with a a design palette, where you come up and say, all right, these are my colors, and these are my textures, and these this is what the wood should look like. You know, what what we're trying to do right now is create a palette for the town of Florel Park. And it's a lot of it's generated by what's been going on on Highway 64. You know, for example, um, we want to maintain a forested community, not a uh grassy uh big lawn area. Uh we want to remove invasive vines. Not allow kudsu and English ivy, Oriental Bittersweet to take over and destroy our trees. You know, we can't dictate, but we can suggest. And for example, light fixtures. So that we the this or these are the light fixtures that we would prefer to see. We don't want a whole lot of uh up light. You know, we we live on a mountain rising almost a thousand feet, and the people up high on the higher, they don't want to look down and see this blaring light you know shining up at them. And so uh there are there are some good things that we can do, uh drainage, for example. You know, who would have ever thought that we would have the amount of rain that we had in uh Hurricane Helene? And you know, we were we were hit hard, and we still haven't recovered. We've uh and that mostly because FEMA money has been very hard to come by. And you know, we've jumped through hoops and we continue to jump through hoops. We did get um an award about a month ago of $960,000. But considering we have a $15 million problem, that's uh that that's not uh that you know we we need a whole lot more than $960,000.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

So it's a more affluent community.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

It is, and it's an older community too. I think the median age is uh is about in the mid-sixties. Okay. Uh but I I am seeing some younger people moving in, and I'm just thrilled by that. Yeah to to see a bus going up the mountain dropping kids off, or or seeing younger families out jogging, and yeah, I just I love that. So, yes, the uh I the affluency or the median income is able to increase because we found that we can work from home. Yeah. And in so many cases, uh someone can move to this area and pull down a decent income and raise a family. Whereas when I was growing up, no, you couldn't do that.

SPEAKER_03 47:31

Yeah. You're about an eighth the size of Hendersonville. Do you see some of the challenges that that Hendersonville faces with, you know, crime, drug abuse, homelessness, things of that nature. Do you ever see any of that? We we see the same things.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Um the similarity between Hendersonville and Laurel Park is uh we own our own roads just like the city of Hendersonville does. The city of Hendersonville owns about 75 miles of roads. We own 30, we own 32 miles of our 35 miles of roads. And so it's uh, you know, we've we're that's probably one of the biggest impacts to our tax dollar is trying to take care, keep the roads up to speed. And uh so uh up until three years ago, we owned our own water system and we sold that water system to the city of Hendersonville for the betterment of our community because we uh Laurel Park is landlocked, and being on a town on a mountain, there are very few buildable lots left. And so if you are going to build on one of those steep slopes, you have to um you have to accommodate you have to accommodate the runoff and you have to do the engineering to figure out, okay, how do I design this house so it's not going to slide off the mountain? Or by disturbing the land, I'm not going to create a landslide. And so we found, you know, we changed our our laws with regard to that several years ago before Helene, and now we're glad we did. Yeah. Because uh they had done, I think it was David Weinthrob had done a study about steep slopes and the endangerment of Western North Carolina for these steep slopes. This study was done about eight or ten years ago, and boy was he right. Every area that was had a red mark on it indicating that this could is a potential landslide, almost every one of those slid. Wow. We have uh we had uh over 30 landslides, we had over 30 culvert washouts, and um, you know, it's just it's amazing how much water, how much rainfall we I think we had 40, I think we had 47 inches within at that uh within that two-week period, there was a big rainfall about 10 days before the hurricane. And then then we had, I think 27 inches, you know, just that one day. Um we have someone on the mountain that keeps track of that for us, Dave Brown. And anytime I'll just call him up and say, Dave, how much how bad was that rain? And so he'll give me the statistics and so the big project right now is 64. The wide net uh making sidewalks uh uh and and bicycle accessible. About five years ago, we knew that this project was coming about. The project really initiated back in uh 1989, and it's so difficult to get a project to follow through to construction. Um and this follow this got on the list for construction about 12 or 15 years ago, and once you're on that list, it's gonna happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

Um being on death row.

SPEAKER_02 51:47

Yeah, and so um we start five years ago, we started saving up, it was setting aside money to enhance the landscaping and the look uh through Laurel Park so that uh we have we have trees that are tree-lined, kind of indicative of that pallet board that I was talking about, so that when you go through a roundabout, it's gonna make a statement. Um each roundabout is a different season. So there's spring, summer, winter, fall, and each one of those has each one of the four roundabouts will have that look. Okay, this is the spring, and so you know, you'll have uh blooming dogwood, or you know, you'll have maybe in the winter you you may have uh red stick or yellow stick dogwood that looks good in the winter, um, you know, when it is colorful. And you so uh Hunter Marks has been great. He's uh he's been working with us and the DOT to to make that happen.

SPEAKER_03 52:58

And when is that expected to be completed?

SPEAKER_02 53:01

I think it's fall of 28. Okay. We've got a ways to go. I mean, I was in construction and I I I I rarely knew of a project that went further than longer than 12 months. I mean, I I could I could build high rises and hotels in 12 months. I'm going, what's just throwing down some concrete, right?

SPEAKER_03 53:24

I mean, yeah, well anyway, so I I don't get it.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:31

So if if you were to say, where is downtown Laurel Park, you would say off 64 there, where um Yeah, the it's that's our business area.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

And uh but I don't really, you know, being a residential community, yeah, that's where you go to get your groceries or you know, to have your jewelry taken care of, or or or the liquor store. But um, you know, the the core of the town, um, I'd like for that to be more like the you know the parks, right? Yeah, where people go and children play. We have uh we have concerts, you know, the our friends of Laurel Park put on concerts about six times a year. They're usually free. And um, poor, you know, we encourage the locals to attend. You know, we will have events down in Laurel Green or after after we open, reopen Rhoda Tendron Lake Nature Park, we'll have events up there again. But you know, that the ticket for that um you know the repairs from the storm is over a million dollars just for that park. Wow. So some good things have have gone on out there. You know, the pavilions, the entertainment, the dummy, the dummy line. At one point there was a a canal that connected the uh two lakes, um, and you could take like a gondola car and and ride from through the canal. Uh Jack Dempsey was there in 1926 before his uh famous bout with Jack Tunney, which would ended up being called the Long Count. And he he lived in uh in uh Indian Cave Lodge and would do exhibitions with uh with other boxers while he was here. He was here only one month and he was paid, I believe it was $35,000 in 1926. A lot of money back then. And I'm going, holy and he drove he drove a Pierce Arrow, you know, or someone did. Yeah. He was from Colorado.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

I think he was. Yeah. Yeah. Southern Colorado. Yeah. It sounds like you you stay busy. It sounds like you um you're a man of many talents and many interests.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Well, I do have interests, that's for sure. History is is one of them. And I and I just I love discovery. Um I'm surprised at how much I have learned that I didn't know. And uh when we first started uh doing this show called Broadly Speaking, I was talking to Mark and Pai at WTZQ, my wife and I were, and we'd tell we'd tell us a little story about when we were growing up or uh about something, and they would just look at us like, wow, I mean that's that's an incredible story. Well, they they after a while, and after a couple more stories, they they said, Well, why don't you um write these down and so and record them for us? And so I've been doing that, and I have written uh over 60, I think over 50 have been released and recorded. But uh I'm I'm constantly I'm constantly learning this notebook that I have beside me, you know, that's it's full of just chapters, episodes. You know, they started out and they were fairly short. They were usually about three to five minutes, but you know, they've they've gotten a little longer. Right now they're probably closer to five to seven, five to seven minutes each. And um I I I end up probably reading at least a book or two books with every episode, so just to whittle a story down to you know seven minutes.

SPEAKER_05 57:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

And you know, but I I love it. I've got a little library of all my all my reference books. Yeah. But there's so much history that uh, you know, before uh you know, like Louise Bailey uh wrote so much, and Tommy Orr and Frank Fitzsimmons and uh uh Sadie Patton. So I've I've read and reread all of those books. And um is Fitzsimmons on the banks of the Oklawaha? Yep. And he used to have a radio show when and he was he he he officed down in uh a northwestern bank, and um you know you'd hear his voice on the and he called it the Oklawaha. Kind of an interesting cat, wasn't he? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And he was uh, you know, he would venture out and and go visit people that he didn't even know and try to get a story from them.

SPEAKER_03 58:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:59

And uh he was just a very gregarious person.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

Aaron Ross Powell Sounds like he made it his life's mission to to kind of document life in Henderson County.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

That uh he he did it, and the barbers did it, uh the uh Baker Barbers. Um one of my best friends growing up is Edgar Barber Edgar Farrington Barber. He lives in Aspen and uh he visits here because he still owns property out in Flat Rock. And his grandfather, Farrington Barber, who went by his nickname was Ferry. And um he built the well where the north where the First Citizens Bank is at 6th and Maine, they had three buildings there. They were the Barber Buildings. The one on the corner was the photography studio, and Don ran that, and then the one in the middle was the it was like a uh uh card and you know, can't card and camera shop, and that was run by Jody Barber, and then the one uh furtherest south was the office supply, and that was run by Uncle Barber. And so growing up, uh the growing up right next door was the Carolina Theater. And so, you know, I um you know I would wander through those buildings. I I knew the all of the barbers so well that um you know sometimes I'd enter through the alley and come through the back. But um I can remember my my wife was a little girl, and she would go into the uh Carolina theater, and she would collect lightning bugs with her sisters, and she would take that take a jar, mayonnaise jar of lightning bugs into the theater, sit on the back row, wait for the lights to drop, and it'd be perfect perfectly dark in there. And they would take the lid off the mayonnaise jar, put it down on the sloped floor, and let it roll all the way front to the front. And in the meantime, all these people are looking up and they're lightning bugs all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:31

That's great. In the theater. That's an awesome, awesome prank. I love that story. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:41

I wish we had a downtown theater again. Oh, it was so cool. That that theater was so uh majestic. And Earl Stilwell had designed it. And it was the the nickname at the time for theaters like that was movie palaces. And they wanted to transport any viewer into another world. And so the if you once you went inside, there were tapestries and uh Oriental, you know, there it may look like a land of Aladdin in there. And it was just so exotic. And um I I I can remember I can remember seeing the movies in there, and and it was it was just such a such a different different look. Yeah and we me I miss that. Um and I found out that Earl Earl Stilwell, you know, a lot of you rem know who he is, but uh he, let's see, I think Earl was born in the late 1880s and died in about uh in the 1970s, at a good good old age. But he was quite an architect, and he he designed um uh St. James Episcopal Church, he the City Hall, uh beautiful, the beautiful City Hall, the Hendersonville High School and the old auditorium, he designed that as well. But his his most prolific work was movie theaters. And the story was that he had designed the Carolina Theater, and then the Carolina Theater burned. And the Carolina Theater at that time was owned by Jake Wells and uh Ellison Smythe. And when it burned, they had to um well Jake Wells committed suicide. He was a builder on the Fleetwood Hotel, and uh he had gotten in over his head in so many things, and he just decided he was gonna take himself out. Uh so when that when he left, uh Allison Smythe ended up hiring a company to manage the theaters who had theaters all over the Southeast. So then Earl Stilwell ended up being the architect to remodel this theater, and they liked him. Well, that movie company is called Paramount. And so Earl Stilwell became a the a lead the leading architect for Paramount in the southeastern United States. He designed over 70 theaters in the Southeast. He worked, you know, they uh dad, my dad was a an apprentice with with Earl. And I I can still look at if I see if I see some of Earl's drawings, which they have them down at the library, I can I can discern dad's uh which one dad's did dad did because uh I recognize his print style. We talked earlier about WA W.A. Smith. He had two sons, Hubert, and his other son was Walter. And Walter had been in WW1 also. Well, Walter ended up being afflicted by mustard gas in WW1. And so, and he had also lost his brother um uh right before the armistice. And so I would see Walter um out on the street, especially during uh November, November 3rd, when uh it was uh Armistice Day, and he would usually have poppies, and he would sell poppies for a dime or something. He would usually give me one because I was just a little tyke, and you know, I I would see him, I would see Walter up at my dad's office, which was on the second floor of the Hunter building, because I, as a youth, I would clean that building twice a week. I would sweep the floors and clean the toilets and you know, just do janitorial duties for $4 a week. And I thought that was good money. Anyway, so um so I would see Walter up there because Walter loved to watch dad draw. So he would pull up a spoon. By my dad's drawing board, and he would just sit there and watch him draw, sometimes talking. So I got to know Walter that way because he'd say, Hey son, you know, uh, you missed a spot. Anyway, so he he got to know me. And so Walter had a sleight of hand. He was uh he could he could hide things in his hand. So he would reach behind my ear and he would pull out a silver dollar and he'd show me the silver dollar and he said, Well, Kerry, you've got this behind your ear. And so after he had done this about six or seven times, I finally my response was, now you know I had that silver dollar behind my ear. You just put it back. That's great. Anyway, he was he was he he was an eccentric old man, though. I tell you, he lived in he lived in one of the pump houses. He squatted in one of the pump houses, and he claimed because his father, W.A. Smith, had built all that, he assumed, okay, well, I own this pump house. So he squatted in that pump house. And uh he was a he was a character.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:16

That's awesome. Carrie, you brought a big stack of papers there that say, broadly speaking, these are these are some of the episodes that you've done. Yeah, this is most of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:28

And let me I'll just kind of give you an idea of some of the stories because I've got an all right. I'll just yeah, the first one's just an introduction. Spanish Explorers in 1540, A Garden of Eden, Early Roads, Murderers, Marauders, and Thieves, Duels, Long John McCarson, Indian Encounters, Long Man, which is the Indian name for the French Broad River, The Trail of Tears, The Castle by N by Denise Kiernan. Denise wrote The Castle about the Biltmore house, and Denise and her husband live over in Asheville. They actually lived here for a while. Then the story about George Vanderbilt, my mother wrote a story about a walk down Main Street in 1925, is actually like 21 pages, and so I I uh reduce that to two different episodes. The Genteel of Flat Rock, Bison in Western North Carolina, going down the French Broad in a canoe. There are a couple of stories that are really somewhat my favorites. One of them is Elijah Mitchell about Mount Mitchell.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

And the it's it's almost like a trilogy because the other one was right beside it. It's about Zebulon Vance. And the third one of the trilogy would be Thomas Klingman. All of these men knew each other. In fact, Elijah Mitchell was their professor at the University of North Carolina and taught geology and a variety of other mathematics, was one of them. Well, Elijah Mitchell back in the 1800s got into a battle with one of his students over the tallest mountain in western North Carolina. And uh Thomas Klingman believed that it was Klingman's Dome, which is, I think that's called Tennessee. Yeah, and it's called uh Black Dome was his name then. And Elijah Mitchell believed that it was uh, I forget what the name was before it was Mount Mitchell, but it was something dome. And so um the story there with these three characters and how they intertwined was just fascinating. And I, you know, I I loved reading that. You know, one one of my stories is gold and minerals. Um, you know, North Carolina was the biggest gold producer until uh gold was discovered in California. Yeah, there was a gold rush here, right? There was, there was, and there are multiple gold mines in Henderson County, most of them are monitored. So if you you you can find them on maps, but just don't go there because you'll you're liable to get in trouble. Uh Pearson Falls, uh uh railroads transform uh western North Carolina, uh hotels and boarding houses, the town of Roosevelt. Does anyone know ever know that there was a town of Roosevelt here? It was out in Edneyville. And there was a there was a hotel that out there that was started by J.K. Livingston, who would be Luttrell's great-grandfather, and it was called the Hotel Recreation. Um St. James, uh, the treasures at St. James, St. James, for example, the stained glass, that it's the same same stained glass company that produced the glass for Westminster. And when Queen Elizabeth II uh, you know, the that just passed, she was responsible for repairing the glass at uh Westminster after WW2. You know, she hired this firm to do this same company. The bells there at St. James come from the same foundry as Big Ben. Uh the organ is one of the uh most exquisite organs in the world. People come from all over the world just to see and listen to that organ. So, you know, they're tre liter there are little hidden treasures all around that we don't know about.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:28

Um talk about Lake Summit and how that was formed. Uh talk about the Fleetwood Hotel. Frank Cheryl. Frank Cheryl lived here. He um he owned Crail Farm. He had a house out in Flat Rock, which is called Sherwood. Um and uh he came back from WW1 and as a a millet as a army chef and said, Hey, I can I can do this. So he created SW cafeterias. The the S stands for Cheryl. He owned Bald Head Island. Uh Baldhead Island is seven miles long and about a mile wide. We used to go down there because I'm friends with Duke Anger, Frank Cheryl's uh grandson. We used to go down there and stay on the island before anyone lived lived there. And all that was there would would be there were three Coast Guard houses that were yeah, they were pretty flea infested, but you know, we would we would sleep in those houses and uh we had a great time down there. But um, you know, Nola Chucky Jack Siever. That was uh that was a revolutionary hero that the Seavers uh they ended up starting, uh it was actually his great nephew that started the uh the school called Fassifern. And uh that was a school for girls that ran until about 1955, I think. My mother went there and uh Luttrell's mother went there, a lot of a lot of people. So we talk about the railroads, you know, it wasn't just the railroads that went up to Toxaway or went to Asheville. There were railroad trolleys, one of which um departed at the depot on 7th Avenue, came up 7th Avenue, ran the length of uh Main Street, then went down the hill at 2nd Avenue, crossed over Church Street to Washington, went one block south on Washington, and then headed west out to Lenox Park, which is now trailside.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:21

And that Lenox Park at that at the turn of the century, at about the same time as uh Great White City when they in of Chicago, um electricity had come about, creating the Great White City, and it was a Columbian exhibition in Chicago of 1892. No. Yeah, that's right. It was the Columbian expedition of 1892, the uh celebrating Columbus landing in the in America. So there was a complement to that. It was called Columbia Park, which is now trailside area. And that area became, they built a lot of uh Victorian homes out in that in that area. Um and the story about Lenox Spring is amazing because that was a sacred Indian ground to uh all of the tribes, even if they were uh feuding with each other, it was considered neutral ground. So you could um the Indians from all over down in the flatlands, they would come up here for healing, the healing, and they would um experience the waters, the healing waters. Well, they tested the waters back in the 1970s, and they came up with like seven or ten medicinal elements in the water that that could have helped the healing process. So there were encampments there back in way before the white white men uh came into the area. And then Dr. Witted uh ended up buying that property. He was the first doctor surgeon in the area and also ran a drugstore, Witted Drug Stores. Hence Witted Street. Exactly. And so um he ended up buying that property, bottling the water, and selling it, and the the the water actually sold, continued to be sold until about the 1970s. As a child, I can remember we would pull up to the ice plant, and the ice plant was located on Whitted Springs, but it uh on Whitted Street, but it extracted water from the spring, would freeze the ice into blocks. And so whenever we would be planning on going to the beach, we would pull up to the ice plant, and we'd order up a couple of blocks, which would be about a foot square. And they would come out on a stainless steel chute, and and we would take some tongs and put them into our metal Coleman uh coolers and take and go to the beach and just take a pick. Anytime you needed some a little bit of ice, you take a pick.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:40

We're so spoiled now. We get the bags just with the ice crushed already. Uh takes the fun out of it. Oh, it does, it does.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

But oh, and the flavor of even to this day, our water tastes so good. I mean, you know, you know what it's like having lived in Colorado. You you you taste that uh that pure mountain water and you get that same flavor here.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:04

Yeah, very true. How do people listen to your program on WTCQ?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:10

Well, it's uh you can you can pull it up any time that you want to. Uh if you just google WTZQ broadly speaking, you can pull up past episodes. Okay. They're all archived. Yeah, and but if you want, it's uh it's broadcast at 1230 on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the radio station. And it's also at 8 15 on Thursdays. So there'll be a there there'll be a new episode. The one right now, the one that's uh on the uh that it has just been released, it's a personal story. And this is the first time I've done a personal story, but uh it was it's it's really pretty pretty fascinating. There's so much there's so much history here. Yeah, yeah. For example, uh the Morse family. Samuel F. B. Morse. They lived here. Samuel Morse. Samuel F. B. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:18

Uh the telegraph. Morse code. Morse code, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, his family. I grew up with uh Chip Morse. Bleep me is yeah, uh, we were in high school together, unfortunately. He died in uh climbing accident on Mount Rainier, but back in 87, I think it was. But anyway, um I uh uh I learned so many uh little traditions from that family. They would always put up their, they would invite every child was in allowed to invite one or two friends over for Christmas, and we would decorate the tree, the Christmas tree, the night before Christmas, but it had to be down the night before New Year's. Um and we would uh in the summertime, every July 4th, we would have lobster, and we would ship the lobster in via uh airplane from Boston, and this great big jug, which you know, uh stainless steel container would show up. We'd have like, depending upon how many of us there were, 12 lobster and clams and potatoes and corn and seaweed. And uh it it was just a tradition that I learned from that family. Well, they had they had in their house, Samuel F. B. Morse had been a uh, he was a famous uh artist. And some of his artwork has sold for you know almost two million dollars. Wow. And I would grow up just seeing all that artwork, not recognizing what its value was. Well, they ended up donating most of it to the uh high museum in Atlanta, along with um uh he you know, Samuel had he he would take ivory and chisel out cameos, and underneath the living room tape glass top table were about 30 different cameos, and they were gorgeous. But um, you know, that's that that family, they're all gone now. That uh uh bleaker died, Sandy and Penny died, and you know, they've they're gone. Yeah. But the house is still there, and so I uh I got a kick out of going by and seeing them. Sandy would call me up, say, Carrie, why don't you come by about five o'clock this afternoon and have a have a dram of scotch with me? I said, that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:10

That's awesome. I love it. Anyway. Well, Carrie, it was great talking to you. I I feel like we could fill a few episodes with all your stories. Oh, I know, I know we could.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:22

Yeah, I know we could. It's just uh it's it's a labor of love.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:26

Why don't you just go ahead and plan on coming back anytime you want to and and keep talking about history in Henderson County? Yeah, that that sounds like a good idea. All right, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:37

Glad to be here. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Dave.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:49

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SPEAKER_00 1:25:28

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