One Year Later: Remembrance and Celebration

John Avera and John Hall sit down with the youth of the church that worked in the tornado relief. Gary Bryant tells about some of the interviews that he has had while writing the book from the tragedy. Personal stories from everyone! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:33

I'm John Avera, and today we don't have John Hall at the moment. He may come in later, but he had an emergency and had to leave. But we're here today. It's May 17th, and yesterday was the one year anniversary of the tornado in London. So that's what we're here to talk about. I've got about nine of the youth with me from church here, and I've got Gary back with us. Um he's uh he came to talk about his book earlier, and uh we're gonna try to get some progress about that. But yesterday we had a what was called a service to remember the the people who were lost and the celebrate the people who worked really hard during the tornado. And most of y'all were there, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26

Um it was kind of weird for me because I got a phone call, the church did anyway, and asked if the pastor would want to speak to represent Heart Baptist and all the work that we did because we were in the middle of it and uh had the little relief center and everything. And so when they were told that we didn't have a pastor at the time, but we had an associate pastor, they asked if I would go ahead and speak, and so I told them yes. I thought that was a great opportunity, and so I wrote all this stuff up, and you know, I I thought I was the only one doing the speaking part anyway, but uh I wrote it all up, and when I got the lineup for the day, just a couple days before, by the way, uh it had me in only for the opening prayer, so that kind of broke my heart a little bit because of all the stuff I had written out, but I just decided I would do whatever I wanted to do, and I just said what I wanted to say and then did the prayer. And so I thought it turned out pretty well, but uh it ended up, I think it's mostly just a um what is it, a political political event, yeah, because basically every speaker there was running for something this year. Um a lot of them were already in people, the incumbents that are already in there, but it turned out being a huge political event. Uh Jacqueline Coleman, our um lieutenant governor was there. Um the governor had a video that he showed. Uh it had all different people here locally that was running for something. Um when the videos came out though, a lot of my family over in Somerset were wanting to see that. And um when I looked it up, I fast-forwarded just to hear my part. I wanted to hear what it sounded like, you know. And I spoke right after our superintendent, Denise Griebel, spoke. So when I saw her, I kind of just slowly scrolled through and then it skipped me and went straight to Jacqueline Coleman. I was like, what in the world? So I've I was like, well, I've scrolled too much. So I backed up, you know, and looked again, and I was just pretty much cut out. So I did question that, and they said that there was a problem with the camera and everything, that they didn't uh keep it running because they had to do something else, which I could understand, but later on, in the exact same, it cut me and the singer out. So I he sang two songs. He sang right after I spoke, and then he sang again, and it cut both of his songs out somehow. So I don't know what to believe, really. Um what do y'all think? You think so? I I kind of wondered if it was because of my uh prayer. You know, I had the prayer, I spoke from a religious point of view, but then again, I looked, and the other two preachers that were there were not cut out. Um, but one of them read the names of the people who passed, and there were 19 of those, by the way. I don't know if we ever mentioned that in the last setting. Did you remember talking about that, Gary?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

No, I don't. I don't remember that we gave it numbers.

SPEAKER_07 4:52

I don't think we actually really had heard the numbers specifically, or you know, maybe I just didn't pay attention, but uh there were 19 people here in London that passed away from that, and I think two in other counties because this tornado went through three counties. That's how far it went. So by the time it got to us, it was very, very strong, which is obviously why it looks like it does now just down the road. Um I was sitting out on my back deck or back porch just yesterday and looking, and I thought, man, the the whole scenery of my backyard is totally different than what it used to be. Those trees, you know, after they were mostly blown down last year back in the canyon, the leaves were all gone off of them, and then it was winter, so they never came back. But here it's it's spring now, or almost summer, or it is summer. Um the foliage has come back and it just does not look the same as what it used to, and it's it's really weird when you think about it. Sit back there, and you used to have a forest behind you, and now you can hardly see anything. But I brought all these people in because uh they were most of them were the original ones that come to talk about the tornado, except for a couple, and one of them is mad at me. I won't mention any names, her name's Madison. But she's with us today, and Gary also is writing a book about the tornado, and I was hoping that he would be able to maybe share a couple stories that he's heard from some of the victims just to kind of uh see where that lies and maybe where his book lies in the process, and so that's what we'll be doing today. Um, who anybody want to speak about anything first? Maybe what you did during the tornado relief.

SPEAKER_08 6:59

I mean, I guess I'll go first. Um I will say it was cool to see the community come together um at that event um yesterday, regardless of maybe the intentions that people had or didn't have with the event. I mean, I thought it was a good turnout. There's a lot of people there. A lot of people that were impacted were there, um, and it clearly seemed to mean a lot to them. Um and it was just a nice uh way to be involved in the community, but they did not do a good job marketing it. I had no idea about it until John told me about it. So excuse me, but I thought that was interesting. Definitely could use a little bit more marketing from the perspective of the city on social media for people that are 25 and under, even 30 and under, to be honest. But um, you know, I we've come a long way in the last year. I was at we were actually driving through like one of the biggest impacted areas, kind of like where Emerald Drive is around there. Like we drove past the street sign, like coming this way. And um, I seen a lot of the rebuilds and I was like, man, that's crazy. Like this has all happened really fast. And um a lot of people are rebuilding that makes me happy to see. You know, I I'm hop I'm hoping that we were able to have a positive impact on all those people. Um that we were able to provide, you know, hopefully a smile and materials and supplies with. So that was really cool. And um just again, just to see it kind of taking shape. A lot of beautiful homes in there being rebuilt. I hope those people are doing well and praying that their insurance companies did right by them and that they're not having any troubles. So I don't know. I guess that's will be my opening thoughts. Is it's cool to see how far it's came in just a calendar year.

SPEAKER_07 8:41

Yeah. I thought it was a really good turnout as well yesterday. Yeah. And really, if it had been marketed more, I don't know that you'd have had room in that gym. No.

SPEAKER_08 8:50

Put anybody else. No, there was not many seats in there.

SPEAKER_07 8:53

It was over at uh Wine Pine Elementary, which is one of the newer elementary schools, but obviously elementary gyms are not huge. Um there's just one side of bleachers, so like the bleachers were pretty much full. And then they had chairs on the floor. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 9:11

They were all full.

SPEAKER_07 9:12

But just looking out, like some of them said, with the uh the tears that were flowing from some of the people that had lived through it when they heard people speaking, you could tell that they were still hurt a year later.

SPEAKER_06 9:26

Of course.

SPEAKER_07 9:27

Um one thing I did notice too, and you see, I saw it from the opposite view of what you all saw it from. So you didn't get to see a lot of this because they were sitting towards the front and you were over in the back. So uh when it when they started reading the names, you know, when the person who they were there to, I guess remember when their name was read, you could just see it in their face. That's their person. And so, you know, it it was kind of emotional sitting up there and watching all that. And then uh, but I just what I wanted to do was get up there because he told me that he wanted me to speak because we I was from Heart Baptist and we had done so much, and he wanted us to be a part of it, and so I I took that as he wants me to speak about what we did, how it came about, um, you know, and just the relief center itself. And so that's what I tried to do was talk about the relief center, the things we had done, how things initiated, and you know, how they came about, how it went from just a couple cases of water to a full general store, and then went from that to deliveries every single day.

SPEAKER_08 10:49

In like one day, all that happened in like one day.

SPEAKER_07 10:52

And even uh, I don't even know if we mentioned this in the last episode that we talked about tornado, but y'all remember the day um like two days in when they were supposed the Red Cross was supposed to come get a few things to get it out of our way and take it over to their relief center. And it was the prisoners that came, they sent the the prisoners, the work release. They came out and they took everything we had, remember? So we were left pretty much with nothing. And uh so we had we were all thinking, why in the world would they take all this from us when we're right here in the middle of it? Well, by the next day, we were built back up. Yep, totally, with probably five times more than what we had. And that's when the National Guard came in, they started staying here every night. And you know, they're they're different people I want to thank later on, but anybody else want to share while we're talking about it? Let's try to keep more on uh the day of, the day after, and the week after, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

One of the things I wanted to say, one of the things that struck me about yesterday is when they asked the question, how many people here, and like you said, it was a huge crowd. This you know, the the bleachers were pretty much full, and they asked how many people here didn't help with the tornado, and no one raised their hand.

SPEAKER_07 12:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

It it spoke volumes about what kind of community support there had been to recover from the tornado. I mean, pretty much everyone pitched in and did something in in some way or another.

SPEAKER_07 12:29

And I would almost probably agree with that that uh everyone was telling the truth. Because I have never seen a community come together like they did. And I'm not just talking donations and stuff like that, but like when we went out, people getting their hands dirty, even on that first day when we went out, you know, it was hard to get through that. It we had a police escort, thankful. But it was really hard to get through all that. But once we got out there, there were people everywhere with excavators and uh skid steers and just moving stuff, and I'm like, man, they're on it. People, you know, digging through the rubble, trying to find things. It was it was really cool to see uh them come together like they did.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Anybody else? I can talk about something. The first day we've had a bunch of storms before, and normally they don't go bad as as this one did. So I went downstairs, I went to sleep, and the next morning I woke up to the horrendous things that happened the night before. And my buddy called me up, said his grandma got hit by the tornado. So he called me up, asked if I could come help them try to clean their rubble out of the house. And that was my first day. I wasn't I wasn't at heart for the first day. So I didn't even I didn't even know anything was happening here until my brother Aaron, he came over and brought picked me up from his uh from my friend's mama's house. And we came over here the second day, and I was amazed at what I saw. I didn't think that so much would have happened in the one day that I was gone, and I come here, and there's a massive operation just already brewing something to help everybody out. It was just kind of amazing to me. And there was one day that we was handing out Bibles and sunscreen in the back of the truck, and there was one lady that she whenever she came up to the truck, she was crying because she lost her, I think it was her dog. And she whenever we gave her the Bible, she was just so thankful for that. And I don't I don't think I've ever seen anybody taking so much just thankfulness for just a small handheld Bible. I I just thought that spoke volumes to me, to me personally.

SPEAKER_07 15:09

So I'm not sure who it was that thought of that, the uh sunscreen thing, but that was probably one of the best runs that we had made.

SPEAKER_08 15:18

We had the we had the little bug screen sunspray combo spray. I remember handing that out towards the end, and we like ran out like people were burned up out there, like they were just out all day long working.

SPEAKER_07 15:30

Yeah, and that's one thing I wanted to stress up there yesterday, you know, was you all are like either teenagers or you know, college age or whatever, but you were out there like 13, 14 hours a day. And I didn't mention this, but you know, I was thinking, well, after that first day, you know, it'd be hard to get them up here, but I was getting a call day two, day three. Where are you at? I'm already up here, you know, and I'm like, well, I'll be there in a minute. But you know, I was getting the call saying, you know, where are you? And so I I was just impressed all around, not just from you all, but also just from our church, from our community. Uh, there's people I want to thank while I'm on here, and those who are listening, I wanted you all to hear it. I want to thank one, the Laurel County Sheriff's Department and the Kentucky State Police because both of them were here on that first day, and they are the ones that helped us get through the mess to make those deliveries. Um, they gave us an escort, and I don't think we would have got through without them because people would have told us just turn around and get out of here, you're in the way. So that got us started for the first couple days, and but we kept going without them, you know. But uh anyway, I wanted to thank them for that. A National Guard, Kentucky National Guard, came in and helped to keep the place secure and safe. You know, you never know when you're dealing with public and the tensions going around and everybody, then you have people coming in who are trying to steal and take things when they're not even part of it. You know, I know that there was a car that stopped one day to ask where Sunshine Hills was and how to get there, and it was a car full of four guys, and I know good and well they weren't going out there to help. So we didn't tell them how to get there. But anyway, so I'd like to thank them just for the security and safety of the relief center and all of the deliveries, traffic control, you know, things that people don't think about. Another person I'd really like to thank, I don't know who it is or what his name would be, but it's our trash guy. That was very important because he decided to take it upon himself to stop here every day at the end of the day, at the end of his route, no matter where it was, he came by here to empty out our trash bin outside. And if he had not done that, I can imagine what it would look like out there.

SPEAKER_08 18:16

That's an unsung hero. I hope he hears this. Like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_07 18:21

I I mean, I was glad to see that, and he was a great help. Um, there are some local restaurants and businesses as well that helped us out. Farmers Pro Hardware and Lowe's Home Improvement. They donated tools, tarps, wheelbarrels, gloves, all kinds of supplies. Really kept us stocked. I don't even know how they got it here so fast, to be honest. Christian Appalachian Project. They various donations by the truckload, semi-truckload. Whoever brought those grapes, that's the best idea ever.

SPEAKER_08 18:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 18:58

Well, why was that a good idea, Max? You remember? No. The grapes?

SPEAKER_13 19:03

I do.

SPEAKER_07 19:04

Why?

SPEAKER_13 19:04

Wait, what'd you say?

SPEAKER_07 19:06

Why are the grapes such a good idea? I said it like multiple times, that's why I'm making a joke out of it.

SPEAKER_13 19:11

I thought you were just talking about the grapes. I was like, yeah, I remember because it was a good snack just to eat. The duck song, that's what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_07 19:17

No, I said because it's the perfect snack. You can just eat it and throw it down. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_13 19:22

But the thing is, no one wanted to eat them, so we just had so many and just carrying around.

SPEAKER_07 19:27

There was a lot of grapes. But I'll tell you what, those are the best grapes I ever ate. Yeah, they were pretty good. They were good. Uh, Brandon's the kitchen by Brandon for the donations of the hot food and his food truck coming around. Uh, El Dorado did the same. They provided hot meals to deliver to the residents that were working out in this area.

SPEAKER_08 19:46

El Pescador did as well.

SPEAKER_07 19:48

El Pescador did. Um, there's there were so many out-of-town places coming in, food trucks, uh, people just coming to work from all across the United States, all the way down as far as Florida. And I thought that was pretty amazing. But um, and that was just at our relief center. I'm sure that many people, I mean, I saw other restaurants out there that set up trucks and tents to feed the people of the community.

SPEAKER_08 20:17

Yeah, we had one back here with a barbecue place that set up. I can't remember what they were calling. He was one of the out-of-town ones.

SPEAKER_07 20:22

I think he was from Louisiana.

SPEAKER_08 20:24

Yeah, and he just set up for Louisiana.

SPEAKER_07 20:26

Yeah, he set up here pretty much just to cook.

SPEAKER_08 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 20:29

And he was taking his meals up to Walmart and feeding anybody that needed to eat.

SPEAKER_08 20:34

Um Koy Express also donated to us, and there was one more else, one other one that I can't think of, but Koy Express did and all the other ones you said as well. Okay. Definitely.

SPEAKER_07 20:44

I should have done a little more research before I did my big speech yesterday.

SPEAKER_08 20:47

I I just remember uh Koy like providing food for us. Oh, the uh firehouse coffee, is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Firehouse coffee. Firehouse coffee.

SPEAKER_08 20:54

They brewed us coffee and they were like you said, they were. I think it's fire department. Fire department. It's one of the FDC. And then um a couple food trucks from again out of town. I can't remember their names, but they gave us the people that were working all the food that we could have asked for and more, and it was really good too.

SPEAKER_07 21:11

Yeah, the fire department coffee had a truck and they set up pretty much every day and gave out free coffee. And that's available at Walmart now, too. So you can buy their coffee there. I just wanted to plug that so people could do that, you know, since they were such a great help.

SPEAKER_08 21:26

Does anybody remember that guy that was selling the smoke baloney out of the truck?

unknown 21:30

No.

SPEAKER_11 21:30

What?

SPEAKER_08 21:31

I remember him, but uh this is a smoke baloney sandwich. It was great, it was amazing. That's what they remember.

SPEAKER_09 21:37

They were heater, yeah. They were selling to us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.

SPEAKER_07 21:42

Well, they weren't selling, they were giving. Yeah, sorry. They yeah, let me preface that. He called me somehow. How you guys I don't know how he got my number, but he called me and asked if we would be interested or have a place for him to come up and cook. And I was like, Yeah, um, you know, we've got a pretty large parking lot. We got a lot of workers up here that could really use some food. And I can't remember where he was from, but I'm I'm feeling like he was the one from Florida. Uh but I I can't remember for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

It was important for here because you couldn't get away to eat. I mean, you were just you were here and you know, if that was the only way you were gonna eat.

SPEAKER_07 22:22

Yeah. Well, now let's just move on to now. Huh? One year, not a hundred years. I've said a hundred years a couple times on accident. The one year anniversary. Like I said earlier, my backyard looks totally different. And we were driving up here to church this morning, my wife and I, and I told her, I said, you know what? This day, last year, we were driving up here, and all that stuff was going into our youth building. All those donations were moving in, and we were sitting here wondering, what can we do to help? How can we help this community? And it's amazing that our church was still here because we're talking to the right and to the left, basically, all around us was gone. Uh, we're within uh 300 yards of the Sunshine Hills neighborhood, which was flattened completely, uh, straight down Heart Church Road here. A lot of those houses were taken out, but here our church still stood, and you know that that amazes me, and it makes me just kind of feel like we were spared because of that reason. That's this is what we were meant to do during this time. What do you all think? How how do you all view it now that it's a year later?

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Well, our church name is part of this missionary church, so I feel like God made our mission to where it was so close, like you said. I think there was a reason to spare this church just so we could open it and be right. Um on a positive note, I did think that the tornado really helped our bit because I mean we're all pretty close already. We were but we had so many different age groups, different grades. We kind of just didn't click in that way, but after meeting each other, going out twelve hours a day with each other, doing everything together, we clicked and formed a bond, and everyone I think noticed that and really did thank us for our service and for our help. And I think after that we really just became a really tight group.

SPEAKER_07 24:57

Yeah. One thing I spoke about yesterday was the spirit of the helper. And I felt like we all felt like we needed to help. And that's what made us come together because we all had the same goal and the same intention, the same level of compassion, especially after going out there and seeing it. Um would it have been the same without seeing it? I don't know, probably, because you know, this is a caring community. But uh I don't know. After seeing it, I just felt like we all really came together and realized something's definitely gotta be done.

unknown 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 25:37

Um so I'm glad that we all chipped in and got in there. Anyone else want to speak about maybe you know, a year later?

SPEAKER_12 25:46

I feel like another place um that looks completely different is Levi Jackson Park. Like whenever you first enter it, whenever you first enter it, um, like the the pond is in the mid is in the front, and like all of that used to be woods, and it's still not cleaned up. Like there's still a bunch of trees down over there, like it's not being mean, Levi Jackson, but it looks ugly.

SPEAKER_07 26:12

It's not them. Um I was over there for a field trip just a couple weeks ago.

SPEAKER_12 26:18

So you you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_07 26:19

Yeah, I've seen it.

SPEAKER_12 26:20

It just looks completely different, and another thing that happened is um treetop completely got torn down, which was like a zip line in place, and they have that in the pool. The pool wasn't touched, but they they completely had a shut down uh treetop, so that's not there anymore.

SPEAKER_07 26:35

Well, if you've seen treetop, you wouldn't want to go on it. I can tell you that right now. That's gonna be completely unsafe.

SPEAKER_12 26:42

Yeah, it's it is completely like tore apart like over half the park, and that's like the main park here in the county.

SPEAKER_07 26:49

So well, that part of the park that you're talking about is now the city.

SPEAKER_12 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 26:55

And it's their responsibility to get it cleaned up.

SPEAKER_08 26:58

Yeah, it hasn't happened yet. It looks really bad. You're talking about like the loop to go up the hill to leave the phone.

SPEAKER_12 27:03

Yeah, like it's it looks like it's where the pond is, like literally like all the trees is like in the parking lot still. You can there ain't even no ducks to feed.

SPEAKER_11 27:11

It's just crazy to look through there, and all that's just cleared and gone.

SPEAKER_07 27:14

Like by the way, John Hall is back with us. He's back from sleeping in the day. Yeah, um well, we've talked about basically the day of, day after, few days after. We talked about yesterday and things that happened there, but now we're on like um one year later. So is there anything that stands out to you, John?

SPEAKER_11 27:46

That just the crazy amount of how fast everybody has actually came together and rebuilt everything. Um, I mean, because they even said in that meeting that we were at that you know, people were looking at years before being able to rebuild, and they've done it in months. Like just everybody came together. So it's just really it kind of warms the old heart to see, I guess. Um, you know, I had a lot of friends that lived out there, lost everything, but I mean they're and and again, I'm not so happy with a lot of people because of like I have friends that got paid out and then instantly got dropped from their insurance. And happened with several people.

SPEAKER_07 28:31

So the insurance side of thing has it's actually blown my mind.

SPEAKER_11 28:36

Yeah. Not in a good way.

SPEAKER_07 28:38

I've had to fight with my insurance.

SPEAKER_11 28:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 28:41

And my windows, the seals were sucked out, and they just would not pay for those windows.

SPEAKER_11 28:49

Insurance is such a scam. You pay so much, and it literally is. It's the one of the biggest scams in America, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_07 28:56

You can look at the two windows on the side of the house, um, and they are like bowed out, like they were being sucked out.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 29:05

So I I need new windows, I just gonna have to pay for them, I guess. But that's another thing I wanted to tell you. I found out today my contractor called, and it's time to settle up with him because he's finished. And uh he was very honest and really did us right. He went through and he said, I took off all the stuff that it was paying me for that we did not do, and he named all these things. He said, I didn't charge you as much for the garage door as it should have been, which we got an upgraded garage door put on. And uh he said, uh I know we put the screen door on for you, and you asked us to, and we're just gonna charge you a hundred dollars for that. And it was about probably five or six thousand dollars less than what the insurance gave us to give him. So that puts me five or six thousand dollars positive towards the new Windows. So yay, equity. Yeah, so it actually helped us out, and his name is Tony Robinson. I don't want to go without saying his name. He's a contractor out of Lexington. I can't remember what his uh company is called, but it's Tony Robinson out of Lexington, and he really did us right. So I just wanted to put his name out there and thank him as well. But I'll tell you a couple other things, too, that I don't understand with the insurance. Yesterday I was talking to a victim who actually goes to our church. I won't mention his name, but he had uh applied for FEMA, which I applied for that too, and I was quickly denied. Yeah, but he applied for FEMA, and they told him, Well, you can't double dip. They asked him if he had insurance, he said yes, and they said, Well, you can't double dip. And he was like, I'm not trying to double dip, I just want to see if I qualify for anything. Well, turns out he gets $42,000 from FEMA, even though he had insurance. Well, this same person. But you know, FEMA's another scam. It must be because this same person has a neighbor whose house blew into his front yard. Their whole house picked up and moved into his front yard. Well, she didn't have insurance. Guess how much FEMA she got? None. Zero. Wow. That makes absolutely no sense at all. The one that had the insurance got the total amount. The one that had no insurance got nothing. So she's just stuck with the whole, she's lost everything.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah, and I and I know the person you're talking about. That that was one of the one of the people I interviewed for the book, and and uh it was it was a problem with their deed because of the way that they had the property, their mother had given them the property, and because of the way she'd set up the deed, they couldn't get insurance, and they were in the process of getting insurance, getting the deed corrected so they could get insurance, but the tornado hit before they got the deed corrected. So it wasn't someone who just said, well, I'm not gonna take out insurance. That wasn't the issue, they just couldn't get it.

SPEAKER_07 32:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 32:19

Anyone else want to? I I would like to, while somebody else thinks of something to say, because somebody else needs to talk. There's like eight people over here, only two people said something. But anyways, um, I would I would like to say a couple things. Number one, John Hall said this one time. I don't know if it was on this show or if it was like just to us, but um, it was really cool the togetherness of not just the youth group, but just the the church as a body of Heart Baptists. Like uh the reason I mentioned John Hall is because he said like there were people that he didn't know yet at this church that he got to talk to and get close with because of the tornado and the relief system that we were running. It was really inspiring to see. Um, and again, the tornado is not a good thing um at all. You know, people lost lives and lost um everything they had, but good things can come from unfortunate circumstances, and I think that's one of them. And another thing, like again, just touching on the togetherness of everything, like uh Jesse mentioned how much closer we were because of it, and you know, that's very true. And I just I I catch myself, and you know, like I don't want this to come out the wrong way, but I just I catch myself like looking back on that time um fondly um because of helping people and all the good memories that we all made. So, you know, I don't want that to come out as I look back at such a time of um terror, I don't know, for lack of a better term, terribleness and horror for some people fondly. I don't want that to come out uh the wrong way because of course I feel for all those people and I can't imagine I can't even begin to imagine what they have gone through and continue to go through, and our prayers are with them and uh we will we will always extend a helping hand. But you know, I just I look back at those memories like just like it was it was such a nice time. Like I remember I probably stayed at Cameron's house like between five and seven days in a row. Uh we're just you know, we would literally work here, get done, go eat, play video games, go to bed, and then come back the next day and work more. And it was, you know, just being so close with everybody and every single person was doing whatever they could, you know, to brag on Hannah. She was like a month removed from surgery, and she was here on a walker waving a sign around, um, doing doing whatever she could to assist and aid, you know, even though the longest bone in her body had been broken like a month ago. So, you know, I admire her for that. And I admire everybody just for putting their best foot forward. And I just think um that really um one of the quotes that was said in the this the service yesterday was, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but you know, the the the bad things that happen bring the best people out of out of this town. And I I think that was clearly shown. Like that's the worst thing this town's ever been through in my lifetime, and people really showed their best foot forward. And you know, again, I I look back at that fondly because there was actually surgery buddies at that time.

SPEAKER_11 35:29

I was about two weeks out of my stomach surgery at that, and just yeah, yeah. It was literally glued together out here lifting cases of water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 35:38

I'm pretty sure I was like three weeks post-op. And I definitely was not supposed to be out of the house.

SPEAKER_11 35:45

I was about two weeks because I just had got hit in that car wreck and tolled like two days before, and I just had got that rental car. I remember whoever got the rental car because that thing's got like 30 tires of plug tires.

SPEAKER_07 35:58

I remember I'm sure they understand what all it had been through.

SPEAKER_08 36:01

I remember charging my phone in that rental car. It saved my phone a couple days. I charged my phone in that car when it was about to die. Nobody else had a charger.

SPEAKER_11 36:09

Jason said that was the best use of a rental car he ever saw. Yeah, it was. I used a burgeon charger. We went to the hospital that night. There was trees, I just drove through them.

SPEAKER_07 36:20

Chargers, y'all remember uh that was one of the biggest requests we had at first. Yeah, five. Y'all have any chargers? Yeah, and then somebody brought in like a multitude of chargers.

SPEAKER_08 36:31

I remember tarps going out like hot cakes because there was a second follow-up storm, not as severe, but uh there was more rain and stuff coming, yeah. Yeah, people were trying to tarp over their houses to recover any belongings that were at risk of changing.

SPEAKER_07 36:44

And where were we? Right here, sheltered up.

SPEAKER_08 36:47

Right in their backyard, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 36:49

Because uh we've been through it the first time and we weren't going to mess around with a second time.

SPEAKER_08 36:55

No.

SPEAKER_07 36:56

Speaking of, how many of you all like every time a storm starts up brewing, you get kind of nervous?

SPEAKER_08 37:04

Anybody? We had the tornado warning like a couple weeks ago, if you remember.

SPEAKER_14 37:08

Well, I will say I do have someone here that helps me know whenever there's a storm coming. Her name's Madison. She's got a $10 weather app, and it's pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

It's pretty good. Yeah, it is good. The night of the tornado, I bought uh the fancy app you see all those meteorologists use. $10, by the way. And I still use it. I actually have screenshots of the tornado symbol going across the exact path of where it hit. Huh. And I still use it all the time. Radar scope. Shout them out.

SPEAKER_07 37:39

Well, I didn't know there was an app like that, but I'm telling you, my just regular Apple emergency thing went off that night and told me exactly where it was, and I knew to get out.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

But there's there was a That was me.

SPEAKER_11 37:54

I knew location through the woods, like how close that was, and I was like, all right, now we need to go.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

There was a warning the other day, another one, or it was a chance of, and yeah, like me and my whole family. We were one of the ones to come at the church the night of the tornado. I think my dad's just kind of been skeptical ever since there's been like a warning or anything.

SPEAKER_11 38:17

Yeah, because he's like me. He'll he's not leaving home first a warning.

SPEAKER_07 38:20

Yeah, he was not leave at all. I called and told him we were coming up here. You know, we're gonna open the church up. I will be alright, we'll just ride it out here.

SPEAKER_11 38:28

I said that too until they said where it was in Mount Victory, and I was like, yeah, it's so close.

SPEAKER_07 38:33

It was within 10 minutes they were pulling up. Yeah, and the whole family was at church.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

But I remember not too long ago we came to the church, it was just us, and then I know some of the neighbors uh down the street came also because it was kind of getting bad that night, and I was kind of nervous. I my veins were shot up. I even texted Kendra and asked her if she was coming and stuff. She said no, I think we're just gonna wait it out. But I do get a little paranoid, especially where it was really close.

SPEAKER_11 39:01

I swear though, it didn't seem like we were here five minutes when the tornado came through. I don't know how long we were actually here, but it seemed like it was just so fast after we were here.

SPEAKER_07 39:09

We were here for a while, but we were actually standing outside. Yeah when we started. I remember everybody screaming at me to get inside. But I'll never forget the people running for their lives and coming into the church.

SPEAKER_08 39:21

Yeah, I didn't even know about that until yesterday.

SPEAKER_07 39:24

Yeah, because I knew I knew about the whole front end of his car, and it was his mother-in-law's car. I think it she he said, My mother-in-law's gonna kill me. I was like, I don't think so, man.

SPEAKER_11 39:34

Yeah, you got the babies here, that's what matters.

SPEAKER_07 39:36

Yeah, he was carrying his kids, and they they actually go to church now, our church. Here?

SPEAKER_08 39:41

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_07 39:42

And uh that's when it started, was the week after that. That's but I know we're talking an awful lot about church and everything. That's one thing we all have in common sitting here, and you know, it was a big part of what we're talking about, and I do want to mention from my perspective, on that same week when Sunday came around, and we still went ahead and had our Sunday service. You know, at first I was like, gosh, I can't believe we're doing this. We need to be over there working, but really it made me feel so at peace to go over there and do that little service that we had. So I actually with no power.

SPEAKER_11 40:26

Yeah, I was thinking it was completely dark and but it didn't it feel like everybody was just so close, yeah. Like it was in the dark, but it was genuine.

SPEAKER_08 40:35

Yeah, we were all over there, we were glad to have it was a time of peace and rest because we had already been going one to two days before that, so everybody was coming to you know, service anyways, and then literally after we closed, everybody just migrated over here and started working. Yeah, so it was really cool.

SPEAKER_11 40:53

I just again, I mean, that was people that I may not have ever thought about it.

SPEAKER_08 40:56

Exactly. And this this opened that opportunity, and you know, that's that's why I look at it with such fondness, like the togetherness that that brought out of us, you know. Again, not taking away from what you know people experience, it's it's awful. That's not why I look at it fondly, obviously. But it's just um again, good things can definitely come from bad situations. And you know, while we're talking about it, like you're mentioning heart, like if anybody that was impacted, you know, listens to this, like we will always have our hand out for you all to come join us for service, or if we can help you guys, like we're right in your backyard. We were then and we are now, so yeah.

SPEAKER_07 41:34

We may even still be able to scrounge up some donations around.

SPEAKER_08 41:38

We had water for like 80 years built up downstairs, ended up going through it really quick, but water doesn't last long anymore. No, it does not.

SPEAKER_07 41:49

Well, um, Gary, like I said, we're gonna move on to you a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 41:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 41:55

Uh Gary is writing a book about the tornado and the relief efforts and about some of the survivors and their stories. He's just randomly went around and uh asked for interviews. And if people wanted to interview, I how did they contact you on that, Gary?

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Well, I I've been having people reach out through Facebook. I mean, I just make a post, and for the most part, then uh they start sharing the post, and and almost everyone knows someone that was impacted. And so as they share the post, they see it and they message me back. And so far, I've had very few instances where I've actually reached out to people to ask them for an interview. You know, it's just the only exception to that is a few people who give me names of people they wanted me to contact. Otherwise, it's uh it's just been people reaching out to me that say, Hey, I want to be a part of it. And and where the idea came from for the book is is my daughter converts videos to digital, and one of her customers sent her a poem and she said, Can you help me get this published? I looked at it and I said, Well, you know, uh, that would make a really good first page of a book. And that's when I I asked a few people, uh, because I didn't want people to think I was going to exploit them with the book, and and I asked a few people I knew that were victims, do you think I should write this book? And as unanimous, they all said, Yeah, go for it, go ahead and write the book. And um, so I'm about somewhere around 35 hours into interviews right now, and I've got three more scheduled, and there were a bunch of people that uh I met at the event yesterday, and and I got their numbers and things, and I'm reaching out to them to schedule interviews. So um I don't know exactly how many hours I'll end up with, but it's it's at the point where I really need to start writing. And so I won't have uh availability much to add too many more victim stories because um the way I'm writing the book is I'll have a prologue on storms in general, and then I'll have a chapter on our book. I interviewed Bill Mack, and or um, I mean a chapter on our stor our uh storm, actually. And and so there are a lot of unique factors to our storm that don't typically occur, so I'll be writing about the That. And then after that, um, the victims' stories will appear in chronological order according to the when the storm hit their house. So it'll be kind of hard to put someone in so it's gonna follow a timeline. Yeah, it'll follow a timeline, exactly. So it's it's gonna be hard to insert someone into that. I'll have to, it'll create kind of a problem in writing to have to insert someone into that if I start writing before I get all the stories. So um so I'm gonna at some point I'll have to wind it up and say that's that's all I'm gonna have. But the stories are, you know, when I first started, I was like, I thought, well, is this gonna be redundant to have, you know, I thought the stories would be kind of like I was in my house, the wind started to blow, it sounded like a train, and then you know, it hit. But no, every single story is completely unique, and every single story is very special and and um a lot of emotion, and and you can feel the trauma in the stories as they tell these stories, and it's it's been kind of difficult to listen to these um because every single interview is completely emotional. And so it's it's been kind of traumatizing to me to listen to their stories.

SPEAKER_07 45:05

And I can only imagine I'd say a lot of them break down on you, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Absolutely, yeah. And then I break down with them. It's it's hard not to, and and it's um, you know, these people are it's it's not something we think about it. If you weren't impacted, you you have a tendency to think about it in in the sense that well, it's a year later, I'm I'm kind of coming out of it, and we see that there are still physical scars in our neighborhoods, and we still see trees down, things like that. But but these people will carry scars, emotional scars with them for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_07 45:35

Yeah. The two stories that were told yesterday by the survivors were very good.

SPEAKER_08 45:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 45:42

Um the one lady bringing up the emergency worker that pulled her out of the rubble and thanking him right there in front of everybody. That was that was very nice too.

SPEAKER_08 45:54

Yes, very, very cool.

SPEAKER_07 45:55

It's their job to do that, and I'm sure it didn't, I'm sure it meant something to him, you know, to do it, but he probably just feels like, you know, that's what I'm there to do. But it's nice to be recognized sometimes, um, thanked for what you have done, you know. Um and actually, just for you all, I've told you multiple times, I'm sure, but you know, I've been thanked about what we did during that time many times. And so that makes me feel pretty good that you know we made a difference. That's what it's really all about. You know, we're not here to try to just snub everybody and say, well, missed my house, you know. We're here to try to make everybody comfortable, try to make everybody um have an easier time getting through all this. Do you have any uh Gary? Do you have any maybe like one story you can share of something?

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Yeah, I mean, I I've got a few. Yeah, there's there's a few. There's one in particular that kind of stood out to me that um, you know, because you may recall that there were actually three tornado warnings that night. There was the there was the major one that hit first, and then there were two tornado warnings after that. And a lot of these neighborhoods, there was no place to go for shelter. You know, their houses were destroyed, and in a lot of cases they didn't even have a car to get in. So there's no way to get in out of the rain or in the storm that was in that was coming. So they started trying to walk out of the neighborhood. I mean, they literally were on foot, crawling across trees and everything, trying to get to a safe place. And and a lot of them were going to going from Sunshine Hills over to Wine Pine School.

SPEAKER_10 47:35

And uh because after that, they weren't allowed to be in there. Yeah, yeah. They were curfewed and put out.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

But but this one particular was was going as as they were going trying to get to shelter, he um they stopped because there was a man that was trapped. He had he had things laying on him, and and he waited there with the guy and he kept waking him up. He wouldn't let him go to sleep because they were waiting for the MTs to get there, and so he kept waking him up, waking him up, and finally the MT gets there and and um you know the guy goes to sleep. And the MT looks at him, kind of shakes, shakes her head, you know, like he's not gonna make it. Well, looters, as you know, were a problem. Um they were serious problems. So this this lady is here at her house, and and you know, of course, we had the people driving by that were taking pictures and just gawking and things like that. So this car comes by and it stops. And um she just looks at him and says, What? And the guy rolls down his window, and it was the guy that was trapped under the debris, and he says, Where's my Pepsi man? Because all he remembered is the guy that was there keeping him alive, keeping him awake, worked for Pepsi. He didn't remember his name, but he just remembered his he worked at Pepsi. But I thought that was a pretty, pretty uh great story. Yeah, it was on Sunshine Hills.

SPEAKER_08 48:52

I actually know that Pepsi guy.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 48:54

Did they figure out and took them meals and did they end up meeting the guy?

SPEAKER_00 48:57

Yeah. Oh, awesome. But but it was just really neat that that he he just he he didn't remember his name, but he worked, remembered he worked at Pepsi. I thought that was pretty neat. And and um there were a lot of miracles um that took place. I mean, I think about the uh the lady that was in the mobile home with her two-year-old. And she lost her internet earlier today when the two o'clock storm hit it, took out her internet, so she had no TV either. Apparently, she streamed her TV, and she didn't have a cell signal, so people were trying to call her, tell her the storm was coming, but you know, she didn't get the calls. And she literally hears the storm. She hears it, she knows what it is. And her two-year-old's already in bed, and um she starts running to get to her two-year-old. It picked up the entire mobile home and tossed it, and so the mobile home's flying through the air, and pieces are flying off of it. It drops her out on the road. You know, it's it's dark, um, and she just knows that her two-year-old's dead. There's no way he survived. And through the darkness, somehow she was able to see his face in a pile of debris. And then she starts going to him and she hears him cry, but she can literally see the tornado exiting her neighborhood. She's dropped out on the road, her two-year-old's on the road with in a pile of debris, and her washer and dryer landed behind her, and her refrigerator landed behind her. She's she was that close to getting hit by those large items. Yeah, but I mean, it was just a miracle survived. Even her little dog survived. Everyone survived.

SPEAKER_07 50:25

You know, I never really thought of it until you mentioned it earlier. But to go through that in Sunshine Hills, and most of y'all went through Sunshine Hills and know what it looked like. Can you imagine living there and going through that and coming out of whatever you were in and seeing everything to try to go to your neighbor's house in the basement or something and nothing be there? Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 50:48

I mean that you know as well as I do though, that night you couldn't really see that much good anyway, because we went right by WC's house and it looked fine. Yeah. And it was not fine.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

No, I mean, you know, one of the things that resonates with me that I kept hearing over and over and over again in multiple stories, and it was just so heartbreaking. But you know, these people would their safe place, they come out of their safe place, the storm's over, and they can't really see anything. It's dark, all electricity's gone.

SPEAKER_10 51:17

It was dark, dark.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Oh, yeah, it was very dark. But but they kept hearing their neighbors crying for help all through these neighborhoods. Their neighbors were crying for help. Yeah. And you know, they couldn't see them. You know, all they could do is try to get to where they heard the cries because they could not see these people. And that was and I kept hearing that story over and over again, every story that the people told me.

SPEAKER_07 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 51:39

All while trying to watch and not step on powers that were down and everything else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 51:43

A lot of those people that ended up here, we did have the one family that I told you had wrecked the car, but a lot of those were brought in by people just that were driving driving through trying to find people, and they would just bring them here because they heard we were open. So, you know, like he said, they came out and their house and their cars were gone. Yeah. They had no way to get anywhere.

SPEAKER_11 52:07

There was quite a few of them came back too when we had that little get-together event thing for the neighborhood afterwards. That little girl that we took to the hospital that night was back here that day.

SPEAKER_07 52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

But the same Pepsi guy I was talking about, um, his mother-in-law told me that, you know, as they're exiting that neighborhood trying to get to a safe place, they found a lot of people that didn't make it. You know, and um he was usually the one that found them. And and at that time when I interviewed her, she said he he still couldn't talk about it. It's so traumatizing to him, he just couldn't talk about it.

SPEAKER_11 52:46

Now they lived directly across from the house where the guy was arguing with the other guy and wanted to bring out the gun, and Cameron offered the tarp to him. Yeah. They lived directly across from them.

SPEAKER_08 52:58

Cameron actually said that was you. It was me. Yeah. But he was with me. Yeah, no, yeah. He said he was with you, but he said.

SPEAKER_07 53:06

We were both standing there with tarps. I said, Y'all need a tarp? Um, yeah, that was an awkward moment.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

But you know, you talk about uh people helping from in the community, people everyone helped, and you know, a lot of people came in from different places. But one of the interesting stories I came across was a guy that uh was going to school at Miami, Ohio, uh going to college there, and he saw it and he wanted to come down here and help. So he he thought, well, I'll drive down here and I'll help for a day or so. And he comes down here, and he at first it took him a while to get attached because uh people thought he was there to loot or something. They were kind of distrustful at that point. So um, but he finally he finds this woman. She was a a lady in her 50s. Uh, she didn't have anyone there to help her, and he he starts to help her, whatever she needs. If it's to go to the bank, if it's to uh to move things, but he ends it, he ends up coming back for two weeks helping that lady every single day for two weeks.

SPEAKER_07 54:10

That's pretty good. I'm just amazed at how everybody came together and just if you had a talent or a skill, you were there to use it.

SPEAKER_08 54:22

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_07 54:23

And I said talent because I I think I forget to mention him all the time, but this boy I had when I did my student teaching out at South Laurel High School called me. His name's Jason Johnson, and he said, you know, I got a bunch of buddies that plays instruments, we all play bluegrass. You know, would what would you think about us coming up here and just playing some music, trying to raise some spirits? That was his exact words.

SPEAKER_12 54:50

I was like, come on, yeah, it was nice, come on up. They played Continai Joe too. I asked them to.

SPEAKER_07 54:58

Yeah, but their version of Cottonai Joe is the actual bluegrass version, and you were looking for the dance song.

SPEAKER_12 55:04

Yeah, I had no idea what they were playing. Um I just started cluffing.

SPEAKER_07 55:09

But I don't know if y'all know this or not. Yes, he knew all them people. Yes, they are very talented musicians, but those had though that group had never played together before.

SPEAKER_11 55:20

They knew each other, but they hadn't played together.

SPEAKER_07 55:22

They knew each other, they knew each other, they knew they could play. Of course, bluegrass is kind of a tight knit community, and there's not a whole lot of bluegrass songs, so most people know most of the songs, and they just came in there and started playing.

SPEAKER_08 55:38

Heck yeah.

SPEAKER_07 55:38

I thought that was pretty cool because they sounded like a bluegrass band that had been together for years.

SPEAKER_08 55:43

Oh, heck yeah.

SPEAKER_07 55:45

Another person we keep we never think to thank would be uh out of Corbin. You know, the guy the iceman came up and he brought the ice out of Corbin, he brought bags of ice, he brought a whole big uh container and just left it here and filled it up for us all the time. So we had free ice all the time.

SPEAKER_09 56:06

Gotta love the ice, man.

SPEAKER_07 56:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 56:10

Ice man was an important part. It was Leo, was you even there?

SPEAKER_11 56:20

Yeah, he was there for part of it, weren't you?

SPEAKER_12 56:22

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_11 56:24

He was there for the smoke baloney.

SPEAKER_12 56:27

How do you know?

SPEAKER_07 56:29

I was there for the smoke baloney, too. Yeah. Well, does anybody else have anything else they'd like to mention before we stop?

SPEAKER_09 56:38

I'd just like to further reiterate on Max's point that there's it's like looking back on it now that we're a year out, um there's there's definitely a fondness to it, as weird as that sounds, but as he explained, like the closeness of the relationships that it brought us was just something I never imagined. Like I had people that we that I had said five sentences to riding in riding in the truck with me, going out taking stuff to people. And I developed relationships with those people and got got close with them and still am, and that's something that I'm extremely thankful for. And just like Max had said, um he stayed my parents actually left on vacation the night before it hit and so I was there by myself. And Max came over and stayed. It was probably at least six days in a row and it it was I mean, he just left his stuff there, like yeah. We just knew like coming back tonight. We we go to sleep, wake up, come back here.

SPEAKER_11 57:38

It was all kind of just one big day. Yeah. No week was just a day.

SPEAKER_09 57:44

And like my parents weren't home, so I mean I just had to go back and take the dogs out, but I'd say me and him were here for twelve hours, thirteen, we go back, eat, sleep, come back and do it again the next day.

SPEAKER_07 57:57

They were about thirteen hour days.

SPEAKER_09 57:58

I can just with no I mean, we just there wasn't any thinking about it. It was that's where you're going. Like eight and a half or like nine at night.

SPEAKER_11 58:08

Every afterwards we'd be here organizing and trying to straighten up and clean some too for the next day.

SPEAKER_09 58:12

So and I think that's uh that's one thing. And then another was um at the memorial yesterday they had uh picture on the back of all the crosses of the people that had passed away, and in the back you can see uh the destruction that it had caused. And driving back through like a week or two ago, there's still some of that stuff there, but you just wouldn't believe like the amount of reconstruction and cleaning up that's been done. It doesn't even look like the same place. And I think that just goes to show how stronger community is.

SPEAKER_07 58:50

Anyone else?

SPEAKER_09 58:53

Parker's got something to say.

SPEAKER_07 58:56

Yeah, Parker and Madison are here. We're not really make making all that up. They are here, they're just being very quiet today for some odd reason.

SPEAKER_03 59:04

I talked about my $10. Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_08 59:07

The weather appears.

SPEAKER_03 59:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 59:12

Confirmed, Parker is here.

SPEAKER_03 59:22

You probably don't even got the weather app on your phone. No, I can't, honestly. And that's why you get hit by a tornado.

SPEAKER_09 59:28

Leva, you're gonna school tomorrow.

SPEAKER_03 59:31

I got two dollars and you don't.

SPEAKER_12 59:32

Leva, when's your mommy picking you up?

SPEAKER_11 59:36

Snap, over there, rolling.

SPEAKER_07 59:39

How's your mama now? It's starting to become a roast session here.

SPEAKER_11 59:43

Yeah, is Jesse gonna sing us out?

SPEAKER_07 59:45

I do want to share a verse or two. One, uh, kind of goes along with what we've been talking about. It's Galatians 6.2. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. And I feel like that's what we did was we beared each other's burdens. And it wasn't just out in the community, it was here as well. Um, you know, tensions weren't just high in the tornado victim area. Tensions were high right here at the church. Um, you know, people were saying things that they probably never would have said. They were getting, you know, upset.

SPEAKER_11 1:00:21

Oh, I remember letting stuff fly.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:23

Yeah, I mean, it just uh I've never seen anything like it. But the compassion and love was much greater than that. You know, I I think it uh we really stood out as a church, we really stood out as Christians and um as just a community as a whole. All right, looks like this is gonna be the last chance for anybody to maybe see.

SPEAKER_12 1:01:02

I remember something. There's this one day Parker went out, and there's this little old lady that came up to him uh thanking him because he had such big, strong muscles, is what she said. He still does.

SPEAKER_11 1:01:14

Is this true?

SPEAKER_12 1:01:14

Yeah. You remember Parker? I know what's true. I think I didn't hear that.

SPEAKER_11 1:01:18

Yeah. Did anybody at least call him Hercules?

SPEAKER_08 1:01:25

He cuts grass, by the way, if you need your yard mode. If you're in London, he does real good stripes. He'll come to Corbin, won't you?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:32

I'll go anywhere. We need money's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:35

Well, you better watch it because we have listeners in all across the world. I mean, 19 different countries.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:48

If the numbers right, he'll sail across the sea with a lot more keyboard.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:53

He's gonna drive to Australia.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:57

Yeah, I'm sure uh they got a bridge now.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:00

Oh yeah?

SPEAKER_07 1:02:02

I'm sure most of our listeners have across the world have just really listened to the Bigfoot episode, but still uh it's good to think that people all over the world are listening to you anyway. Oh yeah. Um well, I guess John, you have anything to say since you came in late?

SPEAKER_11 1:02:18

No, I missed it all, so we'll just keep it that way.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:21

Well, I will say that we're gonna have some more recordings coming very soon, and we're since it's the the school year's about to end up.

SPEAKER_11 1:02:30

Yeah, we're gonna pick it up some.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:32

John finally decided to get a job, but uh with the school year ending up and everything, we might have a little more time to be able to record some sessions and maybe talk to some people.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:45

Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:47

Thank you, John, and thank you, John. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you all for coming on.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Thanks, John Square. Thank you, John. Yes, I like that. Thank you, John. Thank you, Gary.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:56

Kicking the dog. Turn up the top, turn up the stage.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:25

This episode, I would like to say, is it's not sponsored by anybody, but I did find out Tony Robinson's company number and it's our company name and it's R C R S construction. R C R S construction. I don't like to see that.